Sidewalk Slaying in Bangor: Who Shot Peter Bassett?
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Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com. This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small-town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Zevey.

You can connect with me and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast.

When I was researching this case, I found myself a little angry at the lack of results and the silence surrounding a case that should be cut and dried. This is a brazen murder that happened on a busy summer night with multiple witnesses, yet the answers remain hidden. This is a case that should be solved, but it isn't, and the years continue to pass without answers.

One where you say to yourself, somebody knows something, and they're not talking about it. This is the story of the murder of Peter J. Bassett. The door to Judy's Bar and Grill slammed shut behind Peter Bassett as he stepped outside onto the sidewalk in downtown Bangor. The August air felt warmer than it was because of the heat from the anger growing inside him.

Peter and his friend Terry were hanging out at Judy's, a local bar, playing pool and having a drink on a Saturday night.

Peter had been working long hours and had even worked overtime that day at his job as a US postal worker. In fact, he was still in uniform. He was off work though and was looking to have some fun, but his friend couldn't seem to drop the argument they'd gotten into an hour earlier. Peter tried to move on, but Terry persisted, so Peter stepped outside alone to collect his thoughts. But the argument followed him, and as Peter turned his back,

the cold barrel of a gun pressed into his neck, sending a chill down his spine in the warm summer air. In a split second, two shots rang out and Peter was dead. It was around 11 p.m. when Detective Donald O'Halloran arrived on the scene and saw the 39-year-old postal worker lying lifeless in the street.

It had been a busy summer for the police. The homicide rate for 1988 in general was up, and in Bangor alone, there were an average of one to two murders per month. In fact, police responded to another reported murder that same Saturday night. Detective O'Halloran was no stranger to homicide, so he rolled up his sleeves to undertake another grim investigation.

People gathered on a fire escape across the street to watch with a bird's-eye view of everything happening below. With the weight of the rapt audience, the steel stairs creaked and groaned and gave way, collapsing and dumping the spectators 15 feet to the ground. Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured, but it did add tumult to an already chaotic evening.

Witnesses told police they'd seen an oversized yellow or light-colored rusty older sedan with the lights that were out over the license plate, leaving the scene after shots were fired. Police scanners sent out an APB with the car's description to try to track down a potential suspect fleeing the scene. Cheryl Bassett wasn't expecting the doorbell to ring. After all, it was midnight and the kids were all in bed.

Maybe Peter forgot his keys and locked himself out again. She was fully prepared to give him a playful scolding for being forgetful, but her smile quickly faded when she opened the door to two police officers standing on the steps. They looked a bit somber. She'd seen this moment before on television, but this wasn't fiction. Her husband was dead, lying on the sidewalk on State Street in downtown Bangor.

A child's sobs echoed from the hallway, giving away the hiding place of 10-year-old Nicole, who had snuck out of bed to see who was at the door.

Cheryl, filled with adrenaline, had no time to give way to the emotion rising in her throat. She had a family to protect and a priest to wake up. She dialed the familiar number, panicked that Peter didn't have his last rites read, and requested that the priest head down to Judy's immediately so that her husband could peacefully transition to heaven. She also had to break the news to Freda, Peter's twin.

When they arrived at Judy's, Frida tried to push past the police to get to her brother. This can't be him. What if it was a mistake? What if he was somehow alive? She just wanted to hold him, not wanting him to be alone on the sidewalk. But the police wouldn't let her past the yellow tape.

Her brother was now evidence, and this was an active crime scene. Frida told Renee Ordway of the Bangor Daily News, quote, End quote.

Around 7 a.m., police were called into the bagel shop where 28-year-old Terry W. Thompson sat. He was under arrest before he could finish eating his breakfast and was charged that day with the murder of his friend Peter Bassett.

Peter Bassett was born in Princeton, Maine at the Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation. He had a twin sister named Freda, and they graduated from John Bapst High School in Bangor in 1968. Shortly after, he joined the Marine Corps and served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971 before returning to Maine.

The state of Maine has a rich and complex Native American history, and as a kid who grew up in the Maine public school system in Penobscot County, I can confirm that I was not taught any of it.

In fact, the only elementary school education I remember receiving is a generalized Thanksgiving-friendly narrative. That being said, I did a little investigating to see if things had changed and learned that Maine has enacted legislation, Bill LD-291, that mandates that Native American history be incorporated into Maine's public school educational curriculum, with an overwrite board that includes seven seats.

four of which are given to Native American tribe representatives.

Many of Maine's 16 counties are named after native tribes as a nod to our history, and almost all of the lakes and rivers are taken from Maine's indigenous languages, including the lake I grew up on, Sebastakook, which means "almost through place" and comes from Penobscot-Abonaki heritage. But that is the extent to which a good majority of Mainers know today about Maine's indigenous roots, myself included.

Peter was Passamaquoddy, and I felt compelled to research and share some information about his tribe, their sad modern history, their language, culture, and their traditions. I've linked a few sites I found helpful in the show notes on MurderSheTold.com if you would like to learn more.

The Passamaquoddy tribe is an indigenous Native American tribe of eastern Maine, and is culturally one of several tribes of the Wabanaki group. One of the central characteristics that defines what it means to be Passamaquoddy is to speak their language. Through this language, all of their cultural traditions have been passed down from generation to generation, and though it has been spoken for thousands of years, it had never existed in written form until the 20th century.

In the 1970s, a project to develop a dictionary was undertaken, and today that dictionary has over 30,000 entries thanks to the hard work of Passamaquoddy leaders and their collaboration with linguistic researchers. You can find examples of their spoken native tongue on pmportal.org. Some of the following is quoted directly from this excellent resource:

"When Passamaquoddy Maliseet speakers say, as they often do, that the language makes them feel connected with the environment or closer to the land, they are not romanticizing or idealizing a bygone era, but instead referring to deep cultural understandings rooted in the language. For them, Passamaquoddy Maliseet is a communication system responsive to the immediate social and physical circumstances in which they find themselves.

Native Passamaquoddy speaker Margaret App's description of the language as a unique mindset in which she feels completely at home acknowledges on a very deep level how a people's cultural history and sense of collective identity are embedded in the words and constructions of their native tongue. End quote.

Their oral tradition, myths, legends, and beliefs have been passed down for thousands of years. Here is one such story about a figure central to their belief system. Glooskap, the cultural hero of the Wabanaki peoples, made the world habitable for human beings and taught them their place in it.

In one of these stories, Glooskap must tame the wind in the person of Wajosin, a giant white bird who is making life difficult for the people with an unremitting gale. Glooskap goes to see Wajosin, addresses him as grandfather and entreats him to flap his wings less violently. But Wajosin refuses and Glooskap must exert his power. He ties the bird up so that he cannot move his wings at all.

When this proves equally disastrous, Gluskap must go back to the north and untie one of the bird's wings, restoring harmony.

In the story, the wind's name, wajosen, is not a noun but a verb meaning it is windy. Likewise, the other elements, such as rain, snow, sunshine, cold and heat, are also expressed as verbs. Continuing actions or processes rather than independent things or forces. Allowing speakers the possibility of interacting with them and affecting them, as Glooskap did.

In addition to their language, the Passamaquoddy are defined by the land that they inhabit. The ancestral home of the Passamaquoddy tribe covered about 3 million acres of land, 13% of Maine's total land area, including the entire St. Croix River watershed in Washington County and adjacent land in New Brunswick, Canada. But they were nomadic and they didn't stay in the same place all year round.

It was custom for the tribe to follow the flow of Maine's Four Seasons and the migration of the animals and fish, using an elaborate network of rivers, lakes, and portages to trade with other tribes in New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. And one of the goods that they traded was woven baskets. Quote, For hundreds of years, Passamaquoddy artists have woven baskets from splints of black ash wood.

They make them in many forms, from delicate, fancily decorated sewing and handkerchief baskets to sturdy, utilitarian baskets for agriculture and fishery. Each type of basket requires distinct types of equipment, materials, weaving methods, and decoration."

These baskets would often be sold in the summer in generally wealthy areas of Maine's coast. The coast was a familiar place to the Passamaquoddy. Their name literally translates to "people who spear pollock," speaking to their great dependence and skill at fishing. They have a long tradition of canoe-making, braving the rocky Maine coast in small wooden vessels.

But many of their traditions were threatened by the main education system, the Catholic Church, and the land grab that began back in 1604 when they greeted explorer and colonist Samuel de Champlain at the mouth of the St. Croix River.

In early times, they generally helped the European settlers adapt to the land and, in 1777, they fought side by side with the Americans in the Revolutionary War, coming into direct conflict with the British in New Brunswick and Machias.

Because of the remoteness of the land, though, the Passamaquoddy generally were able to maintain autonomy. But when Massachusetts claimed ownership of their land, it was only a matter of time before they were confined to a small parcel, just a fraction of their ancestral lands.

And although the ever-present pressures to assimilate never abated, the Passamaquoddy struck back with a decisive legal victory in the 20th century. "In the 1960s and '70s, the struggles for civil rights and the assertion of cultural identity by minority groups across North America inspired the Passamaquoddy and Maliseet communities to empower themselves.

Through conversations with elders and from the study of historical documents, the younger generations learned details of their legal and political relations with the federal government. Native scholars framed their own accounts of history, adopting a Passamaquoddy or Maliseet perspective. In Maine, this research led to a land claim settlement, granting them 100,000 acres and approximately $80 million, end quote.

This 1970s legal struggle brings us back to Peter. The legal claim they brought, which found a foothold in the American judicial system and support from President Jimmy Carter, ignited racial tensions between Native Mainers and Native Americans.

The claim challenged the legitimacy of the acquisition of millions and millions of acres by the state of Maine. A successful outcome in court could change the lives of the Mainers that lived on these lands, and they struck back against the Passamaquoddy with intimidation and fear. Stories abound showcasing the tensions between these rival communities during this turbulent time.

Peter was in his 20s in the 1970s, still young and impressionable and trying to find his way in the height of this political discord. Peter had consistent run-ins with the law when he was younger in the 1970s, often involving repeat offenses for driving without a license or driving with a parking light out. And in April of 1987, a year and a half before his murder, he had two back-to-back DUI arrests within a week and a half of each other.

From this, it's clear that something was going on inside that he was battling.

But from what I've read, it seemed like he was fighting to take control of it and working hard for his family. His manager at the post office acknowledged his struggles and the work he'd put in to overcome them and added that he was a loyal employee who was very well liked by his peers. He'd started out as a clerk at the post office and worked his way up to become a carrier, having worked there for 15 years, covering five to six trips a week around the Bangor Vesey area.

Peter was very active. He tried to run almost every day and played basketball on a 35 and older league, a passion that stuck with him since high school. A newspaper search gave me photos of him and his team at various championships throughout the years. He was also a member of the Maine Army National Guard at the time of his death.

Peter's pride and joy was his family, his wife Cheryl and their three children, all under 10 with the youngest being only 3 months old at the time of his death, and his twin sister Frida, with whom he was very close. Something that really struck me in my research was the number of memorials that were sent to print over the years by Frida in the Bangor Daily News, always with a photo of him and a special message.

In the first few years following his death in 1988, at least a quarter page of the newspaper near the obituaries would be dedicated to the memory of Peter, with promises that he will not be forgotten. The quantity of memorial clippings outweighed the news articles by more than half. But despite the page eventually dwindling down to one column, Freda's love remained strikingly visible. For Peter's birthday and the anniversary of his death,

For Father's Day and Veteran's Day, Peter's face was always there. 1989, 1990, 1995, 2001. A reminder of a life cut short and a love that remains.

The Tuesday following Terry's arrest during his initial court appearance, he was ordered to remain at the Penobscot County Jail without bond pending a hearing that had yet to be scheduled, the first example of its kind after a new law surrounding bail had passed two weeks prior. The bill affected those now charged with crimes that were formerly classified as capital offenses, or in this case, murder.

The law provided those who were charged with lesser crimes the opportunity to automatically receive bail, but gave the judge the opportunity to deny bail in situations like this, where there's a murder charge. To do this, however, there needed to be a bail hearing, known as a Harnish hearing, set to take place within five days of the initial charges. Terry's bail hearing was set for August 22nd, which

which fell within those provisions but allowed the loophole of the Attorney General to seek and receive an indefinite delay because of scheduling conflicts with the assigned date, leaving Terry in jail while awaiting a hearing where a judge would decide or deny bail based on the likelihood that he was guilty of killing Peter.

If the judge decided there wasn't enough evidence, Terry would automatically be entitled to bail. But if he decided there was enough evidence to support the allegations, he had the right to deny Terry of bail.

Although probable cause is still a factor, this procedure is separate from the bind-over hearing that simply determines whether the case will go ahead or not. Terry's defense attorney, Martha Harris, was stuck between a rock and a hard place. She told the Bangor Daily News that this new law gave lawyers defending clients with murder charges little to say in the outcome of receiving bail or not. Quote, End quote.

she said. At the request of the assistant attorney general, the judge ordered the police affidavit listing the evidence linking Terry to the crime to be sealed for 60 days, citing that they had compelling reasons to keep the documents closed from the public and that it would otherwise compromise the investigation.

A few days later, on August 19th, the yellow getaway car that witnesses had seen at the crime was located, but police were tight-lipped on anything related to the crime and declined to comment what they found in the car, if anything, and if anyone else was being investigated in connection. Police also refused to comment on the search for the murder weapon, which at this point still hadn't been located.

In the days prior, though, Marine patrol divers and police were seen patrolling in boats and searching different spots of the Penobscot River, leading people to believe they had information that the gun that killed Peter may have been discarded there.

One month later, Terry Thompson was officially indicted for the murder of Peter Bassett, and he entered a plea of innocent before the judge, something his attorney told newspaper outlets he would do. He said he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger that ended Peter's life, but still sat at the Penobscot jail awaiting his postponed bail hearing as well as his now impending arraignment.

Like sand through an hourglass, the days of the affidavit's moratorium were slowly coming to an end, and in mid-October, the hold was lifted and the contents were released to those still seeking clarity over the tightly sealed investigation.

According to the affidavits, witnesses at Judy's and Pat's, both bars that Peter and Terry went to that night, reported seeing Terry and Peter together. They also left the bar minutes before the shooting. One witness told police he saw a confrontation outside of Judy's between two people fitting their descriptions.

and said that he saw a man resembling Terry put his hand behind the head of Peter, who was still in his postal uniform, and then saw him fall to the ground after two shots rang out. According to the autopsy, Peter died of a single gunshot wound about an inch and a half behind his right ear.

I went to Bangor to see where Peter had been killed and was surprised to find that Judy's looked exactly the same as it did in newspaper photos from 1988. The next door bar, Pat's, is no longer there. The area feels dated and a little run down, but more or less exactly the same as it did 30 years ago. Just a stone's throw away over the Kanduskag stream from the classic downtown district.

That same witness who saw the confrontation said that the man who resembled Terry got into the rusty yellow sedan police searched for and provided a description of the vehicle that was later located outside of a residence in Brewer. Terry admitted to being at the bar that night and even admitted to being there with Peter. Detective Tim Reed said, quote, Thompson told me that he left Judy's with the victim and was with the victim when he was shot, but

but he denied shooting him." Essentially saying that he knew who shot Peter, but he wasn't talking. The affidavit also named another possible person of interest in the case, the driver, but police refused to release the name of this second mystery man. 30 minutes before the police scanner sent out information on the shooting, a neighbor saw the car's owner leave it in the driveway and saw the men get into another vehicle. They didn't return that night.

Terry said that he and this unnamed driver slept in the cab of the second car on the Bangor docks, avoiding the chaos of downtown Bangor.

When police searched the vehicle they'd slept in, they obtained a suitcase that contained a 44-magnum cylinder, a pair of wooden revolver grips, a pair of plastic revolver grips, a bag containing .38-caliber ammunition, and gun cleaning tools. The murder weapon, however, was nowhere to be found, and even at the point of the affidavit release, it still hadn't been found, despite extensive searches in the nearby waters.

You know this is a cold case, right? It frustrates me to say that because to me, everything seems so crystal clear. This should be the end of my story, the part where the accused gets convicted and gets a sentence, and I wrap up the timeline and bring it all home, cue outro theme music and source credits. But unfortunately, it's not.

On Wednesday, October 19, 1988, Terry W. Thompson was released from the Penobscot County Jail and the murder charges against him were lifted. The development came two days after affidavits were released that quoted witnesses who implicated Terry in the crime.

Martha Harris, Terry's defense attorney, said that the information that led to the indictment being dropped pertained to the involvement of the second man. The investigation also suggested the presence of a third person who was at the murder scene as well. Martha also credited private investigator Bruce Buchanan for finding enough information to convince investigators that Thompson wasn't directly involved with Peter's death. He denied being the one who pulled the trigger.

They uncovered unspecified new information that left them to question the extent of his involvement in the crime, and the charges against Terry were ultimately dropped. Jeffrey Helm, the assistant attorney general, said that, quote, no particular piece of information had led to this action, but that continual reviews of the case led investigators to rethink, end quote.

He also added that dropping the indictment wasn't so much about raising questions as to the validity of the witness statements, but that it was about other matters, such as this unnamed second person. He also added that, although the charges had been dropped, Terry was still considered a suspect in the crime, and this didn't exonerate him.

Detectives stressed that this investigation was still active and that Terry could be indicted again if any further evidence was produced that implicated him. Reasonable doubt.

That is our legal system, no matter how badly we want justice for somebody. You can't convict a murder charge if there is any reasonable possibility that they didn't commit the crime. Not that it doesn't happen, but that's a whole other story for another day. And although dropping charges is an uncommon move, it's not completely unheard of.

Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Helm said, "...we don't dismiss a murder indictment lightly. The purpose of an investigation is to find out the truth." And the family is still seeking that truth.

In December 1990, Renée Ordway from the Bangor Daily News did an article that showcased the aftermath of a family still fighting and grieving. That arrest of the unnamed second person never happened, for one reason or another, leaving the family trying to put the pieces together themselves in search of answers to lingering questions. The article also shed a little light on a still fuzzy timeline of events from the evening.

Cheryl, Peter's wife, believed the motivation for the murder was robbery. At the time, Peter, who was in the postal workers' union, was working as much overtime as he could to help pay for the remodeling of their house. She said that the night of Saturday, August 13, 1988, Peter had worked until about 8 p.m., though an earlier newspaper report said that he'd apparently clocked out at 4 p.m., but I didn't find any more sources to corroborate either timestamp.

He then went to a friend's house, and Cheryl met him there and gave him $20 to play cards with. Around 9:30-10pm, he and his friend, who is assumed to be Terry Thompson, though he isn't named in the article, decided to go to Pat's Cafe on State Street to have a beer and play pool. The bartender at Pat's, Joan Smith, confirmed the man he was there with was Terry. She said that the two men got into a heated argument and left the bar within a minute of each other.

Shortly after, they were both seen at the bar next door, Judy's, after meeting another man outside. Cheryl said that she was told by some people that night that Terry had made racial slurs against Peter, who was proud of his Passamaquoddy heritage, and that's what started the argument. A man named Mike, who was at Pat's that night, remembered seeing Peter there with Terry when they came in to play pool, though he declined to comment about what exactly happened between the two.

It wasn't too long after that, that Peter was dead. In 1990, Cheryl Bassett said that life goes on, but that there's still a void. Quote, I would probably be at the Bangor Mental Health Institute if it weren't for the kids. I was in shock for a while until something made me get up and get going again. It's hard when I think about the kids. They'll never see their father again, and he wasn't allowed the opportunity to watch them grow. End quote.

Peter Bassett Jr., who was only six at the time of his father's death, asked, quote, if they wanted his money, why couldn't they have just shot him in the leg? End quote. So here we are, 32 years later. The statute of limitations never runs out on murder, but without anyone coming forward with information, the case has gone cold, despite decades of work. Peter Bassett isn't on the main unsolved homicide list.

This case should be closed, but the other person of interest, and a possible third, have never been publicly named, and they probably won't be. And even though he remains a person of interest, Terry Thompson has since passed away, and with him went the secrets of anything else he might know about that night. Stephen Farnham, a friend of Peter's from high school, said that he doesn't believe the case will ever be solved.

He told Nitnoi Ricker of Fox Bangor, quote, "...they know who did it, but they can't prove it. It's one thing finding out who did it, and it's another to prove it." End quote. And this case will remain without justice until somebody steps forward with anything that could either implicate Terry, even in death, or either of the other men.

But I still have hope for the family, and I think about his children who have spent more than my entire life without their father, and his sister Frida, whose memorials cry out for us not to forget this man, not to forget his face and his name, and to remember his life and what happened that night in August of 1988, not to forget that he still deserves justice.

There's a killer out there who needs to be named. He could already be deceased. Or he could still be walking around among us. Somebody who shot a person in cold blood in public. Somebody who shouldn't get away with this crime. If you're holding on to any information or think that you might know something about the murder of Peter J. Bassett, I urge you to submit a tip to the Maine State Cold Case Unit. The website will be linked in the episode show notes.

Maybe one day, this case will finally be solved. I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. You can follow Murder, She Told on Instagram at Murder, She Told Podcast for key photos from this episode and more.

My sources for this episode include original archived articles from the Bangor Daily News featuring the writing of Margaret Warner, Jean Curran, Doug Geary, Pat Flagg, and Renee Ordway, and articles from Fox Bangor written by Nitnoi Ricker. Additional resources include the Passamaquoddy Maliseet Dictionary, Maine State Museum, PassamaquoddyPeople.com, and PMPortal.org, as well as Passamaquoddy history videos found on YouTube.

A very special thanks to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. All links for sources and media can be found in the episode link in the show notes and on MurderSheTold.com.

If you're a friend or a family member of the victims or anyone connected to this story, you are more than welcome to reach out to me at MurderSheToldPod at gmail.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 in keeping the names of your family and friends alive. Murder She Told will be back next week with another crime story from Maine. Thank you for listening.

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.