Dark Downeast

The Murder of Shirley McAvoy (Maine)

Dark Downeast

Show Notes

In late summer of 1990, a mother in central Maine seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, leaning on friends and trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. Then, shortly before a scheduled court date related to her pending divorce, she simply disappeared.

Days turned into weeks, and small, unsettling details began to surface—things that didn’t fit with the idea of someone who’d chosen to leave. What started as a missing persons case slowly transformed into something far more disturbing, stretching well beyond the quiet town where Shirley was last seen. More than 35 years later, investigators are still trying to identify a mystery man believed to know exactly what happened to Shirley.

This is a story about a young woman whose life was brutally taken and the decades that followed as investigators, family members, and forensic experts worked to overcome outdated science and finally confirm what so many had suspected all along.

More from Dark Downeast

Oct 22, 2026

Judy Belfrey. Kathy Williams. Holly Davidson. Melodie Stankiewicz. Four young women whose lives crossed the same few blocks of Boston in the 1970s, and whose deaths left investigators with a pattern they could see but never fully explain.

Oct 15, 2026

If there is any case where you wish you could turn back the clock and change just one small decision, it might be the disappearance of Bianca Lebron. There were several moments that morning in November 2001 when a question, a phone call, or one person stopping her before she walked away might have changed everything that came next.

Oct 8, 2026

Why talk about a case that was solved years ago? Because the answer to who did it isn’t the only thing that matters.

Oct 1, 2026

On a Saturday morning in 1990, the body of a teenager was found on a dead-end street in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The scene raised immediate concerns, but the autopsy did not answer the question everyone needed answered most: how did Kasha Blount die?

Sep 24, 2026

A young mother disappears just days before Christmas. More than a year later, another woman is murdered across state lines. The cases seem separate – different cities, different circumstances – but eventually they converge around the same teenage suspect.

See all episodes →