MISSING: Where is Reeves K. Johnson III?
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This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small-town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Seavey. You can connect with me at MurderSheTold.com or follow on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast.

Do you know this man? Do you recognize his hat? It's a cherry red trucker cap with a white logo on its face. Its brim, by today's standards, is oddly short, but its length wasn't unusual in the early 80s.

Do you recognize his outfit? Dark green coveralls that zip up the front over an orange t-shirt. Were they part of a work uniform? Do you know his town? He likely lived near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in Exeter or Stratum. He was white, about six feet tall and lean. He had chestnut brown hair about shoulder length and a full beard. If we find him, we may find the answer to this question.

Where is Reeves Johnson? This case is special. We've never before had complete access to any case like we do this one. Thanks to the transparency and support of the local detective working on the case, we have been brought into the fold of the investigating team that is searching for answers to a decades-old mystery. Listen closely to this episode. You could be the one to break this case wide open.

Sally was the oldest. She arrived in the world in the fall of 1949 and her mother, Barbara, gave birth to a son, Sally's younger brother, Reeves, just one year and ten months later on the final day of September of 1951. One year later, in 1952, the family unit would be complete with the arrival of Hugh Johnson, the youngest of the trio of siblings.

Their parents, Kemp and Barbara, lived in a sparsely populated exurb of Philadelphia called Broadax, constituted chiefly of large farms, unique single-family homes, and some well-to-do neighborhoods. They were boxed in by agriculture, cornfields behind them and dairy cows next door, an idyllic countryside backdrop to their historic Pennsylvania fieldstone farmhouse built 200 years prior to the Johnsons taking up residence.

Kemp loved Philadelphia, maybe too much for his daughter's taste. My father adored Philadelphia. No, you don't understand. He worked for a year in Chicago before he got married and couldn't wait to get back to Philadelphia. In the 60s, height of the Beach Boys, height of the Beatles, my father was offered three jobs—

one in Southern California, one in England, and one in Japan. And he turned them all down so he could stay in Philadelphia. Never forgave him. Never forgave him for that. So yes, we stayed in Philadelphia.

Reeves, more commonly heard as a surname, was a family name that his father, Kemp, shared. They were both Reeves Kemp Johnson. The father was the second, and his young son was the third. His father went by Kemp, and his son, Reeves. Reeves was a hero to his younger brother, Hugh. Reeves was imaginative. He loved stuffed animals and would create complex stories about their intertwining lives.

fascinating and endearing young Hugh. He was my older brother, one year and nine days. We had the third floor of the attic room of the old house, and obviously growing up he was my best friend for the first bunch of years. My playmate and my mentor taught me everything I needed to know at the age of five. laughs

Reeves and Hugh especially were very close. Then the boys were together up in the attic and they were so close in age and they played together all the time. I was a little bit of an outlier.

We had a huge collection of stuffed animals. We each had their own names and personalities. And he was the one who could get them all together and really make a story out of it, make a narrative. And this is what they're doing this time. And I would contribute, but he always had the lead. Incredible sense of humor. Another actor. Wonderful sense of timing.

Kemp had many siblings with whom he was very close, and they had families of their own, so the three kids would often get together with their many cousins for the holidays. There were 13 of us and fairly close in age, not super close. And our grandparents had a house at the shore, and at least one weekend every year in the fall, we'd all go down and pigpile the kids together.

you know, up in the attic and under the eaves, and some of the older cousins would sleep elsewhere, and then the beach was right outside the door. So we kids had the weekend to hang out, and the parents partied, and when it wasn't down there, it was at their place in Connecticut, or they would come down to our place in Philadelphia, and there was...

laughter and teasing and fun and music. It was great. I mean, we were very lucky to have that. Reeves' personality began to develop as a boy. He was methodical and careful, or as his mother might have said, slow. Well, my mother used to call him Speed Reeves because whatever he did, it would take forever to get it done.

Not so much a procrastinator, but he just, ah, okay, I'm sorting my clothes. Let me look at this for a minute. Okay. We used to call him Molasses in January. He wasn't speedy. He was methodical and purposeful in what he did. But if you were trying to herd three kids out of the house, he was never moving at full tilt. I think Mother got a little impatient.

kind of floaty, little absent-minded professor going on. He was left-handed, strongly so, and faced pressure in school to become ambidextrous. It may sound odd in this day and age, but he was left-handed. And we grew up in the days when they tried to make you change to be right-handed. Left-handed was associated with evil and incorrectness and

in some cultures, not ours, the devil and all of that. So it was very, very bad to be left-handed. And I can remember being in a class with a kid who, there were teachers that would slap your hand if you were writing left-handed. Our grandmother was ambidextrous. I am left-handed. Hugh is left-handed. But we can play golf right-handed.

Reeves was so left-handed that he plays golf left-handed, which is really bizarre on the course.

The family would often drive into Chestnut Hill in Philly for activities at their country club, the Philadelphia Cricket Club. It had a pool, squash courts, tennis courts, bowling, and of course, golf. I must have been five, so the boys may have been a little smaller. We started going into a club in Chestnut Hill where there was swimming and tennis and golf. I know I was five when I learned to swim.

I was on the race team when I was seven, and Hugh and Reeves did the same. My parents' feeling being that, you know, you don't buy a summer home. A lot of people would have a house on the Jersey Shore or a house in the Poconos, and there was one-stop shopping as far as they were concerned for all three of us.

The family was looking for a larger home so the kids would have more space as they got older, and Sally discovered what would become their new home. She was playing with some friends on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill and noticed that there was a large stone house for sale and told her parents. They moved into the neighborhood, just two miles from their hub of activity. Kemp was the breadwinner of the family, working in technology as a marketing executive.

He sold adding machines, which later became computers, to major U.S. government clients. Their new home was on a large lot, over an acre, whose backyard went right down to Wissahickon Creek.

It was an affluent neighborhood within Philadelphia, and we had a very, very beautiful large house with an acre and a half. The people who moved into it looked out, and they came from more of a downtown situation, and they said, oh, look, we have a park right in our backyard. No, that is your backyard.

We each had our own room. There was the guest room, my parents' room. My sister had the third floor, which she felt she was being exiled. We all looked at it and said, you're lucky you're way up there and away from everybody. Reeves and Hugh both went to Germantown Academy, one of the nation's oldest private day schools, founded in 1759.

Sally, too, went to private schools and eventually boarding school. As the boys got older, the differences in their personality started to send them in different directions. Reading was what he did all the time, and eventually he started to sketch and draw. When we started to drift apart and go our separate ways, a lot of it was because I was always a little physically active, high metabolism kind of kid, wanted to get out and run around.

And all of a sudden, all Reeves wanted to do was sit and read. So, well, I guess I'm going out by myself. But he would read anything and everything, stuff that was really way beyond his age level, grade level, and be able to understand it.

Reeves was drawn to the fantastical worlds contained in the pages of A Wrinkle in Time and Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, breathtakingly beautiful centaurs, flowers that produce oxygen for interstellar travel, and ladders to the moon. Both L'Engle and Calvino managed to wrest profound truth from the absurd as their characters embarked upon wild adventures in far-flung worlds.

Their characters were innocent, childlike, and heartwarming. Good often vanquished evil. Good often vanquished evil. Love often conquered all. And in their bizarre and beautiful journeys, they confronted difficult questions that were on the mind of both adults and children in the 60s. What role would technology play in their lives?

Would the suburban oases that sprung up in the post-war housing boom be a utopian paradise or a prison of conformity? Was it possible that democracy and capitalism could turn into their own special brand of tyranny? What rights to privacy did citizens have from their own government surveillance? Reeves was a deep thinker and found companionship with these authors and others that pondered these difficult questions.

He was drawn to philosophical books and even philosophical comics. Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, was one of his heroes. Perhaps he identified with Charlie Brown and his feelings of not quite fitting in. At one moment, precociously wise, and the next, a naive little boy. There was something deeply human about the Peanuts gang.

He had friends. He's the kind of guy that knew everybody, but had a few good friends. He was very happy with his own company, very happy reading. I don't think he particularly got bored. In other words, if he wasn't reading a book, he'd just sit there and be with his own thoughts. Oh, and he was a huge reader. I mean, we all read a lot.

My grandfather used to come every other Sunday for dinner, and he'd bring you a book every other Sunday, one for each of us. You know, golden books, little books, but just, yeah, you read, and you talked to each other. You played board games.

Reeves did well academically and held his own on the soccer team, too. But what Hugh remembered the most was their time together in theater. He had a little trouble disciplining himself well enough to learn his lines. And when he was playing Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, he pretty much ad-libbed the entire play and got away with it.

He knew essentially the thrust of the story and, you know, knew what was supposed to happen about when. And everybody else on stage just sort of learned how to catch the foul balls and put them back into play and to keep the story going. And it made me angry because I was up for best actor and he was up for best actor, different plays, and he got it. And he never learned his lines.

That's not, but anyway. One time Hugh and Reeves performed together in the same play. We did Charlie's Aunt. He was Charlie's Aunt. And I was Sir Francis Chesney. And in one of the scenes, I was a widower who was in financial difficulties. And Charlie's Aunt was supposed to be rich. So it was determined that I should propose to her to recover my fortune.

And so I had to propose to my brother on stage. Yeah, it was pretty funny. Especially when we'd rehearse that scene in places where people around us didn't know what was going on. He did learn his lines for that one. Well, that's good. Yeah.

Sally remembered that both of her brothers took up brass instruments for a time, much to her chagrin. You know, I was not there for a lot of their high school time. And again, exiled to the third floor. I do remember when I was still there, they were taking music lessons and Hugh was playing the trombone, which he had to give up because he could never reach seventh position, stretch out far enough. And Reeves was playing trumpet. Well, my bedroom had...

had part of each of their bedrooms underneath it on that end of the house. And stairs went up around to the third floor and was open all the way down. So any sound, if their doors were even closed, was going to come up through the floor or through the stairwell.

And so one would finish this horrible trombone practice and then the other would start the trumpet practice. Thank you very much. The focal point of the Johnson family and their friends was the dinner table. After often brief meals, the family would linger and talk. And no matter what position the kids would take, Kemp would play devil's advocate and debate them.

Sally and Hugh both remembered Reeves' quiet zingers, his wicked, dry sense of humor, and his deep thinking, and, on occasion, his stubbornness. This is Dave, Sally's present-day husband, who had just begun dating her in high school and remembered his time at the Johnson household. Her mother was one that, you know, maybe half an hour before dinner, she would find out how many people were going to be there for dinner. You know, because Reeves and Hugh would have friends over,

and, you know, everybody would eat. So, yeah, it was sort of a central point at that time. So I got to meet, you know, a lot of his friends, got to know him through just my contact with Sally.

Dinner at our house, you would sit down, you would eat the meal. Food was done in 10 minutes. You were still at the table an hour and a half later just talking. Conversation. Debate. What do you think about this? My father would, no matter what he thought personally, whatever you thought, he was going to take the opposite side. Tell me why. Prove it. You know.

Tell me why do you think that? Why do you feel that? You know, explore, explain. Don't just say something because you heard it. Tell me why. What does it mean to you? It was important. Our dinner table was a place for discussion and friends would stop over

and they'd be invited in, and we're still having dinner at 7:30, 8:00 at night. And, okay, come on in, sit down, offer you a glass of milk or something like that, but join the discussion. And that would be it, and my father and Reeves would get into it, because my father was a good one, as Sally was saying, about those discussions, and Reeves would take it very seriously sometimes.

Everybody was always welcome. The door was always open. If you had friends over late in the afternoon and it got to be dinner time, last minute, so-and-so can always stay for dinner. Absolutely. It was very welcoming, friendly. When Sally and I bring up our kids, you wanted your house to be the focal point.

You wanted to know your friends, your kids' friends. You wanted to know what they were doing. You wanted a safe place for them to feel that they could come to. So yes, it was a very welcoming house.

Kemp was raised by his parents, who were Christian scientists. Barbara was raised Presbyterian and later switched to Episcopal. As Sally said, Bible in one hand, bottle of scotch in the other. Barbara wanted everyone to go to church every Sunday, but wasn't picky about where. He and Reeves made it an adventure.

She really believed we should go to church. Every Sunday, my father dutifully would go to church and fall asleep or kind of subconsciously start to light a cigarette in a pew because he wasn't paying attention. So my brothers began to balk about going to church, and I went to an Episcopal boarding school, so that was taken care of.

Mother said, "Fine, you don't have to come to church with us, but you must go somewhere." So Hugh and Reeves became active friends for a couple of years. And then Reeves met Polly, who was so nice, so much fun. She was Greek Orthodox. So that's when he started going to Greek Orthodox Church.

Hugh remembered some of the jobs that Reeves had. As a high schooler, he would spend much of his time over the summer at their club, where he would sometimes work as a dishwasher. One summer, he spent working on a horse farm with his high school friend in rural Pennsylvania. Which was, for Reeves, very different. And it got him out and doing stuff and all of that. And he was a kind of different guy when he came back from that, just because it had been a real hands-on, practical job.

real-world type of stuff as opposed to being intellect, pure intellect. Also made him physically into good shape, but it never really followed after that. I mean, it's not like he became a horse person. Like I said, it was a real-world kind of thing, and it made him focus and get out of his head and into, this needs to be done, it needs to be done now, and you need to watch what you're doing or else the horse will kick you.

Reeves had a small circle of friends with whom he was close. He would talk for hours with his buddy, Bob Blanco.

One time Hugh asked Reeves if he liked high school, and Reeves said that he didn't enjoy himself. Perhaps it's cliquishness. Perhaps he didn't feel he had a lot in common with his peers. Reeves had his eyes set on a small New England liberal arts school situated in the downtown of Hartford, Connecticut, called Trinity College. He applied early decision and was one of roughly 500 freshmen that were admitted in the spring of 1970.

The Johnson siblings were separating. Sally was off to school at Centenary University in New Jersey, and Hugh was destined for Webster College in Missouri. They were off to scattered states, leaving the safety and guidance of their parents in Philly. Before beginning his fall term at college, Reeves got a stern letter from Trinity—a

Apparently, they had gotten a copy of his grades from the spring semester of his senior year, and they didn't measure up to his previous academic success. They asked him for an explanation and spoke to his high school counselor. After some letters and phone calls, they decided to keep a spot for him in their entering freshman class and left him with some words of wisdom. This is one of the few opportunities in your life where you'll be able to wipe the slate clean and truly be a fresh man.

I hope you take advantage of it. Reeves moved all of his things into the dorm at Hartford and became part of the class of 74. He continued to date his high school girlfriend, Polly, while at Trinity for some time. She was another very, very bright woman. Polly was actually in my class, and I could never understand their attraction, but they were an item for quite a while. When he was at Trinity, she was up at Holyoke.

And so that's not that far away. I need to go up and see her. And I don't know exactly when it was that that relationship cooled, but it did at some point. His academic performance in college was mixed. He had some A's and B's, but C's and D's as well. In his junior year, he studied abroad in Italy. And when he returned from that trip, he was a changed man. When he came back,

from Rome. He was sick and I heard about it from my parents and he exhibited a lot of signs. It was obviously hypoglycemia, but again, it was an unnamed condition at that point. So a lot of the symptoms of hypoglycemia can be paranoia, schizophrenia, mood swings,

Paranoia was the one that I noticed because Trip was a newborn and he would be all worried about something odd. Don't let him do this or that, which seemed unnatural to me. And he was, he would sleep. I mean, he could sleep 18, 20 hours a day. But again, that's low blood sugar. That's

your body crashing, which we now all recognize. And for him, he was a very severe case. Reeves dropped out of school and returned home to Philadelphia to live with his parents. He was chronically sick. He couldn't concentrate. His skin suffered from a pallor that hung around him like a shroud. He could sleep for 20 hours a day. He would have uncontrollable shakes.

There was something physically wrong with him. His parents took him to numerous doctors and psychiatrists around Philly looking for answers. They couldn't figure out what was going on. It was the early 70s, so he had a full beard, he had long hair.

He looked a little like Rasputin. So there was this totally sweet, wonderful human being. But doctors of the day would take one look at him and say, "Telton, stop taking drugs." Well, he wasn't taking drugs. When he came home from school, from Trinity, I think it was very frustrating in that he knew something was wrong with him.

And he went to multiple doctors, psychiatrists, everything. Nobody could find out what was wrong with him because this hypoglycemia was sort of new to the world and nobody really had a diagnosis for it. I think it was a very frustrating time where he knew something was wrong with his body, but nobody could tell him what it was or what to do about it because he was

night and day from what he was before. You know, it was very obvious something was wrong with him. You know, and you get sort of frustrated if nobody can tell you what's wrong with you. When you're going to all these doctors and you're being told you're psychotic and, you know, all this stuff. Well, I'm not. He was eventually diagnosed with a blood sugar disorder called hypoglycemia. It was a novel diagnosis, and there wasn't much known about it.

I mean, you're shaking, you are pasty white, you're sweating all different stuff out of your body. You could see the physical change in him. It wasn't just fatigue, but he was sleeping like 20 hours a day. It would have been interesting to see where he would have gone and what he would have done, you know, not having that with the mind that he had. With 20-20 hindsight, I can see where...

after particularly strenuous exercise, sometimes he would be very, very shaky. And I realized then that that was probably the hypoglycemia coming in even though it was long before, long, long, long before it was officially diagnosed.

And then it was in his senior year at college that it became quite a problem. I think it was his junior year that he went to Italy, came back his senior year, and it was the fall semester of his senior year that he really had some problems. No energy, couldn't focus, sleep 20 hours a day. So he kind of got a medical leave from Trinity and never really went back.

Took some courses, tried to just put together enough so he'd get a diploma from somewhere. He only had one semester to go, so not that big of a deal, but never really got to the point where he had that completion either. And I do know it was very frustrating for me to try and deal with him at that time because it didn't make any sense.

Just, you know, here's my brother, he's my best friend, and he's just not there anymore. At least not the guy I knew. But over the next few years, he learned how to manage it, primarily with diet changes. It was something that ran in his family. His sister and his mom, Barbara, both have similar but milder versions of the same condition.

Reeves was living with his parents and would see his siblings during the holidays when they would come home to Philly. One of the jobs that Hugh remembered from this time was driving a cab during the night shift, which Hugh found astonishing. Hugh said that Reeves could barely make his way around the neighborhood and was terrible with street names. And the notion that he had learned the entire street geography of Philadelphia shocked him, but evidently he made it work.

There was tension between Reeves and his family. They found it difficult to accept this new version of Reeves. They always believed he would have an ambitious career, but this medical disorder had totally sidelined him.

There's two lives to Reeves in that when I met him and a lot of my interaction with him, very studious, very, very smart, read all the time and talked to him about anything. Very interesting. When he came back from that, just the hypoglycemia had gotten the better of him and he couldn't concentrate and all that. So he

you know, he came home. And at that point, you know, his life pretty much changed.

My father, because of his upbringing, Christian scientist, and again this Quaker balance, he didn't understand why Reeves couldn't make up his mind to be well and just go ahead and do it. And hypoglycemia was a very new diagnosis then. It was brand new. I mean, obviously it had been around forever, but it was a new diagnosis.

So there was so much that wasn't known about it. Mother just adored him because he was sweet and charming and wonderful. At the end, I think it was improving. When he was sick and when he was living there, he and Dad would get into it because Dad would be pushing him to, okay, come on, you know, pull yourself together. You can do better than working as a dishwasher. And...

it would rile him. And I'm sitting there watching. I remember one of the last dinners. I happened to be there and watching the dynamic go on and wishing I could just make them both stop. You know, Dad, leave it alone. You're not getting anywhere. Reeves, back off. You know, don't let it get to you. He's just being your dad. They had very similar minds. And there was a time when

They could have long and great discussions, but I think Dad was getting frustrated with the situation and venting that frustration, and Reeves was also frustrated with the situation. He didn't want to feel the way he was feeling, but he didn't know what to do about it, and getting pestered about it, pushed about it, pressured about it wasn't going to do any good either.

When he was 26 years old, after five years of living with his parents, he decided to move to Kittery, Maine. Sally and Dave lived close by in Cape Nettick. Reeves lived with a girlfriend for a while and her young son, but he eventually settled into a rental cabin right off the main traffic circle in Kittery on Jewett Court, a street that no longer exists.

It was small, dark, affordable, and just a single room. He had a parking spot out front for his red Volkswagen Beetle. Kittery is the southernmost town in Maine, right on the border of New Hampshire. Back in the 70s, it was a rustic, rough-around-the-edges little town. The Kittery Trading Post, a hunting and fishing shop in town, would give hunters a pair of mittens in exchange for deer skins that they brought in. The neighboring border city was Portsmouth, and

And just beyond that was Exeter, where he found work at Donnelly Manufacturing. They were a medium-sized company with about 200 employees that made things out of sheet metal. They employed all manner of metal workers: welders, press and shear operators, metal finishers, and painters. One of their main products was electrical distribution panels.

Though it's no longer there, their facility used to sit on a short horseshoe-shaped road that was shared with other industrial businesses, aptly named Industrial Drive.

Shortly after Reeves settled into Kittery, a major storm hit New England. The blizzard of 78 rocked Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and southern Maine. His brother-in-law, David, who was making a long commute to Boston, had just learned that his company was sold to a Georgia-based company.

The new owners were planning to leave the operations and facilities more or less intact, but when they came up to tour the plant and got trapped in Boston for over a week while they were digging out from this terrible storm, they decided to uproot the facility and many of the families tied to it and move them to Georgia. In the week that followed, all of their Boston-based employees were given notice and in just three weeks, Dave and Sally and their young son Trip packed up and moved to Georgia.

With the sudden departure of Sally and Dave, Reeves was without any family nearby. He was never a big social person, and he had a few close friends in Philadelphia and not too many at all up here that I never really knew of. So I think when he went back to Philadelphia, it was good because he was with a bunch of people, and he enjoyed that.

just not necessarily being a part of the big scene, having to be the center of attention or anything, but just being in a room full of people talking. I think he was lonelier than he wanted to admit.

At first, Reeves worked as a general laborer for Donnelly, but at the suggestion of his boss, he undertook welding classes. He went through a welding program and graduated. His family all remembered his pride at his accomplishment. It was the first educational program he had succeeded at since leaving Trinity. He got a modest boost in wages.

But based on some of the information we've learned about his employer, it looked like the average wage paid to a welder was only $4.75 an hour,

which without overtime would yield about $10,000 a year in 1980 or $2,600 a year in today's dollars. Not much to be able to live on your own. I asked Hugh if he enjoyed his work. I think he enjoyed doing things. He enjoyed getting out of his head and doing things with his hands. I mean, like he enjoyed drawing and artwork.

and making things. And I think this was something where he'd go to work and at the end of the day he can look at it and say, "I made that." And in the meantime, I mean, talk about needing to focus. If you're welding, you really need to focus.

During Reeves' tenure at the company, there was a debate and tension about whether or not to unionize. This period of American history was marked by rising competition from East Asia, which undercut the power of unions and threatened the wages and way of life of millions of Americans. Millions were watching their jobs get shipped off to far-flung factories, and instead of steady increases in wages, unions were settling for employee givebacks.

Not only were manufacturing workers barely holding on to their wages, the dollars that they earned were worth less and less each year because of the extraordinary inflation that was happening. In 1980, overall inflation in the U.S. was 14%, meaning every dollar you earned in 1980 had only 86 cents worth of buying power by 1981.

In October of 1980, 77 of Donnelly's workers, perhaps Reeves amongst them, voted on whether or not to unionize. It was a very close vote, 40 to 37. The nays had it. Donnelly would remain non-union. The union investigated the circumstances of the company leading up to the vote, though, and discovered that management had used threats and intimidation to coerce their employees to vote against unionizing.

The union had recourse and they took it to court. The judge easily sided with the union's well-documented claims and voided the results of the first election. Donnelly, dissatisfied with their ruling, appealed and once again found that they had violated the National Labor Relations Act. They had to post notices at the facility to all of their employees that explained that they had violated the law.

I couldn't find the results of the second vote, but I suspect that their second vote was successful and they became a union shop. Hugh was living two or three hours away in Vermont. He remembered Reeves coming to his wedding in August of 1982, a small low-budget affair that was done at a state park and certified by a justice of the peace. Little did Hugh know this was the last time he would ever see Reeves. I asked him,

I asked Hugh what his relationship was like with Reeves during this point in his life. It wasn't so much that I'd reach out. I wasn't calling him. He wasn't calling me. Occasionally, he'd just show up at my door in Vermont, and we'd spend a weekend. But it was like, why are you here? I took a drive. But then again, I'd be there in an apartment with not much room and

You know, and okay, now what do I do with you? Yeah, you know, and he was fine. And I certainly didn't want wanted to do everything I could for him. But I'm struggling to get my own life going. I didn't have a lot of extra cash or space or anything else to really support him or help him out. Do you have enough gas to get back? All right, let me make sure you've got enough gas to get back.

You know, we weren't close, like I said. I'd try to find out what was going on and he wouldn't really give me any kind of real answers. When I confronted him one time with the fact that he seemed to be in this funk all the time, he said, "Yeah, well, maybe." I agreed that he was in it, and just whether or not you want to call it a depression or what. But I said, "Sometimes, Reese, I want to just grab you

smack you across the face three times, and then say, there, wake up and be happy, and have it work. And he looked at me and he says, I wish you could too. Later that same year, in December of 1982, Reeves went home to Philly for Christmas, driving down in his little red bug. It was a short trip, and Reeves left the day after Christmas, on Sunday the 26th, to return home. He was warm and gentle, kind,

would give you the shirt off his back. As my mother wrote somewhere, Reeves never could pass up a hitchhiker. As he passed through New York City, he picked up a hitchhiker named Richard, who said that he was on the way to either Detroit, Michigan or Ontario, Canada. Kittery would be on the way to neither city, but he accepted a ride from Reeves nonetheless.

Hours later, when Reeves crossed into Maine on I-95 and got off on his exit for Kittery, the hitchhiker gave him no further instructions on where to drop him off, so Reeves invited him in. Reeves gave him a place to stay and helped him with his meals, hooked him up with cigarette money, and took him where he needed to go. When Reeves was at work, Richard stayed in the cabin by himself. Kemp and Barbara remembered Reeves telling them that he washed his clothes in the shower, was kinda quiet,

and hummed a lot. Richard stayed with Reeves from Sunday the 26th until Friday, January 7th, almost two weeks. Someone came up from Boston to retrieve him, and according to the police files, he left while Reeves was at work with a key to Reeves' cabin.

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It was his fifth winter in Kittery. He recalled the therapy parties that his sister and brother-in-law would have in Cape Nettick to bring some much-needed warmth and joy to the cold, dark winter. But they were a thousand miles away in Georgia, wrapped up in their busy lives.

On Sunday, January 30th, Reeves had his weekly call with his family, and later that week, on Thursday, February 3rd, 1983, Reeves worked his last day at Donnelly Manufacturing. Reeves was helping his co-worker, Curtis Cook, with rides to work. He would pick him up each morning in his Red Bug and drop him off after every shift, even though it was out of Reeves' way.

Curtis lived close to their shop, in either the town of Exeter or Stratum, New Hampshire. On Thursday morning, he picked up Curtis, and after their day at work, he dropped him off on his way home. On Friday, February 4th, he didn't show up to Donnelly. He had not shared anything with his family about any plans to quit. Quite the contrary, he was proud of his welding work.

Though it is not entirely clear from the case record whether he quit or not, what is clear is that he didn't work another day at Donnelly Manufacturing. What's more, Thursday the 3rd was the last day that Reeves Johnson was reliably identified as alive and well by anyone in his life. That same Thursday, he deposited a $70 check, withdrew $30 in cash, and purchased a set of guitar strings.

This is where the timeline gets a little complicated, but the details are extremely important.

On Friday, February 4th, Reeves' checkbook was used to spend $80.06, the equivalent of $208 today, at Shaw's in Stratum, New Hampshire, just southwest of Portsmouth. It's just on the edge of Exeter, close to where Donnelly was located on Portsmouth Ave and Route 101. But even though it was close to work, this wasn't where Reeves usually shopped for groceries.

Sometime between Thursday and Saturday, his neighbor in cabin 4, Chris Schroeder, saw a young man with black hair and a mustache wearing a black leather jacket and dark pants knock on Reeves' door. He was let in and a short time later he left on foot. Reeves had a weekly scheduled call on Sunday morning with his parents, something he never missed.

On February 6th, however, Barbara and Kemp were overseas on a trip, so Sally called Reeves instead that Sunday, hoping to talk with her brother. She tried twice. He didn't pick up. During this same period, Thursday through Sunday, all of Reeves' valuable belongings were removed from his cabin before a big snowfall on Sunday evening.

On Wednesday, February 9th, six days after his final day of work, a purchase was made from a specialty store in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Reeves Ocean National Bank checkbook. Daymart was a winter thermal wear undergarment retailer and it was at the height of its popularity after being publicly endorsed by the 1980 Winter Olympics.

The purchase included two different pieces of thermal clothing. One was a heavyweight material sized small and cost $31.25, or $87 today, and the other was a regular weight extra large and cost $26.95, or about $75 today. They had both men's and women's sizing and styles, and it's still unknown what exactly was purchased.

Reeves was neither a small nor an extra large. That Day Mart store location no longer exists, though their products can still be ordered online. The former 1811 Woodbury Ave Portsmouth store is now a BJ's wholesale club.

The following day, Thursday, February 10th, a week after his final day at Donnelly, someone withdrew $30 from his checking account and $50 from his savings at Ocean National Bank, leaving only a few dollars left in both accounts. Detective Avery later visited the bank and spoke with branch manager J. Clinton Dickerson. The bank tellers identified the person withdrawing the money as Reeves.

On Saturday, February 12th, a $100 purchase at Radio Shack in the main mall in South Portland was made with one of Reeves' checks, $260 in today's money.

It was a pair of RadioShack brand speakers for $49.95 each. We found this model listed under the name Realistic Minimus 7 in a 1983 catalog from RadioShack. They were small, passive bookshelf speakers that required an amp to power them. A

A $30 deposit was also made on a Pioneer brand car radio and cassette player. The full cost of it was $280, or $738 today. A pricey upgrade for your car.

The following day, Sunday, February 13th, a check for the $250 balance to take home the car radio was written out to Radio Shack in South Portland, bringing the total spent at Radio Shack to about $380, or close to $1,000 today.

That entire week, Sally had tried reaching out to Reeves by phone to no avail. By the time Friday and Saturday rolled around, she tried calling just about every hour without answer. When her parents returned home to Philly from their vacation on Saturday, she told them what was going on in her attempts to reach Reeves.

The next day, Barbara and Kemp, after trying to reach Reeves again by phone unsuccessfully, contacted the Kittery Police Department and reported their son missing.

On Tuesday, February 15th, a week and a half after his final day, Officer Bromfield of the Kittery Police Department met with Charlie Bold, the landlord for 3 Jewett Court, for a wellness check on Reeves' cabin. The door was unlocked and the pipes were frozen. Snow sat undisturbed. It was clear that nobody had been there since the snowfall on Sunday the 6th, more than a week earlier.

There were some things missing from the cabin. Items of value. A black and white television set. A nice acoustic guitar. A Pioneer record player and amplifier. And all of Reeve's vinyl records were gone.

A Huffy Brand bicycle was gone, all of his expensive welding equipment, and strangest of all, every single piece of Reeves' clothing was missing. All that was left behind were the guitar strings purchased on Thursday the 3rd, a pair of slightly torn stereo speakers, the box for the record player and amp that was kept for a future move, and his contact lenses.

That same day, Reeves' red 1972 Volkswagen Beetle with main license plates was towed to the Exxon mechanic in Elwynn Park in the southern part of Portsmouth for repairs from some unknown location. The mechanic on duty later identified the man who dropped off the vehicle as Reeves, based on a photograph shown by police. He said that Reeves mentioned he wanted quick repairs because he was planning to, quote, head south.

Reeves was also spotted by Mr. Newsome of Newsome's Market, a local kiddery grocery store where he did most of his shopping. He remembered Reeves coming in sometime around the 16th or 17th.

Unless Reeves paid with cash, there is no bank record of a check being used for purchases here. However, his checkbook was used again to buy groceries at the same Shaw's location in Stratum, New Hampshire, the town right next to Exeter where Donnelly was located. A purchase was made for $66.61 on February 19th. That's the equivalent of $185 worth of groceries today.

Two days later, on Monday, February 21st, the mechanic who was working on the repairs to Reeves' Red Beetle said that somebody claiming to be Reeves came to the shop and attempted to pay for the repairs with a check. When the mechanic refused the payment, he left the building on foot, heading north.

The following day, Barbara and Kemp came up to Kittery for the first time to speak with detectives in person and to try to find their son. It was Tuesday, February 22nd, two and a half weeks after his final shift.

Kittery PD had previously called up Donnelly Manufacturing and asked them to hold onto Reeves' final paycheck and to ask anyone looking for it to come in person and pick it up. But when Barbara called Donnelly on February 22nd to ask about it, they said that Reeves had called and requested that they mail the check to his post office box in Kittery instead. And despite the request of law enforcement, the check was in the mail.

Evidently, Reeves had told Donnelly that he found a new job and that he had told his parents of his whereabouts. And with those assurances, they decided to mail his check.

The following day, Exxon in Elwynn Park received a call from a man who said he was Reeves Johnson. He tried to sell his car to them to cover the cost of the repair bill. He mentioned he'd originally bought it for $1,200, but in reality, the car had been a gift to Reeves from his father, Kemp.

The Kittery post office, where Reeves rented a P.O. box, had estimated that he last came in to get his mail on the 16th or 17th, before Donnelly released the last check.

Barbara asked if the Kittery Police Department could keep an eye out at the post office, and they unfortunately didn't have the resources to do so. But a lack of manpower didn't stop Barbara and Kemp Johnson. They instead asked if they could step in and assist, and were granted permission to stake out the Kittery post office themselves, hoping to encounter their son.

Barbara and Kemp spent two days waiting, rotating shifts from the lobby to the car, pretending to be tourists. In the winter, inside the post office of an empty seasonal summer town, their story might have been a little thin.

They showed up as soon as they unlocked the front doors and stayed all day, waiting for somebody to show up and get the check from Donnelly Manufacturing that sat amongst junk mail inside post office box 451. Would it be Reeves? Barbara prepared herself, practicing inside her head for the moment she would confront her son over the worried pit that took up residence in her stomach. Where have you been the past two weeks?

On the afternoon of Thursday, February 24th, 1983, somebody did show up to open Box 451. Somebody who had a key. Only it wasn't Reeves. The man was young, maybe 20s or early 30s, white, about 5'10", with longer reddish blonde hair and

and a beard. He wore dark green coveralls over an orange t-shirt, a short-brimmed red baseball cap with a white logo, and had the key to Reeves' mailbox. The man pulled out the mail, opening, reading, and tossing out everything except for the check from Donnelly. Barbara snapped a photo of the man on her tourist camera.

This was it. This was the moment she would finally have the answer as to where her son was. Petite Barbara confronted the man, demanding to know where Reeves was and why he had his mailbox key. The man replied, "He's with me in an apartment in Portsmouth. I'll take you to him if you have a car." She followed him out of the post office, but the man took off running on foot. Barbara and Kemp never caught up with him.

"Barbara developed the film right away. Everyone will see this photo and know your face. Somebody will know who you are."

When she flipped to the photos in the post office, her heart sank. The photo of the man, the only photo she had taken of the man stealing her son's mail at the post office, was a photo of his hand covering the exact spot where his face should be. He had foiled her attempt and successfully eluded being captured on film.

Here is Kittery Police Detective Brian Kummer. It's sort of tragic because if you think about in today's society, you would have had 150 pictures of that guy's face because cameras work that way. Back then they didn't work that way. She didn't know she didn't have a picture of his face until she developed the film. And, you know, I can imagine the heartbreak she had when she got the picture developed and that was the picture. I mean, just...

It's just crazy to think about that. Reeves' final paycheck was never cashed, and it was eventually canceled by Donnelly.

That chance encounter, Barbara's face-to-face meeting with the man who could have possibly killed Reeves, or at the very least knew what happened, was the only encounter she would ever have. When they were coming up here to Kittery, I said, can I come up and help? And they said, no, no, we've got that. And I keep wondering, what if that guy at the post office, if I had been there,

And I could have chased him. What if? What if? Sometime around Friday, February 25th, Reeves' landlord, Charlie Bold, and his daughter spotted Reeves' red Beetle at the Exxon in Elwynn Park. Up until this point, no one knew where Reeves' car was at. All they knew was that it was no longer parked in front of his red cabin on Jewett Court.

Kemp went to the Exxon station, paid the bill, and took the car to the Kittery PD, turning it over to them and giving them permission to give it to Reeves if he appeared and presented ID. Inside the car, he found brochures for Canon and Minolta cameras and for RadioShack. That same day, Ocean National Bank closed Reeves' account. It was overdrawn by $81.55, or $226.46 today.

and the checks from the purchases made at Daymart, Radio Shack, and the second round of groceries at Shaw's had bounced. And that was it. Three weeks after his final shift at Donnelly, Reeves was gone.

Right away, I knew something was very wrong. Knowing Reeves was not somebody who was going to do something like this, not going to disappear, didn't have the resources. He's not somebody to get involved with dangerous people. It just left me completely at a loss as to what could have happened. In the early days, both Detective Avery and the Johnsons believed that Reeves was alive, but just out of touch.

His father wrote a letter to his P.O. box on Tuesday, March 1st, 1983, about a month after his final day at work.

Dear Reeves, your mother and I are very concerned and upset that we have been unable to reach you. We know you are alive since we discovered your car and learned that you had visited the Exxon station to pick it up on Monday the 21st. By the way, your bill at the Exxon has been paid and the car is with the Kittery police. Sally is also very upset that she has been unable to reach you. Sally has been trying to get in touch with you since February 6th.

so try to let her know where you are and how you can be reached. The people at Donnelly Manufacturing tell us that you said you have a new job. We certainly hope so. However, you mentioned selling your car when you called the Exxon station, so things are obviously not under control. The enclosed check should help you until you get things straightened out. Love, Dad

Reeves' parents acted quickly to get a handle on his finances, and just two months after his disappearance, successfully filed for a conservatorship to take over his affairs. As they were settling his estate, they would periodically travel back to Kittery. On a trip in August of 83, six months after Reeves' disappearance, they checked his P.O. box and discovered a letter addressed to someone named Bob Tyner.

It was correctly addressed to Reeves P.O. Box 451 in Kittery, but they had no idea who Bob was. The return address on the envelope was from Bristol, Pennsylvania, a short drive north of Philadelphia. The only name associated with the return address was the Imperial Motor Inn, located right off a major truck route on I-95. It appeared to be a trucker motel.

The letter was postmarked July 16th, 1963. Supposing it really was sent from this inn, who was Bob Tyner and why would he have provided Reeves' mailing address? And that letter from Dad back in March? They found that in the mailbox too, unopened.

In 1984, the year after Reeves' disappearance, the family reached out to a friend of theirs from the FBI for help. After a short bit of correspondence, this lead seemed to go dry.

Reeves' parents put their resources to bear on finding their missing son and hired private investigators over the years. We were unable to find any record of who those investigators were or what they found, but judging by the fact that the case is still unsolved, it must not have amounted to much.

I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Direct to my bank account.

Yes, I know I'm sending to your bank account. Western Union. Send it their way. Send money in-store directly to their bank account in India.

As the months rolled on, Sunday after Sunday without weekly calls from Reeves, it started to settle in that maybe this was it. The possibility that Reeves was gone forever started to turn into their grim reality. And Barbara and Kemp, after finally feeling like Reeves was on a forward track, realized they may never see their son again. Took the wind right out of their sails in a big way.

Dad always had a handle on everything. Always thought he had a handle on everything. And for the most part he did. And all of a sudden this was something where he didn't. And it really shook him. You know, Mom was just an emotional wreck for quite a while. And so when we got together it was a lot of issues to be avoided. Or I felt the need to tread very carefully.

in any of the discussions. I don't want to say something that will give them any hope. I don't want to say anything that might imply that I know something I don't. So it was difficult for all of us. I can't imagine what it did to them. They were the kind of parents that were always looking at what we can do. How can we make it better? How can we help? And what it did to their marriage wasn't there.

and would never have known. They loved each other, took care of each other, worked in harness together, so to speak, very well. But I know that they worked very hard at moving on and keeping the search going. You don't totally drop the rest of your life, that you have to, for your mental and emotional health, keep the rest of your life going. And I do remember my mother being incredibly hurt. It just destroyed her.

It was probably no more than much of a year after Reeves had disappeared, and so they would have been at a cocktail party or something, and my mother was laughing at something somebody said, and somebody else came up to her and said, how can you laugh at anything your son is missing?

I don't think it was meant in a hurtful way. I think the person was in fact probably trying to say, "Good for you. You know, you've got to keep out there. You've got to keep going." But it came out so horribly wrong.

I knew that Reeves was happy with what he was doing and had a good feeling of accomplishment. And I think he was content. And it probably would have grown to something more. I think I worried that my parents, that I perceived that my parents pushed him, that they pushed him to do more. But I don't think they did.

I just knew he would never go off. He would not do that to my parents. He was not in any way vindictive or hurtful or mean. He would not have taken off and left any of us. He just wouldn't. I asked the siblings how it affected them. The first big hole, the first big hole right through my heart, finally realizing and coming to grips with the fact that

He's gone, not coming back. We're probably not going to get an answer. I've been told I carry some sadness and I'd say that that was the, like I said, the first big hole, source of a good chunk of it. I've given you some of my best memories. Oh, it affects you for the rest of your life. I mean, there's a hole that never gets filled.

There's this amazing person that could have given so much to my kids that they've missed out on. I mean, smart, funny, probing, witty. He would have enriched my children's lives immeasurably and my grandchildren's lives.

You know, that's all lost and gone. And my friend. I lost a really good friend. There's a space. And the difference is, I mean, you have people you're close to. They die, they go away. But you know what happened. Was he afraid? Was he terrified? Was he hurting? Was he left half dead someplace? Those are nightmares. It affects me because it affects Sally.

You sort of lay it to rest to put in the back of your head. I'm lucky I can compartmentalize. I can just put it back here, it's back there, I know it's there, but I don't ponder it. Where Sal can't do that, it just comes up. The most recent phone call, contact with Brian and our son and then with Sally. Soon as Tripp got a hold of her, the shaking started again.

Though the family had many questions and no concrete answers, they speculated on possibilities of what could have happened. His family knew that Reeves was drawn to philosophy and had deeply considered the writings of French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre as a young man.

Sartre was strongly left-leaning and a proponent of benevolent communism, so they thought that perhaps Reeves could have been persuaded to join an underground, left-leaning cult-like group. The headlines in the 70s about the Jim Jones massacre, Scientology, and the Manson murders stoked fears in many American parents of their kids getting brainwashed by charismatic leaders and held captive through peer pressure.

The Johnsons imagined a scenario where Reeves had quietly uprooted his life, first quitting his job and then abandoning his cabin to pursue completely the doctrines of some cult-like group. Well, obviously, the longer time elapses, the more you realize he's not here. But you never know with what was going on in that day and age.

There were a lot of cults. Kids would disappear. People, adults would disappear. My parents joined and parents of these people who had disappeared and they knew they were in a cult had to meet in an underground group. I mean, there were churches that had underground groups and you had to be vetted before you were allowed into the group because cults would send spies in because these parents were trying to get family members back.

I mean, cults were in the news. I mean, so if you're thinking what could have happened, there's a possibility that you hear about on the news. Another possibility was suicide. Reeves lived a solitary life with a limited support network and contended with a debilitating medical condition and depression. A key part of that story that doesn't square with everything the family knew about Reeves, though, was that he left so many things undone and unknown.

Had Reeves made this decision, his family felt he would have let them know rather than leave them with unanswered questions for decades.

The detective from the Kittery Police Department who had handled the initial investigation, Ron Avery, in those first few weeks was under the impression that Reeves was still alive. He had numerous witnesses that told him so. The mechanic shop in Elwynn Park where Reeves' car was being repaired looked at a photo of Reeves presented by the detective and ID'd him.

The Ocean National Bank teller ID'd him from a snapshot. Donnelly said they had gotten a call from Reeves asking to mail his final check. Most telling of all, Mr. Newsome of Newsome's Market, Reeves' local grocery store, told Avery that he thought Reeves was in around the 16th, two weeks after his last day at Donnelly. But was he? Reeves' appearance, his long hair, his facial hair, his height, his complexion...

was so ordinary in 1983 that Reeves could have been easily misidentified by any number of people. The last day that there is conclusive evidence that Reeves was alive was on his final day of work, Thursday, February 3rd. Everything after that could have been done by someone who has a passing resemblance to Reeves. The

The purchases that were made were out of character for Reeves. He was financially conscientious and would include in his letters home to his parents regular updates on his payments. Mom, I've paid rent this month and the utilities. Things were tight. Sometimes he would have to cut corners in his discretionary spending to make ends meet.

The notion that he would have spent, in today's dollars, $260 on bookshelf speakers, $738 on a car radio, $381 in groceries, $151 on thermal clothing, and would have withdrawn $278 from his checking and savings for a total of $1,800 in just a couple of weeks was completely out of character for Reeves.

Not to mention, his car was in the shop, and he was theoretically facing an expensive auto repair. Plus, all that money that he spent? He didn't have it. The checks bounced. His account was overdrawn, and the bank promptly closed it. The businesses that had sold that stuff? They were left holding the bag. They never got paid.

Reeves was the kind of guy that if my grandmother gave him a check for Christmas, she would do it early because she didn't know whether she would see him. And then I'm sure he would take that and go buy her her Christmas present and everybody else.

He would buy groceries last after he had paid the rent and the oil bill and the electric bill and made sure he had gas money for the week. So if he had said to someone, I'm going to go visit my sister in Georgia, my car needs repairs or broke down, that's what he would have saved money for.

When the police conducted a wellness check at his cabin, they found most of his valuables gone, but what was left raised questions. He needed corrective lenses or contacts to drive, indicated on his driver's license and by his family, and his contacts were left.

His brand new guitar strings that were just purchased before his disappearance were left as well. The packaging materials that he kept to box up his amp and record player in case of a move were left.

Why would Reeves leave these things that were important to him and abandon his place? Not to mention how suddenly it all happened. He worked on Thursday, and by the Sunday snowstorm, his place had been cleared out. Where was all his stuff moved to? His car, later found at the mechanic's shop, was empty. Where were his things?

On the 15th, his car was towed into the Exxon shop in Portsmouth, but a large purchase of groceries was made four days later in Exeter on the 19th. How did he get to the grocery store? It was 20 miles from Kittery. Where did he take the groceries? Why would he have been shopping 20 miles away for groceries when he was a regular at a shop in Kittery? Someone had transportation other than Reeves' red Volkswagen.

As the years passed and Reeves never emerged, his parents decided to declare him legally dead. It took a long while for Sally's parents to have him declared dead. I think that was somewhat of a reckoning. It opened up a lot of wounds for them having to do it.

And of course, opened him up for me to, we're doing it because it's the right thing to do, but it doesn't mean we haven't given up hope, even though that's no longer a reasonable thing to hold on to. It was something that, for practical reasons, had to be done. If you're estate planning for yourself, and it had been quite a few years...

I mean, obviously, my parents had had their wills rewritten after Reeves disappeared so that nobody could come back, for instance, in 20 years and say, "I'm Reeves' son." Again, DNA not being back then the big thing, you know, they wanted to protect Hugh and myself.

There was a portion of their estate that would be set aside for Reeves that Hugh and I would administer if he came back and needed support. Then they realized that could get very messy with courts if somebody wanted to be unpleasant. So they had Reeves declared legally dead, and then they could tidy up and finish his estate. I think coming to terms with that for them was very, very difficult.

but they were very practical people and honest with themselves and factual. And they had conversations with Hugh, myself, that this is what we're going to do and why. But if after we are gone, your brother comes back, will you promise us that you will take care of him? Obviously, yes.

I might wring his neck in the process for doing this to us, but don't think I haven't dreamed about it. I asked my mother, I said, what would you want to know? What would you do if Reeves came back, you know, all these years later? And she said, well, I can't really man say where the hell have you been? You know, what's been going on? But you go back and look at the core of the human being he is, was.

And you know, would Reeves have done this to anybody? And the answer is no, absolutely not.

Again, years passed until there was a little glimmer of hope in 2009. Detective Avery called Barbara into the Kittery Police Department to submit DNA to test against unidentified remains that were found in North Carolina. They also wanted DNA on file for the future. After that lead proved to not be a match, contact between the family and the police tapered off again. It sat quietly

quietly in the police files, waiting to be dusted off and given new life. This is Detective Brian Kummer of the Kittery PD. We spoke with him at work, and though his audio is a little fuzzy, his focus on this practically buried case is crystal clear.

I learned about this case probably about four years ago, maybe five. It was before I became a detective. When I was on patrol, I would sometimes pull these old cases and just look through them to see, just to read about them and see what was going on with the cases. About a month ago, Brian decided to break the ice and reach out to the family. He wanted to reinvigorate the case and get Reeves' name out into the public again.

Did they tell you how that happened? I did not get a call from Brian Cover. He's so kind and so thoughtful. I got a phone call from my son who says, so mom, I got this email. And at first I thought it was a scam. I was not going to open it. And then I opened it and realized, oh, it's not a scam. I said, well, what's this email? He said, it's from the Kidry Police Department.

And he read it to me saying, you know, my name's Brian Kummer. I have your mother's contact information and there's nothing new with your Uncle Reeves' case. But I wanted to contact her and ask some questions. But I wasn't sure what her situation was.

In other words, is she, you know, Looney Tunes, and it would be best not to contact her. So he reached out to Tripp. She called me, all right, almost right away. And it's like, what? But immediately again, it started dredging up.

All those feelings. Oh, what did it do to you? You shake. I took days for my hands to stop shaking. And your voice. I said, okay, Tripp, give me a minute. And he said, oh, no, Mom, I can hear your voice. You know, your voice shakes. It does all those things. And my hands shake. Tripp was trying to give me the phone number, and I couldn't write it down. It brings everything back. It brings back hope. And then it takes you...

while to accept the fact that you're not doing this now to find him and

you're looking to get answers. Brian and Police Chief Richter agreed to let us see everything they had on file for Reeves' case. So we spent two days at the Kittery Police Department looking through handwritten notes from Detective Avery in 1983. Personal letters written to and from Reeves, photos, school documents, dental records, an FBI booklet of potential perpetrators. Everything the police had and

and everything Sally had brought them from her mother's files so that we could tell the unabridged and unredacted story of Reeve's life and disappearance. Working on a case from 1983 has its challenges. Part of the issue is not knowing the geography of 1983.

Just finding where Reeves lived took me two weeks to find out where it was. I talked to everybody I could think of to try to find out where these cabins were that he lived in, and finally tracked them down and found out where they were. They no longer exist, but it's just nice having a visual about where...

where they are. So the geography is really tough and missing statements and missing phone names and missing, you know, information is the most critical thing. It's not if you don't have it, you know, 40 years later, it's hard to get.

When you read through the report, you initially have a really hard time of tracking down the timeline of events, like what happened where. Part of the issue is Reeves stopped going to work, but in the report it indicates that he quit his job.

So I don't know if he quit his job. I don't know. It says he quit his job, but it doesn't say that he gave notice. It doesn't say anything else. It's just that one day he didn't show up. So that puts me at a disadvantage. After that, Reeves, or his checkbook, started buying things all over Maine and New Hampshire, Portsmouth and Kittery. And

So he was tracked using his checkbook from one place to another spending money. So, you know, when I say Reeves bought something, I don't know that Reeves bought it. I know that his checkbook bought it.

There was sort of a frustration in that, you know, here was somebody who was of age, disappeared, and there were things that were happening that we could say, that's not him. But the police were saying, well, he's of age. He may have wanted to disappear. Yes, I think that there were some, you know, there's some conversations that the detective then had with people where he was employed.

But, you know, to Brian's frustration, yeah, I had a conversation with so-and-so, but there's no documentation of that conversation, what was said, what was asked, what the responses were. So there's very little to follow there. So, you know, we're not sure how much true work was done there other than, you know, a mother and father, you know, on top of the police department saying there's something wrong here. Can you do something?

I'm operating on just really limited information, so I've got to kind of keep my mind open as far as it could be just about anything. I just don't think it's a case of self-harm or him walking away from everything. His Social Security number has not been used. In America, it's really hard to operate without a Social Security number and not slip up and use your own identity. After 40 years, there would be no reason for him not to contact his family, no matter what he's done.

My gut tells me that somebody was responsible for Reeves' disappearance. And as I said, the family just wants to know what happened and where he's at so they can, you know, put him to rest where he belongs with his mom and dad. There's no place to go and visit him. You know, there's graves, there's...

other memories for other people who are no longer with us, but for Reeves, there's nothing. When my parents left Philadelphia, the family plot is there and had their stones put up with their names and dates, except for the death dates, that meant, and it was all paid for, so, but they also did one for Reeves, so his is there with a birth date, but no, you know, there's this whole story

piece of our puzzle of who we are that's gone that you can't answer any questions about living in in georgia even living in florida you know you do the i-95 drive up here and um you know for the longest time you would pass a hitchhiker you'd look does that look like him

I want to help the family get answers, and this is where you come in. Because of Brian Kummer, this case, previously unknown to the modern public, is being covered in a way that it deserves for the first time in 38 years, and you can add to its momentum. Reeves' family spent an entire day with us at the Kittery Police Department, opening up their hearts, reliving old trauma, and

and sharing their stories with us. All because they want to find Reeves. We can help them maybe find the truth. Share this case. Something as simple as putting it on your Facebook wall and saying, "I care about this case and you should too" would make a small but meaningful impact. Mention it to your friends.

follow the Find Reeves Johnson Facebook page. If you have any connection to media outlets, chat them up or drop them a line. Let them know that this case matters to you and it should matter to the public.

If you know anyone that lived in the Kittery or Portsmouth areas back in the late 70s and early 80s, ask them about this case. Ask them to listen to the episode. Maybe some detail that I've mentioned will jog their memory and give us a new clue. The best way to share this episode is through the blog in the show notes.

The Kittery Police Department is actively investigating this case and wants tips and background information. They can be anonymous too if you'd prefer to remain so. Here's some things that you might know. Do you know anyone who worked at Donnelly Manufacturing? Any name that worked there from 1975 to 1985 would help. Did they have a dress code or a uniform?

Do you have any connection to Brock House, the English-based company that owned Donnelly at the time and still exists today, or to Ocean National Bank? Do you know the name of Reeve's girlfriend, whom he was dating when he first moved to Kittery? Do you know the names of any of Reeve's friends from that time?

Did any of the names I mentioned in this episode sound familiar? Do you have any photos of Jewett Court in Kittery, in the rental cabins that used to be there? And most importantly, do you recognize the red hat worn by the mystery man in the photo? Could you find out? Maybe you know someone who's into 80s fashion and might recognize the style of the hat, or even a blurry logo. That photo is on the website at MurderSheTold.com. Study it.

Share it. Find the things that we missed. The link to take you directly to the page is in the show notes. That photo was never shared in 1983. Let's make up for lost time. The phone number is 207-439-1638. My email address is bcummer at kitterypolice.com. They can call here. They can email me.

I will always get back to them. They can stop by the police department if they want to and see me. I'm here just about every day of the week, so it's not really hard to get a hold of me. And I'll stay as late as they need me to stay. If they want me to stay, I'll stay. I just want some information. No piece of information is too small. You have the power to make a difference in this case. Let's find Reeves Johnson. ♪

I want to thank you so much for listening. I'm so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you.

A very special thanks to Detective Brian Kummer for his time and generosity on this case, and to Chief Richter for allowing me access to the files, and to the entire Kittery Police Department for their kindness. Thank you to Hugh Johnson for traveling up from Vermont to meet with me and to share memories, and thank you to Sally and David Schwartz for traveling up from New Hampshire to do the same. Thank you to Abby Bergen and her support, and to Tripp Schwartz.

And thank you to Barbara Johnson, Reeb's mom, who kept very meticulous files. Photos for this case and all resources can be found on the blog at MurderSheTold.com. Special thanks to Byron Willis for his time, research, and writing support. If you loved this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or on social media and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

It's one of the best ways to support an indie podcast. If you're a friend or a family member of the victim, you're more than welcome to reach out to me at hello at murdershetold.com. If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've honored your stories and keeping the names of your family and friends alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening.