1988

It was now six years and five months since Mike’s brutal murder and the Maine State Police and the AG’s office continued to snub me. They would not respond to anything I asked about my son’s murder.  July 1988, two years later, I contacted Dr. Ryan again.

This was the one and only letter I received from Deputy AG Fern LaRochelle. He enclosed a letter Dr. Ryan sent to him, but all he had to say to me was “I am—” As far as Deputy AG Fern LaRochelle and Captain Raymond LaMontagne were concerned I was just a nuisance and they would like to get rid of me—and didn’t mind letting me know it.      The information in Ryan’s letter to LaRochelle didn’t correspond with the information in Ryan’s letter to me in July of 1981. He wrote LaRochelle that the “identification of the deceased was made initially by the circumstances, the police suspecting who it was.” That is not what Ryan wrote me in July of 1981. At that time he said “the remains were identified with certainty through the dental comparison.” But now he says he has no idea if the word “positive” was ever used” and that Mike’s body was released “upon probability of identification.” He mentions finding the scar but does not say it was on his chest as he had in his 1981 letter. Mike's body had been released for a cremation upon probability of identification because the dental comparison was not completed until June 1, 1981.     I obtained a permit from Mt. Hope cemetery & crematory Corp to cremate what was left of my dear son’s severely charred body. Mike's body was created on February 26, 1981, one day after his autopsy. This permit was signed Henry Laitz MD. I tried to find this man but was unable to. I was told that he was living overseas.

Why did a doctor sign a permit to cremate a body that had died under suspicious circumstances and state that "I am satisfied that no further examination or judicial inquiry concerning this death is necessary?"        A February 24, 1981 death certificate states pending investigation and on June 1, 1981, four months later, it was amended to homicide. During my lawsuit against Paul Pollard, I  learned that Mike’s jaw bones were still at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office.  Mike was not identified when his body was returned to his family for a recommended cremation. In 2002, 21 years, after Mikes murder his jaw bones were returned to his family for burial. I was told that I first needed to write a letter to Jim Ferland at the CME’s office giving him permission to transfer Mike’s remains for burial.  The death certificate states "Trapped in hiuse fire."