EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Maine State Police detectives returned for a third time since October to the site where a local teenager was found bludgeoned to death 35 years ago, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland.
The body of 16-year-old Joyce McLain, a sophomore at Schenck High School, was found on school grounds on Aug. 10, 1980, two days after she disappeared while jogging in her neighborhood.
“They went up yesterday,” McCausland said Wednesday. “It’s the third time in recent weeks. A decision was made yesterday to go back to the same site.”
State police investigators first returned to where McLain’s body was found on Oct. 1. They then returned a month later.
Pamela McLain, who has been very vocal in advocating for more work on her daughter’s homicide, worked with volunteers to get a cold case squad started. That effort led to LD 1121, a law enacted earlier this year that provides $491,662 annually to fund two state police detective positions and a forensic chemist for the three-member team tasked with tackling the state’s cold cases. A case is typically considered a cold case after two years.
The cold case squad is not involved in the Joyce McLain case, McCausland said.
“The cold case squad at the moment is not involved in any case because its not fully operational yet,” he said in an email. “The unit was not involved in Tuesday’s search.”
State police interviewed more than a dozen suspects in McLain’s death and worked thousands of hours on the case over the years but have never made an arrest.
Police investigators have declined to go into specifics about what evidence they are looking for on the grounds of the high school, or if they found anything, McCausland said.