March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Sullivan family learns missing kin murdered> Son, believed AWOL, killed in 1980

ELLSWORTH — A Sullivan family wonders why it took so long to learn that its eldest son had been murdered and the body dumped in a North Carolina ditch 13 years ago.

One July day in 1980, Richard West called his parents at 3 a.m. to say his life had been threatened. Raised in Massachusetts, the 23-year-old West was living in a trailer near the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg, N.C., where he was stationed. His plan, he told his family, was to leave that day with his girlfriend to visit his brother, Charles, at boot camp in Alabama.

Richard West never arrived in Alabama and his family never heard from him or his girlfriend again. The Army listed him AWOL. Three years ago, Charles learned that his late brother’s girlfriend, formerly of Gouldsboro, was living in Portland.

Unbeknownst to the family, a man’s murdered body was discovered in a ditch near the base that same day. He had been shot three times in the head and was wearing a Sumner High School T-shirt, which had been a gift from his brother, Charles.

In a serendipitous chain of events, the murdered man recently was identified as Richard West. Charles West identified his brother in a photograph, with a mixture of relief and regret.

“We had all hoped he was alive,” he said.

A Southwest Harbor police dispatcher recognized the Sumner High School T-shirt when a picture of a North Carolina unidentified murder victim was flashed on the screen of a recent television program.

The dispatcher, Jeff Reed, contacted the North Carolina police department, which sent copies of the picture to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department.

When the sheriff’s department alerted the public, two members of the West family identified the man in the picture as their missing brother.

There will be no burial. Listed as John Doe in the Hoke County Sheriff’s Department files in Raeford, N.C., West’s body was cremated years ago. Charles West said Thursday he was told his brother’s ashes were cast into the sea off the North Carolina coast.

Over the years, the West family pressed the Army for a thorough investigation of Richard’s disappearance. Today, they wonder why police and military investigators made no link between the unidentified murder victim and the missing soldier.

“The Army did nothing at the time,” Charles West said Thursday. West contends the Army told the family to `stay out of it’ every time we inquired.”

West said U.S. Rep. Olympia J. Snowe and Sen. William S. Cohen both made attempts to press investigations by the Army in 1980, but their attempts were fruitless.

Charles West also wonders whether there is some connection between his brother’s murder and Richard’s girlfriend’s earlier marriage to a man allegedly involved in drug trafficking.

Sgt. James Willis said Thursday that the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department will assist the Hoke County police in any further investigation.

Willis sympathized with the difficulties authorities encountered in 1980, when law enforcement agencies lacked even minimal resources for cross-referencing information as basic as fingerprint files.

Richard West’s name was removed from the AWOL list of the U.S. Army Christmas Eve this year, more than 13 years after he was reported missing, but his memory remains, along with the lingering mystery surrounding his death.


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