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.
|