The Tangled Mystery of Shirley McAvoy
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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 Sevey. You can connect with me and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. ♪

Brian McAvoy hadn't seen or heard from his estranged wife Shirley in almost two months. He had reported her missing a little over a month ago in August, and last he heard, there was a man staying with her just before her disappearance. He may have suspected that they went on a long trip together, but this seemed a little too long.

Her red 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which was actually registered to him, hadn't been seen at her home or in town since, nor had her two dogs.

It was now the 3rd of October, and if nobody was going to be living inside her house in Pittsfield, Maine, the pipes would need to be drained as the cold weather settled in. He decided to stop by the mobile home he used to share with her on Berry Road and winterize it. If a pipe burst from freezing, he suspected that he would be stuck paying for the repairs.

The house was strangely dark. Curtains from the kitchen had been moved into the living room, blocking any light from the windows that faced the road.

Brian wasn't as familiar with the new furniture Shirley had bought herself after they separated to get rid of the reminders of her old life, but he knew that there was something strange. The whole living room was arranged awkwardly. The couch in particular stuck out the most. The coat rack that hung on the wall had been moved, and the place was unusually tidy. He knew his ex-wife, and she was a bit messy.

Brian moved one of the coats on the rack, which revealed some unusual dark stains on the wall behind it. He then moved the couch back to where it usually sat, revealing something much more alarming. A three-foot-by-two-foot dark red stain, crusty and dried on the carpet. A stain that was definitely blood.

When local police chief Spencer Harvey and Timothy Roosin arrived on the scene, they immediately brought in the Maine State Police and crime scene experts. The stain on the carpet was later confirmed by forensic experts to be human blood, type O, which was a match to Shirley's. And in the darkness, a luminol test revealed blood stains on almost every part of the living room and bathroom.

The walls, carpets, drapes, and floors were all splattered with blood that had been cleaned up by someone. Close to the large pool of blood on the carpet was a urine stain, and the inside of the bedroom door was practically destroyed at the base. It looked like Shirley's two dogs had possibly been inside long enough to ferociously scratch their paws bloody at the door.

I spoke with Pittsfield Police Sergeant Timothy Rusin, who is actually a good friend of my dad's. They meet for breakfast every Saturday morning. He told me that whoever committed this crime did a very good job at cleaning it up. This was not the work of an amateur. Missing were 32-year-old Shirley Delcourt McAvoy, her 1990 red Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, and her two dogs.

Shirley was 5'6" and 135 pounds, and she had black hair and brown eyes. The last person to see Shirley was a delivery man on August 9th who came to the door to serve her divorce papers around 5:00 p.m. Neighbors also reported seeing her that same day.

Shirley allegedly suffered from depression that possibly stemmed from her dissolving marriage and custody situation, and neighbors assumed that she went somewhere to get away for a while, which is why they didn't think to check on her.

Small towns love to gossip, and this case had a lot of it to go around. It's unclear to me what imprint is true about Shirley as a person and what is not. In addition to what has been printed, I've also talked to some anonymous sources who knew her, and their accounts add more conflict to the mix. Shirley was a complex person. In absence of certainty about the truth, I offer a couple of portraits of Shirley.

A friend of Shirley's told me that she was a loving mother and super protective of her girls. They were unsure how Brian had gotten full custody.

Not only that, the Bangor Daily News also reported in 1991 that Brian found the disappearance unusual because of his wife's close relationship with her two daughters. On the other hand, conflicting accounts said Shirley was an alcoholic and was abusive towards her children, which is why she lost custody.

What I do know for a fact was that Shirley and Brian had two daughters together, and that Brian had full custody of the girls and lived with them in Fairfield. The book Murderers Among Us by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth, which was shared to me by listener Michael, opens up the chapter on Shirley saying that she was barred from contact with the girls after several episodes of physically abusing them. The book, and lots of articles about Shirley, paints a harsh portrait of her.

of somebody struggling with mental health issues and possibly substance abuse, and whose lifestyle was the talk of the town. This was Shirley's second divorce, and I know it was extremely hard on her. On Thursday, August 8th, 1990, Shirley invited over several friends for a little party at her home, where they met a mystery man who introduced himself as Jerry. But Jerry apparently told others that his name was Don.

Shirley wasn't very forthcoming with her friends about where she'd met Jerry. He'd been staying at her house for almost a week at this point, and oddly, she told her friends that they weren't having a sexual relationship. Friends told police that she could have either met him at Funtown, an amusement park in Saco, or at a bar in Millinocket, which are both close to a two-hour drive from Pittsfield in opposite directions. Jerry was an enigma.

He was in his mid-30s and had memorable pale blue eyes and sandy blonde hair, and he spoke with a southern accent, something that stands out in central Maine.

He was initially described as short and stocky, weighing 180 pounds and standing 5'5" with crooked teeth and pockmarks on his face. Jerry seemed to be what anybody wanted him to be. He was an Air Force mechanic from Virginia and a construction worker from Millinocket. Jerry wanted to be a Navy SEAL. Jerry had either a 12 or 13-year-old daughter and had recently divorced a woman in Massachusetts who was having twins.

He was from Oklahoma. He was also from Kentucky. Or was it Old Orchard Beach, Maine? Jerry didn't have a vehicle, which is essential to getting anywhere in Maine. After interviewing Shirley's friends, it was clear that nobody actually had any idea who Jerry really was, or if any of the information that he told them was actually true.

What neighbors did know was that they saw Jerry leave in her 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme in the early morning of Saturday, August 10th, and after that, they never saw Shirley, Jerry, or the car again.

Later that same day on the busy Boston Southeast Expressway, Shirley's Oldsmobile was involved in a fender bender with a well-known Boston attorney driving a Mercedes. When the lawyer went to talk to the lone driver of the car, a man matching one of Jerry's descriptions casually and confidently handed over Brian McAvoy's insurance card from the glove box, likely purporting to be Brian McAvoy.

The lawyer agreed with who he thought was Brian to simply get a quote from his auto body shop and mail him the estimate. He didn't ask to see Jerry's license, and Jerry was so compliant the police never really got involved. A little over a week later, on August 16th, Brian received an estimate in the mail for $1,600 in repair damages for the accident.

Brian hadn't heard from Shirley since the 9th, and word on the street was that she left on a trip with her new boyfriend. He tried calling her, but he got no answer, so he just let the police know about the accident.

When Shirley was reported missing at the end of August, it seems that the local police didn't go to any great lengths to find her whereabouts. The attitude I've gathered, based on quotes in articles, is that neither the community nor the police were too surprised to hear that she had run off with some guy she just met. They figured she'd turn up eventually.

It wasn't until she missed her court date relating to the divorce that Brian filed a missing persons report on August 28th, 19 days after she was last seen, despite the fact that he found it odd she hadn't been in touch with her kids. And after the report was filed, it wasn't until October 4th, over a month later, that somebody finally checked on the house when Brian showed up to winterize it and discovered the alarming scene.

The large gaps in the timeline are confusing to me, and I find it odd that Brian took that much time to take action, both in reporting her missing and in checking on the house. All of the articles refer to her lifestyle and her depression as a reason why people didn't think twice about her disappearing.

But to me, these aren't valid excuses. If people had showed some concern earlier, it may not have saved Shirley's life, but it would have certainly put the investigation on more solid footing. In November, a composite sketch was released to the public as well as the confusing details about who Jerry may have been. This sketch yielded about 50 phone calls according to Detective Dale Lancaster, but none of the leads panned out.

Despite the suspicious circumstances, Jerry was simply wanted for questioning, assuming that he may know something. Steve McCausland, representative for the state police, said, This man holds the key to where Shirley McAvoy is and what happened to her. But ten days after the composite was released, Jerry was no longer simply a person of interest. He was the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

On November 20th, around 1.15 p.m., Mike Furrow was standing on the tailgate of his pickup truck looking for deer in rural Spotsylvania, Virginia, about five miles from the southbound I-95 freeway, when he saw a white object in the distance that he said looked like a ball.

Upon further investigation, he realized it was the skeletal remains of a human body. The remains had been dumped in the woods behind Todd's Tavern Market off Route 623. They were wrapped in a bedspread that was heavily stained with bodily fluids and tied on either end with cords from window blinds.

The remains were tentatively identified by dentures that were found with the initials S. McAvoy and two rings, a class ring from Biddeford High School and a ring with three stones that had belonged to Shirley's mother. Shirley McAvoy had been found.

Steve McCausland told the Bangor Daily News, This certainly is a major break in the case. We strongly suspected foul play had been involved, and this obviously confirms it. We do feel she was the victim of a homicide.

Based on the amount of blood found in Shirley's home, police believe she was killed in Pittsfield, stuffed into the trunk of her car, and then driven south by mystery man Jerry until he dumped her, just over 700 miles from where she lived. And then driven south by mystery man Jerry until he dumped her, just over 700 miles from where she lived. That's an 11 and a half hour drive with human remains in the trunk of the car in the summer.

Shirley's dogs have never been found. It was now crucial to the investigation that they find Jerry. Police didn't even have fingerprints that belonged to him. He evidently had cleaned her place so thoroughly that they couldn't lift a single print from the house, despite the fact that he'd lived there for at least a week. It's never been stated whether they have any DNA evidence. By the time her body was found, though, Jerry was long gone.

Shortly after the fender bender in Boston on August 14th, Shirley's Oldsmobile, which was presumably being driven by Jerry, was pulled over for a minor traffic violation in Florida. But in November after the body was found, the car was nowhere to be seen, despite efforts to locate it in Florida.

Until April of 1991. If you listened to last week's episode on Christopher Rines, you'll know that Christopher went missing in April of 1991. In one of the editions of the Bangor Daily News I read, an article about the search for Christopher sat directly on top of an article about Shirley's car being located, hoping it would lead to answers.

Two Pittsfield cold cases that still haven't been solved to this day, that happened within just months of one another. Shirley's 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme had been recovered in Darien, Georgia, only it was no longer red. The car had been repainted and sold.

Police were able to deduce that Jerry had driven the car down to St. Augustine, Florida, and abandoned it in the parking lot of a beach motel around the same time as the Florida traffic violation on August 14th, five days after he'd left Maine. From there, it seems that the car was stolen from the parking lot, repainted, and then sold, making its way back up the Florida coast and landing in Darien.

which is about a two and a half hour drive. Police also found blood stains inside the car. Investigators kept a tight lid on the details, not wanting to tip their hand in the investigation. They sent the vehicle to the crime lab in Augusta for analysis, hoping that somewhere in the cab was the missing clue that they desperately needed about Jerry.

The brutal murder of a local woman continued to fuel gossip and speculation around town, and in December of 1991, it became fodder for Murderers Among Us, a true crime compilation book of over 50 unsolved murders. This is the second book by authors Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth. The first book helped to catch two killers, and Maine police hoped that it might help them catch Jerry too.

Steve McCausland told the Bangor Daily News, the selling point for this book was the fact that it would be in every airport lobby in the country, because this Jerry had obviously traveled the entire eastern seaboard, and we thought the more people who saw his composite, the better off the investigation would be.

They even commissioned a new and much higher quality composite of Jerry to include in the book. The difference is astounding. They don't even look like the same person. I got a copy of this book from a listener and point blank, I don't like this book. I think it's airport smut that's sensational, victim-blaming, and sexist.

It includes lurid details about Shirley's life, focusing on her sex life and her personal feelings about sex that she had confided in her friends. It says, Often as not, Shirley dragged home a new friend for breakfast or spent the night with him.

Sex, of course, was often the upshot of these boozy encounters, but it was not necessarily their object, at least not Shirley's. According to friends, Mrs. McAvoy was consumed by thoughts of intercourse, yet she detested the act herself. This particular wrinkle in her psyche, Detective Lancaster speculates, may have cost Shirley her life.

This passage lacks complexity and comes off as superficial, portraying Shirley as a sex-hungry, alcoholic, out-all-night abusive mother and nothing more. But perhaps the most appalling bit from this book is a direct quote from the lead investigator himself.

Quote, End quote.

Detective Lancaster's comment straight up blames Shirley for causing her own death, suggesting that her leading him on precipitated the murder. Newsflash, it is the duty of men not to kill women, not the duty of women to control or influence the behavior of men.

Not only was the book caught up in this sensational narrative, so was the local paper. The Bangor Daily News reported in 1990 that a neighbor told them a "steady stream of young men had visited Shirley's trailer the entire summer," conjuring images of a literal line of men waiting to sleep with her, an obvious exaggeration of the truth.

The tired trope of women being blamed for their own deaths for walking at night alone or wearing something suggestive or drinking too much or refusing sex is thankfully coming to an end. However, I acknowledge that this book was written 30 years ago, and although I would like to think so, I don't know if I would have recognized these patterns of thinking myself back then.

I'm grateful for the changes in culture that have held men accountable for their actions and shifted the dialogue from women who had it coming to them to men who had it in them to commit these acts of atrocity.

People cope in different ways. If Shirley was in fact living a messy lifestyle and throwing herself into booze and men as a way to cope with a rough divorce, then I believe her story and her struggles should have come from a place of compassion rather than a place of gossip. Her sex life in this situation doesn't matter.

What matters is that Jerry violently took this woman's life for reasons we may never know. And unfortunately, it seemed like the attitude at the time was a shrug of the shoulders and a response that started with, if she hadn't of. I tried to dig to find more about Shirley as a person that was filtered through a different lens.

I was told by a member of Shirley's family that she was a wonderful mother and friend. They told me Shirley loved to meet new people and denied that she lived a party lifestyle. Shirley never wanted to hurt anybody. In the obituary of Shirley's daughter, Amy, who passed away in March of 2020, Shirley was described as a doting and loving mother.

I'm not sure what the truth is about Shirley, but I would really like to know. I'm still seeking out more information from her family to try to paint a more complete portrait of who she really was. The new composite of Jerry that was printed for the book also came with new information about Jerry, but it just added to the confusion more than anything else. Printing a new account of Jerry that dramatically conflicted the initial accounts.

At first, Jerry was about 5'5" and 180 pounds. In both the Bangor Daily and the book with the new composite stated he was somewhere between 5'10" and 6' tall and 180 pounds. This composite, which is arguably one of the most important aspects of this investigation, is buried in newspaper archives and in old paperback novels.

It isn't searchable anywhere, and it isn't shared in tandem with the annual posts on the Maine State Police Facebook page or the MaineGov cold case page. If nobody knows what Jerry looks like, how is anybody able to possibly help identify him?

In the mid-90s, Steve McCausland unsuccessfully tried to get Shirley's story on Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted, mostly so the composite would be shown on TV in every household across America. Unsolved Mysteries declined to cover the story because they wanted a name to go with the mystery man's face. McCausland did get this case on air though in 1995.

Real Stories of the Highway Patrol is a 90s crime reenactment show that ran on Fox from 1993 to 1998, with a whopping 780 episodes. The segment featured the police who worked on Shirley's case and was seen across the country, but it didn't bring in any new leads on Jerry like they'd hoped.

The last bit of public information I could find comes from an article 14 years after her murder in 2004 from the Bangor Daily News. Shirley's 26-year-old daughter, Christina Lancaster, offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of her mother's killer.

She believed Jerry was the man responsible and said, Somebody knows something. Somebody has got to know something. She was only 12 at the time, and her younger sister Amy, who passed away last year, was just 8 years old when they lost their mother.

At that time, both of Shirley's daughters lived with their father, Brian McAvoy, in Fairfield. But the disappearance drew a lot of media attention, and Brian shielded them as best as he could from the television and the newspapers. He even pulled them out of school to keep them out of the public eye and away from the details. They simply thought she'd disappeared, and Christina remembered waiting, wondering, and praying for their mother to return home.

But kids can be unnecessarily cruel. Christina said on Thanksgiving of 1990, just two days after Shirley's remains had been found on November 20th, she and her sister were out playing basketball in the yard when other kids broke the news. Quote, they said, they found your mother, and I was excited. And then they were like, they found her in a ditch wrapped in a blanket. End quote.

There's something else that popped up in my research I think is worth including. A theory.

I was talking to a woman who mentioned that her mother believed her cousin was the one who killed Shirley, and that they'd reported the information to the Maine State Police who didn't follow up with them. She told me, "My cousin, who was up from Florida, came to visit for a few weeks, and when he stopped to say goodbye at the time he was leaving, there was an awful smell coming from the trunk. I now recognize that smell as one of death or a decaying body."

I will never forget that smell. My grandmother's blanket also went missing around that same time too, and I know she was found in a blanket. I also know that he met a woman at Funtown in Saco when he was here, and it wasn't the first time that he'd been accused of a crime of that nature. I saw my grandmother before she passed away, and she swore that he was the one that killed that woman.

I asked her a few questions, specifically about the car. She said that her cousin's car was a Chevy Citation, painted only with primer, and that he did return south with it. She also mentioned that he ditched the car after getting into an accident with it, something about a high-speed chase.

There are two major things that don't fit, though. One is that we know Shirley's killer didn't have a car, and this cousin had a car. The other conflict is that we know that Jerry used her Oldsmobile to bring her south and then ditched the car in St. Augustine. And if this cousin did know anything about Shirley, he took it to his grave. The woman told me that he'd recently passed away from cancer.

There hasn't been any new information released on Shirley's case since 1995. At the time of filming Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, Detective Lancaster told the Bangor Daily, "...all cases eat at detectives if they're not solved. There is the obvious personal tragedy of the family and the need to bring this to conclusion, but this case is very solvable."

If Jerry is alive today, he'd most likely be in his late 60s, and he's most likely hiding in plain sight. Jerry is your neighbor that waves to you every morning when getting the mail. Jerry is the guy your dad plays poker with on Thursdays, and the mechanic at the local auto body who's been working there forever.

Jerry is the friendly face at the diner, and the guy whose order you know. Jerry is your uncle, your teacher, your friend. And Jerry got away with murder. However, I'm going to leave you with a little food for thought.

As far as I can tell, the only person of interest or suspect who's ever been named was indeed Jerry. According to my research, the people closest to Shirley haven't officially been cleared as a suspect. What if Jerry hits a little closer to home than we thought? What if in some way, Jerry is connected?

A source who wished to remain anonymous told me, quote, "'Follow the money.' Somebody very close to Shirley was hurting money-wise, and then all of a sudden he was rolling in bucks, went from a beat-up old trailer to an acre of land with a new double-wide and a new car. If you follow the money, I think that's where you'll find your answer. And that is the unsolved murder of Shirley McAvoy."

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. As a thank you, I'm doing a little giveaway. For more details, sign up for the mailing list on MurderSheTold.com. I'll be sending out an email soon.

If you or anyone you know has any information about the murder of Shirley McAvoy or any information on the identity or whereabouts of Jerry, I urge you to call the Maine State Major Crimes Unit at 207-624-7143 or use the tip line linked in the show notes.

My sources for this episode include articles from the Bangor Daily News, Fox Bangor, and the book Murderers Among Us by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth. Thank you to Michael for sharing the book with me. A very special thanks to Sergeant Timothy Roosen and to the anonymous neighbors, family, and sources who helped make this possible. Special thanks to Byron Willis for his research and writing support.

All links for sources and media can be found on MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes. You can also connect with me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. If you loved this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the best ways to support an indie podcast.

If you are a friend or a family member of the victim, 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 episode. 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.