The Unsolved Bangor House Murder of Effie MacDonald
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As someone who researches stories that impact families of victims, I can't begin today's episode without addressing the tragedy in Atlanta this past week. My heart goes out to the families and friends directly impacted by this heinous crime. Furthermore, I'm horrified at the amount of violence and targeted hate that has been happening and rising during the pandemic against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

We need to do better to make the world safer and more loving for everyone. Hate is a virus, and hate will not be tolerated in the Murder, She Told community. I stand with the AAPI community in solidarity to stop Asian hate. Thank you for listening.

This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Seavey. You can connect with me and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast.

At the corner of Union and Main Street in downtown Bangor sits what was at one point in time the largest hotel in Maine: the Bangor House, a structure that's older than the Civil War. Construction started in 1834 when the state of Maine was still in its infancy, a substantial building of solid brick and welcoming granite columns that cost what would be the equivalent of $3.8 million in today's money to build.

A luxury hotel of the highest class who boasted guests like Teddy Roosevelt, Gene Autry, and Duke Ellington. A hotel so popular they had to turn people away. This building survived the Great Fire of 1911 that destroyed a good portion of the downtown area. It survived the Great Depression and almost 200 years of brutal Maine winters.

The Bangor House is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its heyday of boozy champagne nights long retired, the rooms inside the walls of the Bangor House have now settled into the comfortable transition of a no-frills apartment building. But these walls have seen a lot, harboring dusty secrets and holding the key to a decades-old mystery that has yet to be put to rest. If these walls could talk, they would have a lot to say.

This is the story of the Bangor House Murder of Effie MacDonald. Effie MacDonald was born at the precipice of World War I in 1910, four short years before German aggression began in Europe, and just seven years before the US declared war against Germany, a war that transformed the country and the ethos of daily life in America.

She lived through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression that followed. She lived through World War II, the greatest conflict the world has ever seen. She lived during a time of the nation's history that was about service and sacrifice. A time when the nation faced extraordinary evil that brought all Americans together to serve a common cause. Effie Elizabeth Terrell McDonald was a member of the Greatest Generation.

She grew up in the small town of Holton, Maine, in a large family of eight children of modest means. She stands out in her tidy tea-length dress against the rustic background of timber framing on her family's porch in an old photo. Her hair neatly parted down the middle and her dress's high neckline betray a modest and responsible young woman.

The dirt, the construction tools, and the unfinished wood that surround her remind us of the difficult daily work required to survive. Her youthful face was not yet aged by the tough times ahead. Gender roles were well-defined during Effie's short life, and duty defined them both. The men went to war, and the women cared for the children in the home. She married and took her husband's last name, becoming Mrs. Jack Hammond MacDonald.

They bore no children and it was an unhappy marriage that ended in divorce. After her marriage ended, she moved back to Bangor to be closer with her family and found an apartment close to her job, allowing her to walk to and from work. She neither had a car nor did she drive. Her landlady liked her. She described her as pleasant, easy to get along with. Effie was a homebody. She liked her quiet hobbies: knitting, crocheting, and embroidery.

She listened to her radio programs and watched her television at a modest volume.

She was grateful for her work and she did a good job. She got a job at the Bangor House on the hotel staff as a maid, and her co-workers liked her, described her as popular even. She was on their staff for seven years and was known to be responsible and dependable. She remained close to her family, her landlady suggesting that the only visitors she ever remembered Effie having were her family members.

Curiously, Effie retained her married name, MacDonald, and never returned, even after nine years to her maiden name. Her nephew, Dale, said that she had no intentions to remarry and was happy to have her peace. She was private and reserved.

She, like millions of other Americans of the GI generation, were grateful for peace, but still worried what was lurking around the next corner. Traumatized, but hopeful. She was a spitting image of the times.

Effie was born in Holton. My grandparents, her father was from Hodgton and my grandmother was from Northampton, New Brunswick. And the family grew up, well, lived in Holton for a while and then moved down to Bangor for work reasons. Effie was married and it wasn't a happy marriage.

After she got married, she moved back to Holton. And I know my mom went up and stayed with her for a year while she was in school. Mom really doesn't know why she went, but, you know, they were living very frugally, not a lot of money.

And the divorce came. I mean, obviously it was not a happy marriage. They had no children. And so after her divorce, she moved back down to Bangor to be close to the rest of her family. She worked at Quality Cleaners, I believe, for a bit and then ended up working at the Bangor House.

She lived, she didn't drive. She lived in an apartment on Boynton Street in Bangor. The house is no longer there. She just, I think she kept to herself. She was a very quiet person.

non-assertive person. Most of that family is very private. You know, they do their work. They're very good at their work. They're focused, but they're just very private people. So, you know, that comes across maybe as, I don't know, I've heard it described as dowdy or whatever, but I think she was just a typical person of the day who was just trying to work, make a living. In her off time, she stayed at her apartment and did needlework and

I believe she did embroidery, maybe some padding. And just, like I said, just kept to herself. That was Dale, Effie's nephew.

I was born right here in Bangalore, lived in Bangalore all my life, so I'm well aware of the history in the area. I've been doing genealogy for about 20 years, I think, bouncing around different lines or whatever and just seeing what I can find out in the past. And, of course, one of those sad moments is looking at what happened to my Aunt Effie and trying to figure out

where that's at and it's been rather difficult tracking down any information. So I'm the fourth son of Avis, Effie's sister, and my mom now is the only living sibling left of Effie. So it's kind of fallen to me, I think, to just kind of

keep the story in the family and my mother would rather forget it, but I kind of like to keep it alive a little bit just so Effie doesn't get forgotten.

In March of 1965, Effie's youngest sister, Avis, heard the phone ringing in an upstairs neighbor's apartment who she was friendly with. She heard the murmur of a few spoken words and footsteps rushing down the stairs to her door. She didn't have a phone in her apartment, and the call was for her. Her neighbor could tell that something was wrong by the tone of the caller, and hurried her upstairs. When she picked up the receiver, she was crushed by the weight of the news.

Her sister had been found dead that afternoon at her work. I vividly remember, I believe this is the way it happened, but we didn't have a phone. We weren't that rich either. My father was a farmhand. And so when the call came in to my mother...

it came into our upstairs neighbor. And so my mother had to go up to the neighbor's house to take the phone call. And I just vividly remember her screaming and crying. And I of course had no idea what was going on. And I think that, you know, in some of the talks I've had with her, she's even blocked out the whole night. My dad said he took all of us and her went in the car down to the Bangor house, but mom has no memory of that at all.

And I know it really affected my grandmother immensely, just knowing that someone was out there and they hadn't caught them. I know after that point, her door was locked all the time at her house. It was scary. My mother doesn't have a lot of the details about everything that went on because she was much younger than her siblings. And her older brother, who was single and lived with my grandmother,

And one other older brother pretty much took care of everything. Like I said, they were a private family, so they kept things to themselves and didn't really share a lot of the details with mom just to protect her. So, but I just, you know, every year we would go over to her gravesite and it was just, that was all that was really said or done for Effie. It wasn't really talked about in the family at all.

was kind of a taboo topic because it was so painful for her mother and, you know, my mom and some of the younger siblings. Effie was survived by all six of her siblings, except for young Jacob, who died when she was only two years old. And the whole family, especially her mother, Daisy, grieved her death.

The killer, after isolating Effie from the safety of her coworkers and the well-lit corridors of the Bangor house, shut the door behind him and attacked her in the privacy of a neat, recently cleaned and unoccupied room, violently ripping off her clothes, beating her face, and raping her. He likely threatened her, using fear and the hope of survival to keep her quiet.

He removed her modest nylon stockings from her already torn work uniform and wrapped them four times around her throat, pulled the ligature tightly and cut off her air supply. This symbol of feminine professionalism had been turned into a weapon, stripping her of her dignity and robbing her of oxygen. He watched as he snuffed out the life of a well-loved sister, daughter, aunt and hard worker.

cutting short the decades of life she had ahead and changing the lives of those who loved her forever.

On the morning of Thursday, March 18th, 1965, Effie went through her normal morning routine, leaving her apartment around 8.30 a.m. to walk the downtown Bangor streets to her work at the opulent Bangor House Hotel. It was a cold winter morning, just 25 degrees, and she had a brisk half-mile walk from her home at 3 Boynton Street to the hotel seven blocks away. She worked as a housekeeper, and her shift started at 9 a.m.,

It was just another normal day for Effie at work. She was given a roster of rooms to attend to and she tackled them one at a time, like usual. Little did she know what terrors were awaiting her.

Something happened just after lunch that may never be fully understood. She was last seen by her co-workers around 1:15 p.m., talking to a man in the hotel corridor. And just an hour and a half later, at 2:45 p.m., her body was discovered in a third-floor hotel room, strangled, partially disrobed, and still warm to the touch.

She had been killed in this tiny fragment of time she was unaccounted for. A sober reminder of how quickly a life can be taken. Effie's duties that day were on the second floor. There was no work-related reason for her to even be on the third floor. Why was she on the third floor?

The room where she was found was not occupied. It hadn't been occupied for a few days, and it was locked, like the other rooms in the hotel. Who had access to this room? How could this have happened in the middle of the day, at a posh hotel in downtown Bangor, surrounded by the bustling activity of the hotel staff and guests?

The police were called right away and they descended on the crime scene. Everyone was a suspect, the staff and guests alike. The hotel was a setting for an unusual and macabre convention that was happening, and many of the attendees were staying at the hotel. It was an undertaker's conference.

Now, I don't know if you ran into this. I did see mentions somewhere or heard from someone that there was a convention-type thing going on with undertakers. Reporters flocked to the hotel to get the scoop on this shocking story. It was front-page news. Maid found slain. A photo was taken by a newspaper photographer of four policemen studying the murder weapon, Effie's nylon stockings.

It looks as though it's meant to be a candid shot, suggesting a reporter capturing a moment, the detectives amidst their important crime scene forensic work. But it's clearly staged. It's hard for me to imagine the reporter giving these hard-nosed detectives directions on how to pose, where to look, and how to hold the stockings just so to feed the public's ravenous appetite for yet another salacious front-page news image.

But it worked. Everyone was talking about it. People wanted answers. They demanded them. An autopsy was conducted the night of her murder by pathologist Dr. Rudolph Eyerer, which confirmed what appeared obvious at the crime scene. She had died of strangulation. By Monday, the police had interviewed over 100 people, hoping to find that one clue that would crack open the case.

Police released only one bit of concrete information. They were searching for a man, 5 feet 10 inches tall, 175 pounds, in his 30s, with brown hair and prominent brown eyes.

He was last seen wearing a button-down shirt without a tie, his neck revealed with a brown jacket. They released a sketch in the paper the following Monday, entreating the public to be on the lookout for this person of interest. He was seen in the hotel under suspicious circumstances, and he hadn't yet been questioned by the police. It was printed on the front page, and the people of Bangor were on high alert for this potential murderer.

I don't know if the drawing itself, I think it brought in some tips, but I don't think it really led anywhere. I do know that, you know, I've had a few phone calls over the years which do name the prime suspect, I guess, or who most people believe it is. It is an undertaker from the Jonesport area who has since, you know, died. Whether that's plausible or not, I don't know.

I don't know the individual, but I have had some random phone calls that, you know, and they all come back to this one guy.

After this, police had little to say. Articles followed that same week betraying the investigators' lack of evidence. A March 23rd petition to the public printed in the newspaper read, "Maybe you have the vital clue." Quote, "As in most murders of this kind, police depend heavily upon information provided by citizens as they seek the strangler of Mrs. Effie McDonald."

Police have little to go on, but the killer was in the hotel last Thursday afternoon. He committed a brutal crime and fled. Obviously, he was seen by many people in the vicinity, though they wouldn't have known of the killing.

Police asked citizens to come forward with any bit of information, something they may have seen or heard, that might be helpful. Possibly some people who have not come forward saw the mysterious stranger reported to have been in the hotel shortly before the murder. Police would like to interview him and additional information about him would be welcome.

A sketch of his likeness, made from descriptions given by witnesses, appeared in the front page of yesterday's news. It may very well be that some citizen possesses information about him or someone else that will put police on the trail of the strangler. So don't hold back. However trivial your information may seem to be, it could be the vital clue. Contact the police and let them decide.

"Citizen cooperation is badly needed if this vicious slayer is to be caught before, possibly, he strikes again."

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The news traveled quickly to other cities and other states. Immediately, Effie's death reminded detectives of a string of unsolved cases haunting the Boston area known as the Silk Stocking Murders or, more famously, the Boston Strangler. By the time of Effie's death, there were 13 Boston victims attributed to the same killer

most of whom were middle-aged or elderly women. From 1962 to 1964, an unknown assailant stalked women in the safety of their home, leaving the unlucky ones sexually assaulted and killed with their own stockings.

It wasn't until two years later in 1967 when serial rapist Albert DeSalvo was convicted of life in prison for the murders. Though there have been theories that he may not have acted alone, including theories of a Boston Strangler in Maine and connections with Charles Terry, a murderer from Maine who killed a woman in New York City and has other possible unconfirmed victims. Some people say that Charles Terry is a serial killer.

However, in 2013, DNA linked Albert posthumously to Mary Sullivan, one of his younger victims. Whether he is connected to Moore or was working with others is just a theory, but it's unlikely that DeSalvo made his way to Bangor, Maine from Boston to murder Effie. But investigators couldn't rule out the possibility, and the Massachusetts State Police sent up their Strangler Squad to assist detectives at the crime scene in Bangor.

The key difference between the Boston Strangler and Effie's Killer is that the Strangler left his stockings tied in a knot in the back, and Effie's was left untied, leaving them to believe that they were unlikely to be the work of the same man.

In an article written by reporter Bob Taylor for the Bangor Daily News in 1971, six years after the murder, important details were revealed, quote, "...the police became convinced that a male guest at the hotel had to be the murderer, but proving it would be another matter. The suspect quickly obtained the services of a lawyer and refused to answer questions."

The facts, unsupported by witnesses or important physical evidence, would crumble under the weight of legal doubt in a courtroom. Police Captain Cliff Sloan believed that he had enough information to obtain an indictment from a grand jury, but finally decided against it. If the suspect should be arrested and freed after a superior court trial, he would be forever beyond the reach of the law.

Police decided to wait and hope for a break." The criminal justice system has many protections for the accused, and one of those is that they can be tried only once for a particular crime, even if new evidence were to later come to light. It's a balancing act, weighing the likelihood of a jury's conviction today against the likelihood of new evidence emerging tomorrow.

I believe this male guest that the reporter refers to was the undertaker, the man depicted in the composite sketch, the person of interest that they called upon the public to locate. Evidently, he was a guest at the hotel.

So how did Effie end up in that locked third floor room? Though it hasn't been reported, I assume that Effie had access to the room, that she most likely had a master key that would open all room doors. As to why she was there, a few theories have been suggested.

One theory is that she met a man at the hotel and she took him to the room on the third floor, perhaps a lover, maybe just someone she knew and agreed to meet with. Effie's nephew, Dale, finds this unlikely. He said that after her divorce, she expressed no interest in dating, men, or marriage. She was content living alone, and he never heard of any talk of men in her life.

Another theory worth considering is that most of the hotel staff likely carried similar keys to Effie, and any member could have easily lured her into a quiet room on the third floor.

Effie, would you mind to come with me? I want to show you something in room 309. I am sure the police considered this angle, but no person of interest on the hotel staff has been named. The only other possibility I can conceive is that someone in the hotel convinced her to open that door and followed her in. Why or how she was convinced is a mystery.

I'm sure she wasn't in the habit of opening locked doors for hotel guests whom she didn't know. So perhaps she did know the man. Perhaps he was a regular guest, someone she trusted.

The possibility the newspaper articles I've studied imply is hard for me to swallow. The notion that an undertaker, a man who was simply there for a weekend, a man she'd never met, encountered her on the third floor, a floor where she had no work that day, and then forced her, perhaps with a knife or a gun...

To open an unlocked door amidst a busy hotel, it doesn't sound very plausible to me. But despite the extraordinary police effort and news coverage, the case remains a mystery, even to the family.

It's really hard for me to speculate. I, you know, knowing that she was found in an area of the hotel where she wasn't working, I don't know how she would get lured into someplace like that. So I have yet to figure out in my own mind what really started the incident. Like I said, she was very plain and, you know, lived simply. And I don't think, you know, I think she was happy with her, with

with the life she was living and not looking for men or whatever. So that's definitely not at play. I don't know whether she upset someone. You know, I've heard a rumor that someone's room wasn't clean enough.

Knowing what I know about Effie, she was a very clean person and kept her apartment spotless. So, you know, I just can't imagine how someone would get her to a different prime unless they wanted her to see something that needed to be tended to by the hotel. I don't know. But I don't, again, it's like I don't even know how anyone can do what they did to her.

Seven years after Effie's murder, in June of 1971, 83-year-old Charlotte Dunn was killed in her Otis Street apartment just one mile from the Bangor house. Charlotte had also been strangled and sexually assaulted. Her screams the night of her death were heard but not looked into until her body was found the following day by family.

A friend of Charlotte's told police that she'd been nervous to open the door for anyone after an incident the year before in April of 1970, when a dark-haired young man in the hallway outside her apartment exposed himself and tried to force himself on her. In the year following, Charlotte was reportedly stalked by peeping toms and prowlers so often that she barely left her apartment. On another occasion reported to police,

She stepped outside her apartment and saw the dark-haired young man waiting for her. After a few weeks of no leads in Charlotte's case, an ESP expert from southern Maine declared that her killer and Effie's killer were the same, a Bangor local, and if police didn't stop him, he would strike again. He said that this killer blends in as normal, but is quick to go off the deep end.

A month later, 30-year-old Robert P. Inman was arrested and charged with the murder of Charlotte Dunn. His physical description was a surprisingly close match to what the ESP expert had predicted in the interview. Officials, however, dismissed the theory that Robert Inman was also the killer of Effie McDonald. For many years, there was little activity on this case, and the family buried it, not even telling Dale much about her death at all.

I didn't really know everything that happened until I started looking into it maybe 10 years ago. And it's just shocking. It's like, you know, and I don't think my mother, like I said, they protected her. She didn't know. And at one point she said, well, I really want to see her death certificate. And I said, okay. And I went and I got it. She took it in and then she was, okay, I don't want to talk about this anymore. You know,

You know, I've tried over the years to get her to talk a little bit, you know, and it was like every year it would come and it would be in the paper. And I remember her just going, I wish they would just let it go. They're never going to solve this. And it would just, you know, bring up old memories for her. The one person who couldn't let it go was the original detective on the case, Captain Cliff Sloan.

In 1973, eight years after Effie's death, when Sloan had retired after 20 years on the force, the Bangor Daily News reported that detectives were in a legal stalemate. They knew who the killer was. What they also knew was that the evidence would never stand up in a court of law, and Sloan doubted that new evidence would emerge unless somebody cracked.

Bob Taylor, a reporter for the Bangor Daily, wrote, The Bangor House case is especially galling to Sloan since it represents the only bit of unfinished business in an unusually successful career as an investigator. End quote.

Even after his retirement, Detective Cliff Sloan still leafed through old case files and notes from Effie's murder. He, quote, had built his reputation as a methodical, tireless machine of a man whose patience and bulldog tenacity literally wore down his opponents.

He told the Bangor Daily News with a practical confidence about his person of interest, saying, Sloan told the newspaper that this case will never be closed unless its mark is solved. There is no statute of limitations for murder.

But Cliff Sloan's main adversary in this story is time. The case details will never change. The suspect will most likely never change. The amount of evidence they have will most likely never change.

The sad reality, 50 years after Sloan was quoted in the newspaper, is that the case will never be officially closed because it will never be marked as solved. I mean, the main detective on the case is gone now. From what I understand, the main suspect in the case is gone now. And I really, I'm not sure there's any...

The hopeful part of me wants to believe Effie's case still has a chance, that some breakthrough will happen, and her case will be marked as solved.

But the family has resigned themselves to the fact that this might not ever happen, to make room for their own healing from this tragedy. To know what happened to her before he killed her was... When that happens to someone close to the family, I mean, it's one thing to hear it on the news, but when it happens to someone close to the family, it's devastating. It's...

You just can't begin to, you know, I still get shook up about it. It's scary. The ripple effect of pain caused by this tragic loss has affected multiple generations, forcing a family to compromise their desire for justice with their need for peace and healing. A family who is rooted in the land of Maine with a peace carved out that they rarely visit.

The Bangor House still stands prominently on Main Street in the heart of downtown Bangor. I drove around the property just last week, surveying its condition. Its red bricks are now lackluster. Its structure, though imposing, now blends in with the rest of the cityscape.

But its walls still hold secrets that they will never tell, and its hallways are home to the ghosts and memories of the past. Dale told me that the ghost of Effie McDonald has been spotted on the building's third floor.

I just want people to realize that the family, we know it's never going to be solved. We're resigned to that. You know, we just want to keep the memory of Effie alive. I mean, she was just a simple, loving individual. Every year, the summary of Effie's death will resurface with the same sensational details.

with eye-catching, clickbait headlines of a woman who was brutally raped and strangled. The gossip of a horrifying crime still unsolved. Bangor will never forget this crime. But what the family doesn't want you to forget is Effie Terrell McDonald, a woman that they dearly loved and who she loved in return. A woman who just wanted to live a happy and quiet life with the people she loved and a job she enjoyed.

A woman whose life was taken away for reasons we will never know. This is what you should also remember when remembering Effie's story on March 18th. 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. A very special thanks to Dale Mower for sharing his personal family stories with me.

My sources for this episode include articles from the Bangor Daily News, Bangor Murder House Blogspot run by Dale, Bangorinfo.com, and Boston Strangler Wikipedia.

All sources and media credits can be found on MurderSheTold.com, as well as key photos from this episode. You can connect with me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. Special thanks to Byron Willis and Pauline Parkhurst for their support on this episode. Murder She Told is co-produced by AKA Studio Productions. If you haven't already joined the Murder She Told secret Facebook group, you can join right now by signing up for the newsletter on MurderSheTold.com.

If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love to hear from you. You're more than welcome to reach out to me at MurderSheToldPod at gmail.com. 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.