Bring Her Home: Virginia Pictou Noyes, Part One
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I'm Kristen Sevey. This is Murder, She Told. This episode contains topics of racism and descriptions of domestic violence. Please listen with care. If you or someone you know are feeling unsafe at home, help is available 24-7. Reach out to your local crisis center or in the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233. It's never too late to get help.

It was the middle of the night in potato country in rural Maine, two miles south of Fort Fairfield, the nearest town, and a fire was building. Smoke was pouring out of every crevice of the modest mobile home. A large family was in peril, and they had no idea.

Earlier that Friday night, on October 19th, 1990, at about 10 p.m., Virginia Pictou Noyes, a young mother of five, kicked out her husband after an alcohol-fueled spat. The five children, ranging in age from just months old to eight years old, had all retired for the evening, and so had she.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, the oldest boy, Randy, awakened to the smell of smoke. He ran to his mother. But by the time she realized what was happening, the fire was unstoppable. She worked quickly to get the children to safety. Her youngest baby girl was sleeping with her. Randy was old enough to manage on his own, and so was the next oldest boy, who was six.

Once the four of them made it to safety, Virginia tried to rescue her two remaining children, who were one and two years old. The one-year-old boy was colicky and was separated in his own bedroom. Virginia started down the corridor to his room, but soon retreated because of the heavy smoke and the heat of the flames.

She emerged from the trailer, her lungs burning and coughing violently. She tried to reach his bedroom from the exterior of the trailer home. Virginia ripped off the clear plastic sheeting that was placed over the windows and broke out the glass. But as soon as she made a new opening in the trailer, it opened up a draft to fuel the fire. And within seconds, the entire trailer was engulfed in flames.

As she stood there, helpless and stunned, her childhood home burned before her eyes with two of her youngest children.

In a stroke of good luck, one of their very few neighbors witnessed the unfolding calamity and called 911. The dispatcher got the fire department out there immediately, but by the time they arrived at 3.40 a.m., the roof and walls of the home had already collapsed. Still, they extinguished the blaze and went about the grim task of locating the two children.

They discovered little Jesse James in his bassinet, who was just an infant, and two-year-old Ashley at his door. She had run to his bedroom to save him, only to perish herself. We spoke with Virginia's older brother, Robert, and he said that his sister never learned the truth about Ashley's fate because it would have been too painful to endure.

Virginia's husband, Larry, returned, much too late to be of any help, and she turned on him. She gave him a black eye and bruises and stabbed him in the leg. He explained, she was upset that I wasn't there to help her. She never faced any charges. He seemed to understand. The fire department, sifting through the rubble, tried to identify the source of the blaze.

Though it was unconscionable to think that someone would have tried to kill five children and their mother, they had to do their diligence. Their preliminary inspection focused on an oil-burning forced-air furnace. On Monday, the Maine Fuel Board, a regulations agency, sent an investigator to take a closer look. He concluded that the fire started from a leak in the fuel pump that ferried home heating oil from the storage tank to the burner.

Virginia's family wasn't so sure. Her husband, Larry Noyes, and his brother, Roger, had a long criminal history that included arson, and they thought he might be responsible. Virginia's brother, Robert, told us bluntly, We think that Larry came back and set the house on fire.

On Monday, the two youngest children were memorialized in the paper. At 11 a.m., the family held visitation at Dorsey Funeral Home in Fort Fairfield. And at 1 p.m., the two babies were buried at Riverside Cemetery, the same cemetery where their father, Larry Noyes, had vandalized 127 gravestones five years prior, his first felony.

Virginia and Larry had grown up together in Fort Fairfield. They were nearly the same age. Virginia was just one month older. Virginia was dirt poor and part of a large family. Her parents, Robert Picto Sr. and Susanna Picto, were both from Nova Scotia, Canada, and were full-blooded Mi'kmaq, an indigenous tribe that's native to both Maine and Canada.

Though the words Micmac and Migamaw are used interchangeably, the Picto family uses the term Migamaw to describe themselves, so I'll follow their lead.

Virginia's father, Robert Sr., had three children from a prior marriage, and her mother, Susanna, also had three children from a prior marriage. And they had four children together, a total of ten kids, of which seven of them lived in Fort Fairfield with their parents, including the second youngest, Fiery Virginia Picto.

We spoke to her older brother, Robert. He was the firstborn of the four children from the union of Robert Sr. and Susanna and was four years older than Virginia.

Virginia and I were oil and vinegar at times, but we're also water and water too. We were opposites and alikes at the same time. You know, we're always vying for attention or things that are happening at the house. If she got something in her mind, there'd be no way of talking her out of it. Even if he told her if it was impossible, she would move that mountain to make things happen. She had a force of will that had to be reckoned with.

Fort Fairfield is a town of 3,300 in northeastern Maine. It's part of the county, as Mainers often refer to the giant region of sparsely populated wilderness and farmland in northern Maine, known officially as Aroostook County. In Mi'kmaq, Aroostook means beautiful water. Most of the towns are along Route 1, which parallels the Canadian border, including Fort Fairfield, where the Picto's lived.

Virginia Sue Picto was born in Fort Fairfield Hospital on April 2, 1967, and she was soon brought back to their rudimentary rural home, which the family referred to as the Old House. Though Maine is mostly covered with evergreens, this region is dominated by huge, gentle, sloping agricultural fields, and their home was on the road right next to one of them.

Their home was primitive. They were grateful to have electricity, but they had no running water. The 55-gallon drum outside held kerosene, and as a daily chore, the kids would fill a two-gallon pail to refill their heating stove for the day. It was a cold climate. The average temperature in January was just 12 degrees. Kids were two and three to a room, and there was a large cast-iron sink in the kitchen where the children would bathe.

Virginia's father, Robert Sr., worked as a farmhand, primarily on the potato fields. In the summers, when the children were out of school, the whole family would travel to work in the blueberry fields, using tined rakes to harvest the small, flavorful berries. They also worked picking potatoes. The kids grew up speaking their native tongue at home, but would travel each day by bus to public schools in Fort Fairfield, where only English was spoken.

Megamog was the primary language used at home. My mom was a fluent speaker. My dad later on became a fluent speaker. Initially, he was a fluent speaker until he went to residential school. And then when he graduated, he said he couldn't speak Megamog anymore until he met my mom. And then through the language of love, I guess you could say, he taught her English and she taught him Megamog. But at home, it was always Megamog. That was the first language I grew up with. All of us grew up with that as our first language.

However, things changed once we started attending school. And I couldn't understand why until later on I found out my dad was a residential school survivor. When we started attending school, he thought the teachers would beat us if we spoke our native language.

So he forbid us from speaking our native language once we started attending school. And we had to practice the English so at home we would still answer in English, but they would always speak to us in Megamonk. I thought that was normal. I didn't understand why my dad didn't want me to speak English anymore. He did it because he thought he was saving me from abuse that would happen at the schools.

We asked Robert what it was like to be one of the only Native families in a region that was almost exclusively white. I remember working for a picking potatoes for a farmer, and he called me his little Sambo. And it wasn't until I actually started going to the library that I read what little Sambo was referring to. So racism was, for me, I experienced it a lot.

I was very outspoken, very self-assured in what I did, but I got beat up a lot for what I did. I'd go to the bathroom, and next thing you know, I'm kind of falling into the urinal because someone decided they didn't like who I was, so they decided to strike me from behind. I was dating this girl, and I remember her dad stopping me one day, and he told me not to see her anymore, not to talk to her anymore, because he didn't want anything to do with Dirty Indians.

I loved her, you know, as much as you could, you know, in ninth grade. But I just, what's the word today? They just ghosted her and she didn't understand why. You know, it was several things like that that happened behind the scenes that you don't realize unless you experience them being minority, a visible minority.

From what I understand, Virginia had a different experience than I did. She was a girl, so I think that may have helped with her a lot. But as far as I know, she was kind of popular, and she had a lot of friends while she was going through school.

It was a rough and tumble childhood. Virginia's mom, Susanna, when she needed some space and peace for herself in the kitchen, would kick all of the children outside to play. The kids had free reign of the sprawling fields and forests of the countryside.

In the winter, Robert remembered sledding down the miles of gentle slopes and building forts in the snow. There was a farmer's dump on the edge of the woods near their home, and they would often go diving for treasure, finding adventure amidst the scraps. One time, the gaggle of children all managed to stuff themselves into an old washing machine and rode it down a snowy hill, nearly breaking an arm in the process.

With so many children and so little to do, especially in the frigid winters, sometimes Susanna would have to get everyone to focus on an activity to have some peace in the chaos. That's how they all learned traditional beading.

My mom was a prolific beader. I can almost pat myself on the back and I say I'm pretty good, but I am a shadow of the master when it comes to beadwork and what my mom would do. My mom was a powerhouse to deal with. She would let you know where she stood, all four foot eight of her.

When it gets cold, things get crazy. I mean, you get cabin fever and, you know, you have, you know, I think there was nine of us living at the house at that time in a three-bedroom trailer. Tempers are going to flare. People are going to be upset. You know, nothing's ever going right. So she would declare a craft day and she would break out her beads and everyone had to sit at the kitchen table. And so as you're sitting at the table, she would give you a task to do. You would either do loom work or make a medallion or whatever it may be.

It was amazing that when that happened, things quieted down. And my mom would say over and over again, you can't do art and argue at the same time. So I think that was her way of actually babysitting us or actually dealing with the craziness when dealing with those cold winters in northern Maine. And that wasn't the only thing that could get the kids quiet.

Now, our TV was a small little black and white TV with rabbit ears that sat up on the counter in the trailer. But that was really the only time when the Walt Disney movie came on. No one said anything during the whole time. We were just totally wrapped up of what was there. We grew up watching Animal Kingdom and things like that. Gathering around the little 13-inch black and white TV for us was the big screen back in the day.

Money was tight, and the wages that Robert Sr. earned as an agricultural laborer couldn't support the large family alone. They relied on food stamps, school lunches, and commodity foods, which was a government food program that doled out rations in no-frills packaging with labels like cheese, pork, and powdered eggs. And, of course, potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes, the primary crop in their region.

Corporal punishment was common in the Pictou house. Susanna would send the kids out to cut their own switches and would even administer one lash per syllable.

Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes were also common. Susanna drank regularly to excess. Robert Sr. barely drank at all, just having a small amount socially here and there. The kids were all drinking and smoking cigarettes by their teenage years. Violence in the Pictou home was not uncommon. A brutal scene from Robert's youth haunts him today.

There was a time where my mom told me specifically that she wanted to, she goes, I'm going to fight with dad, not realizing until later on that she needed an excuse to go out on a drunk run.

And a fight would justify that. So this was during springtime where, you know, dad's working at four in the morning and coming home for a half hour at lunchtime and then coming home for again at five o'clock for a half hour supper and then going back and working in fields working, you know, 16, 18 hour days.

Now, this in no way, shape or forms is to justify the actions that he did. I'm just giving context of what he was experiencing. So he came home for lunch after working and there's no supper made. And he goes, Susie, where's my lunch? And she goes, if you want it, you make it yourself. And he said, I don't want to fight with you because...

you know, when you know someone that close, you know when a fight is going to happen. So I'm there. And so he goes over and he puts toast in the toaster.

and she goes over and pops it back up so it wouldn't toast. And he kept saying over and over again, you know, Susie, I don't want to fight with you. And then he brought out an iron skillet and he's cracked an egg and put the egg in. He was going to make himself an egg sandwich. He took, put the shells aside. My mom then took up the shells and threw them in there. And he said, I don't want to fight with you. And he kept, and he took out all the shells.

So finally, you know, the egg is cooked and he grabs a half toasted toast and he puts it down on a plate and he goes and he sits down. And my mom came over and she's short. She's 4'8". She put her feet up on the table beside his plate. And when she did, there was some dirt that spilled onto a sandwich. And I guess that was the last straw. And that's when I heard that sound of flesh on flesh.

And I immediately did what we all did as children. We went and ran to another part of the house, whether it's under a bed or upstairs, wherever it may be. And we would talk out loud.

We knew what was happening in the other rooms. We knew violence was happening, but we would lie to ourselves and talk about, you know, did you see what Joey did on the bus the other day? Or I was looking at this, I was thinking about getting this for my next car or whatever it may be. And we would talk that way out loud, loud to each other while the violence is happening.

And then I heard the door slam and I heard my mom calling my name out weekly. And she said, Robert, Robert, you know, and I and so I came down the stairs and she's down in front of the landing. And adult me now knows that it was not possible, but it seemed like she had she was surrounded by a pool of blood.

you know there's no one could bleed that much and still be alive but then she was sitting there she was Robert help me up help me up and and I tried and I couldn't because she kept slipping mom kept slipping through and it isn't that you know I was six and you could say I kind of I had some strength to me but she was slipping through me because she was covered with blood and and every time I grabbed her arm it the blood just was so thick that she would just slide out of my grasp

So that was just one of many examples of domestic violence that happened, whether it was my uncle fighting his girlfriend or my dad fighting my mom. We grew up with that.

Virginia got pregnant and dropped out of school when she was just 14. She met a boy, three years her senior, at the roller rink in Caribou. His name was Ward. She gave birth to her first son, Randy Picto, in 1982. Two years later, at 17, she gave birth to Christopher.

Some of the violent tendencies in the home rubbed off on Virginia. Ward had a 1968 Javelin. He thought this car was the greatest thing. He thought it was like a Corvette. It had a six-cylinder in it, and the transmission was so bad, it was slipping so bad that you had to drive it like a manual, even though it was an automatic. And then one time, Ward said he needed to go out. But Virginia said, you know, she's at home. She's being the mom. She's being, you know, the one taking care of things.

But he wanted to go out. And she goes, no, you're not going out. While he's putting on his shoes, my sister ran out stocking footed and went over to his car with a hammer and hammered out the windows of his car during the winter. So that way he couldn't he couldn't go anywhere. And I think he got the message because he didn't go anywhere that day. She later told her brother, when I get mad, I don't see. And afterwards, I don't remember what I did.

Even though she had done some damage to Ward's car, she loved cars and loved working on cars. Virginia was upbeat. She was happy. She was popular. Her older brother, Francis, said of her, "'Virginia was a lot of fun. She kept me on my toes. She did well in school, earning straight A's. Her older sister, Agnes, remembered her as attractive. She recalled Virginia getting back into shape as soon as possible after her babies were born."

She said she was bright and witty and resourceful. She could make a good meal out of whatever she had, just like our mother. Virginia also loved her Levi's, and they had to be Levi's.

Robert also remembered that she liked to experiment with her hair and remembered this one time where she wanted to go blonde. And she didn't realize that there's a step in between being brown hair and blonde, and that's taking all the color out of your hair. She didn't do this. So when she tried to be blonde, all she did is make her hair orange. So she was just a giant pumpkin walking around for a period of time until she could get enough money for the home dye jobs that she was doing.

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Larry Noyes was a neighborhood boy, and so was his older brother, Roger, who was two years his senior. They had both taken a fancy to Virginia, and they were both known troublemakers. Even at a young age, Roger made an impression.

He enjoyed inflicting pain on anyone around him. And he, I mean, he really enjoyed it. In second grade, he broke Larry's arms. Then as that was healing, he broke his other arm. He was really good at breaking arms. He would twist them until they snapped. And he also did that to his sisters. Both of them were both abusers. Fortunately, my sister was, she was a loser magnet. She...

She could pick the loser in a crowd. The worst person there was, she could pick them. In the wee morning hours of Monday, September 16th, 1985, Larry, Roger, and some friends were drunk and decided to go to the big local cemetery, Riverside, and destroy something. Later that morning, the rising sun revealed to the town what had transpired, and residents gathered at the cemetery to assess the damage.

The community felt violated by the senseless destruction. Over 100 gravestones were toppled, many were chipped, and some were destroyed. A construction company volunteered its crane and some staff time to begin repairing the damage, which easily exceeded $10,000. The next Monday, on September 25th, the story dominated the front page of the local paper and inspired several people to write in fiery editorials.

In short order, the police rounded up the culprits and charged them with felonies. They were able to recover fingerprints from many of the polished stones, and some of Roger and Larry's friends who had witnessed the crime fessed up to the cops. By November, the Noyes brothers pled guilty to Class C aggravated criminal mischief and were sentenced to two years in jail with one year probation upon release.

That same month, they were charged with setting a vehicle on fire, which belonged to another Fort Fairfield resident. While they were incarcerated, a tragedy struck the Pictou family.

Virginia's mother, Susanna Picto, died after a short battle with lung cancer at the Presque Isle Hospital. She died on March 14, 1987, at 55 years old. Virginia was just 19. Susanna's body was shipped to Nova Scotia to be buried. Robert recalled that his dad really struggled with his mom's death, and he moved back to Canada, his birthplace, never to return to Maine again.

Around this time, Virginia's siblings moved away from Fort Fairfield and gave her the Pictou home to raise her children. It was a turning point in the lives of their family. The seven siblings who had all grown up in Fort Fairfield had scattered, with the exception of Virginia and her two young sons. Larry and Roger got out of prison, and they all started seeing one another again.

It was the evening of Saturday, August 15th, 1987, and Fort Fairfield police got a call that two vehicles were racing on Forest Avenue, the same road that Virginia was then living in the family home. As Officer Gray approached Forest Avenue on a gravel side road, she encountered Virginia's 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass going the opposite way. She blocked their path, got out of the cruiser, and approached the driver's side window.

Leary was driving, but it was Virginia's car. He was slurring his speech, and he reeked of alcohol. She told him that he was under arrest for driving under the influence and would be tested back at the station.

That left Virginia in the front passenger seat and two friends in the back. While the cop was occupied with Larry, Virginia slipped into the driver's seat and took off, spinning the car around and sending a shower of rocks into the windshield of the cruiser, putting a crack in it. Officer Gray had a choice. Go after Virginia or stay with Larry. She went after Virginia. Larry took off on foot into the potato fields.

Virginia was racing through farm field roads at 50 to 60 miles an hour, and Officer Gray was in hot pursuit.

But after a couple of miles, she was able to lose her in a cloud of dust. Meanwhile, Officer Gray called in backup from the state police. A state trooper and a sheriff's deputy showed up with a scent dog named Chico and started tracking Larry. As they went along, they found clothes that Larry had stripped off, trying to fool the canine. But Chico continued to track the scent. Eventually, the dog found Larry, naked and alone in the woods, and bit him.

They took him to the hospital in Fort Fairfield, where he was treated for a dog bite and abrasions, and then booked him at the Aroostook County Jail, charging him with a DUI and an offense called escape. Officer Gray made her way to the Pictou home, where she found Virginia waiting in her car. She yelled at Virginia that she was under arrest, but remained in her cruiser because of her fear of a large unleashed dog.

When backup arrived, they maced the dog and searched the home for Virginia, but she had eluded them again. Five minutes later, she walked up the driveway and submitted to the arrest.

At the Fort Fairfield Police Station, Virginia was charged with failure to stop for a police officer, allowing her vehicle to be operated by a drunk driver, and the most serious charge, driving to endanger, a Class E misdemeanor. When she failed to meet bail, she was booked at a Roostock County jail. She may not have realized it, but when this debacle occurred, she was pregnant with a little girl.

Three days later, on Tuesday, August 18th, Larry and Virginia were arraigned in district court. Virginia pled guilty to two of the charges and not guilty to the third. Larry pled guilty to his charges and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, a two-year license suspension, and a $750 fine. It's unlikely that Virginia served any time and was probably only issued a fine.

Robert hadn't realized how close Virginia and the Noyes brothers had become. I was never friends with them. I never got a good vibe off the Noyes brothers. I never knew that Virginia was dating Larry until I was long out of the picture. Because if I had anything to say with it, I would have fought her.

Not physically, but argue with her. It's like, this person is not a good person to be with. Part of that opinion was based off of when Larry got his driver's license at the age of 16, as most of us did. However, that same day, he was stopped for DUI, and he lost his license to drunk driving.

That was the age of 16. And so that was not a good place to be. I knew of his family and not saying that you are a product of your family, but sometimes they do influence your behavior. And his uncles were not nice people. One of them wasn't. And, you know, they had a very dim view when it comes to women.

On April 5, 1988, Virginia gave birth to her third child, Ashley Sue Noyes, at Presque Isle Hospital. Four months later, she was pregnant again, but Larry wasn't the father. In May of 1989, she gave birth to Jesse James Picto in Presque Isle, and he had signs of fetal alcohol syndrome.

My mom would go on benders periodically every three to five years, and it would be a strong one. It would usually be about a year solid of drinking. When it comes to what is normal drinking, I didn't know what it was. I don't think any of us children knew what it was. We all drank for effect.

You know, how can you be drinking socially when you're 15, 16 years old, right? Drinking to be cool, drinking to be this or that. And unfortunately, because of the way we drink and everyone else around us kind of

You know, you don't drink that way around people who are like my dad. You drink around other people. So we all kind of formed together that same group. And I think that kind of led to a lot of difficulties for us as a family when alcohol was involved because it wasn't just alcohol. It would be, you know, of course, you know, marijuana and pills and stuff like that.

So it was just a vicious cycle that, unfortunately, once you're in the middle of it and you're in the middle of this whirlwind, you don't know how to get out. And I think Virginia was stuck in that. She still took care of her children, you know, and still was trying to be responsible. But I think in my heart of hearts that she had a substance abuse problem.

On August 12, 1989, Larry and Virginia, who were both 22 years old, decided to get married, and Virginia officially became Virginia Noyes. In short order, Virginia was pregnant again, and on June 10, 1990, gave birth to Brittany Mae Noyes, her fifth child.

It was then, in October of 1990, after about a year of marriage, that the Pictou family home burned to the ground. And two of Virginia's children, Ashley Sue and Jesse James, perished in the fire. In May of 1991, at 24 years old, Virginia gave birth to her sixth child, Miley Ray. And a year later, in July of 1992, gave birth to her seventh and final child, Linnaeus Caron.

It was early spring in 1993, and Larry, Roger, and Virginia were two and a half hours away from home in Bangor to visit her father-in-law, Roger Noyes Sr., who lived there. It was Saturday night, April 24th, and they were out at a bar on State Street called Pat's Place. Around 10 p.m., Virginia had had enough, grabbed the keys, and went to walk out the front door.

Just before she reached the saloon-style swinging doors, her husband, Larry, kicked her from behind, sending her smashing through the doors and onto the pavement. He climbed on top of her and began beating her face, and then his brother, Roger, joined in. The bartender yelled that they had called the police, so the Noyes brothers dragged Virginia around back where they continued the assault.

Police arrived and found Virginia visibly shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. She initially told officers that both Larry and Roger were involved because, quote, they were drunk. But when Larry approached her, she said it was Roger alone who had struck her. In their arrest report, officers indicated that Virginia seemed afraid of her husband, and they wrote her an emergency order of protection that night.

We tried to get these arrest reports, but were denied by the state police. This is Robert's reaction, based on the accounts from the bar that night. Two grown men beating on a woman who's 135 pounds. I mean, physically pinning her down and beating her about the head.

is way beyond any there's no way of justifying that in my mind you do not hit a woman period i don't care what she does she could slap you she could fight she could scratch you step out of the way back off get out of there i'm not saying you have to suffer you know at the hands of a woman who's an abuser but you know what they did you don't even do that to another man or an animal

But they thought my sister was like that, you know, that my sister was less than, you know, that she wasn't a human being, that she wasn't a woman, she wasn't a life giver. You know, instead they saw her as someone to deal with. They took her just down the street to Eastern Maine Medical Center to be treated for her injuries. Virginia repeatedly told police that she needed to get home to her children. They charged Larry with domestic assault and took him to Penobscot County Jail.

As he was being driven away from the bar, he kicked at the windows of the cruiser and screamed at his wife. He was booked, but bailed out shortly after by either his brother or his father. Roger, who police described as drunk and staggering, was charged with assault and given a court summons, but released on his own recognizance.

After posting bail, Larry returned to Pat's place looking for Virginia, but he couldn't find her. Somehow, he ended up with a car that they had driven down the previous day. He said that he left the bar alone and started heading home around 4.30 a.m., checking every rest stop along the way, suspecting that Virginia may have hitched a ride. He said he arrived home around 6.30 a.m. back in Easton, a town near Fort Fairfield.

They had a babysitter for the evening, and Larry said that the babysitter told him that Virginia had called the house two hours prior, around 4.30 a.m., from Holton, looking for a ride. Larry said that he stayed home with the children all day that Sunday, waiting for Virginia's arrival.

In another account, the telephone call that she allegedly made from Holton was made to an uncle of her husband's. But Robert found that difficult to believe. She would have called Agnes. Frances at that time, I think, was in northern Maine. Why did she call her own brother?

Agnes was working at the Roostick Band of Mic Macs, so she would have been at that time living in Presque Isle and had a vehicle. Both my mom and Virginia and also I, we all went to Agnes when there was crisis, no matter what happened.

Agnes told me a number of times that Virginia would show up all beat up and bruised. And she goes, "I just need a place to stay for a couple days while things cool down." You know, same with my mom, right? When my mom had to stop drinking, she'd go to Agnes.

Hospital records from that evening indicated that Virginia left on her own accord sometime after 1 a.m., after they had triaged her and taken photos of her injuries. The staff's attention was drawn to a shooting victim that came in that night, and Virginia left without checking out with anyone.

In an article in the Bangor Daily News, Maine State Police said that they were reasonably sure that she was last seen around 4.30 a.m. at an Irving Big Stop in Holton, 120 miles from Bangor and on her route home. But Robert believes that information is based only on Larry's account from the evening. In Robert's mind, the last reliable sighting of Virginia was at the hospital, and anything after that is speculation.

No one in the family was contacted. That's why I said the last time it was official was when she was at the hospital, because everything after that was what Larry said when he was interviewed. So Larry said that he would stop and look for her, and he said that she was at the truck stop. We followed those leads, and we could not find the truck driver supposedly that picked her up and dropped her off.

And as a family, we went, we fired investigators. We're unable to confirm that part of she was in Holton trying to make her way home and calling family members because none of us received calls. Within a couple of days, Larry reported Virginia missing to the police. Bangor PD was leading the investigation in the early days, but eventually the Maine State Police took it over.

The first article about her appeared in the Bangor Daily News on May 9th, nine days after her disappearance. It described Virginia as Native American, with brown eyes, brown waist-length hair, 5 feet 6 inches tall, and 135 pounds, last seen wearing Levi jeans, a Levi jacket with several signatures on the back, a white T-shirt, and white L.A. gear sneakers. She worked as a potato picker on the Flannery Farm in Fort Fairfield.

After that, the newspapers gave no updates on Virginia for over five months. The assault charges against Larry and Roger from the night of Virginia's disappearance were dropped by the district attorney because the key witness had vanished.

On the Monday after her disappearance, two of Virginia's siblings, Agnes and David, drove up and down I-95 to measure the time it might take to ride or walk from Bangor to Holton. They then did the same thing from Holton to her home. They were trying to test Larry's story out to see if it was even possible.

Robert, who was 30 years old at the time, helped to handle many of the responsibilities that arose. As a family, I was the person who was, lack of a better word, in charge. So I had to stop my grieving in order for the family to function, to push forward. All of us grieved, yes, but then we had to start picking things up and start living life again. Someone's got to make posters. Someone's got to do phone calls. Someone's got to reach out to the media to make sure things are taken care of.

Virginia's dad, Robert Picto Sr., later told the Bangor Daily News that Larry had approached him in a potato field they were both working, confessed his love for his daughter, and denied all rumors that he had anything to do with her disappearance. Robert Sr. told him, "'You did it, too, didn't you?' Larry walked away from the conversation."

Robert Sr. told the press, I know he did it, and all my sons and daughters know it, my native people know it, and all of the people in Fort Fairfield know it.

Join me next for part two of the Virginia Pictou story. April 24th, 2023 marks 30 years without Virginia and her family just wants to bring her home. If you have any information about the whereabouts of Virginia Sue Pictou's location, I encourage you to reach out to the Maine State Police at 207-973-3750 or toll free at 1-800-432-7381.

Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying Murder, She Told, I would love it if you shared it with a friend. Word of mouth or sharing on social media or recommending it is one of the best ways to help reach new listeners. And if you want to support the show in other ways, there's a link in the show notes with options. Follow Murder, She Told on social media at Murder, She Told Podcast on Instagram, at Murder, She Told on TikTok, and Murder, She Told on Facebook.

A detailed list of sources and photos from this episode and more can be found at MurderSheTold.com.

A very special thanks to Robert Pictou for spending so much time with us talking about his sister and for trusting us with her story. Thank you to Byron Willis for his writing and research and to Erica Pierce and Brittany Healy for their research support. If you have a suggestion or a correction, I would love to hear from you. You can email me at hello at murdershetold.com. I'm Kristen Sevey and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening.