Det. Shuman's statement of what he says Linda Gray told him and Bangor PD Roger Bryce at Bangor PD.

Shuman's cover-up of Paul Pollard begins immediately after he arrived on the murder site. He told the other law officials that there was no need for the crime lab to respond. He avoids using Pollard's name and calls him the "other short guy" and the "short guy." He states that it was later that Linda identified Paul Pollard.  Pollard's 3-3-1981 statement in Shuman's words says that Pollard was sleeping in a back room on a lawn chair disregarding Linda's information that he was on the couch in the living room.

When Shuman was notified that an unidentified body had been found in fire rubble he told the news, “Hopefully we will be making identification the next day or so.”      According to Maine State Police Allen Jamison’s Fire Marshal Report, Shuman left the scene at 4:52. And at 5:45 p.m. he had Mike’s girlfriend at the Bangor PD where he and Bangor Police Detective Lt. Roger Bryce took the above statement from her.  It is in Shuman's words of what he claims Linda said.       What caused Shuman to visit Mike’s girlfriend within less than one hour after leaving the murder scene if they were hoping for "identification the next day or so?"     After receiving Linda's statements I wondered why Shuman and Bryce went home and went to bed and never contacted Mike’s parents.      In Linda's statement it says that she told Shuman that she was visiting Mike every day and since Monday, the 16th [The 16th was one day before Mike was murdered.], there had been another person staying at the Dupray camp whom she later identified as Paul Pollard.     Why would Linda not tell the detectives Pollard’s name on the 24th? Why later? How long did Linda withhold Pollard’s name from the Maine State Police? The statement is in Shuman’s words of what he claims Linda told him—very easy to manipulate in my belief. I believe Shuman is the one who is not identifying Pollard. Bryce had already arrested Pollard at the Bangor PD for forgery, six hours before he and Shuman took a statement from Linda.      Linda advised that the other short guy stayed on the couch through most of the evening. They never did engage in any type of conversation. ... The last time she saw Micheal Cochran was sometime after midnight of the 17th. She said good night to him at the door and she thought that he went upstairs to sleep in the loft and she thought the other guy was still on the couch.  This contradicts Pollard's 3-3-1981 statement of sleeping in the back room on a lawn chair.     In the following photo the top part of a couch Pollard was sleeping on can be seen directly under the stairs leading to the loft where Mike was sleeping.  Linda says twice in her statement that Paul Pollard was on the couch.