A Bangor arson happened before midnight on Feb. 17, 1981 and was extinguished when an arson at Phillips Lake occurred sometime between 3 am and 3:30 am on Feb. 18.  The news reported the Feb. 17 arson but the Feb. 18 arson was not reported until one week later.  The day after Mike was found, Feb. 25, the local news reported that an unidentified body had been found buried under a six day old pile of fire rubble. The article said that Fire chief Norman Herrin saw a man leaving the area through the woods. Ten days later, Feb. 28, A. Jay Higgins reporter for the Bangor Daily News (BDN) reported the two arsons and a drug sting that happened about 3 hours before the Phillips Lake arson where Mike lost his life. Higgins does not mention the fleeing man. He reported a pot bust that occurred in Holden a few hours before the Phillips Lake arson.  He said one possibility the police were questioning was that "the arson may have been a retaliatory action in response to a pot bust that occurred in Holden a few hours earlier." This article led me to be suspicious of Mike's death being an accidental death as I had been told.