In October 1987, Maine resident Alice Hawkes, then only twenty-three, was k*illed in her apartment. Even though the case was investigated later, there are still some important unanswered questions.
Where is the deadbolt key that the mu*rderer reportedly used to lock himself in after the crime? Why didn’t the police seem to follow the right protocol when they were gathering alibis? The most terrifying question of all is: Is someone who was particularly close to Alice still getting away with ki*lling her?
A grisly crime scene
Alice and her boyfriend Stephen Bouchard lived in an apartment in Westbrook. They met on a camping trip in 1982. On October 3, 1987, she did what she always did on the weekends: she went to the laundromat down the street, while he played golf with his friends.
When she got home around 11 a.m., a neighbor helped her carry her heavy duffel bag full of laundry up the stairs. Alice put some of her clothes away when she got back inside, and then she talked on the phone for 40 minutes with her mother.
Another call from an old school friend seems to have happened, but Alice was interrupted by someone on the other end of the line. The friend said she’d call back, and Alice thought she had just caught her at a bad time.
Stephen called her landlord, Bob Margiloff, the next day to say he couldn’t get into the apartment and was worried about his girlfriend. When Bob opened the door, he saw a bloody path from the living room to the bathroom.
Because he called the police, they followed the blood trail and found Alice’s dead body on the bathroom floor. It turned out that her throat had probably been cut while she was still doing her chores.
A flawed investigation
As the police started to look into the mur*der, they found that Alice’s apartment door and window were locked from the inside when they arrived. They think the k*iller came and went through the front door and locked the deadbolt from the outside with a key that was no longer there.
A conversation was had with Stephen Bouchard, who was in the apartment with the landlord waiting for police just before the body was found. He said that he got home from golfing on Saturday afternoon to find that the apartment was locked and that he didn’t have his key with him.
Alice’s car, on the other hand, was still in the parking lot when Bouchard said he got back in his car with his friends and drove to Portland to spend the night with them. Since then, Alice’s family has said that they think this is strange.
When he came back the next day and Alice still wasn’t there, he called the landlord to get the door to the apartment opened. Even stranger, the landlord said he saw Bouchard at the crime scene looking through Alice’s purse. No one ever explained this.
In fact, Stephen’s landlord said a few strange things about him before the police showed up. It was important to him to point out that Alice’s deadbolt key was on the nightstand, which meant he couldn’t get in. He then bent over the body and touched the mur*der weapon.
In a diagram he made for the police, the landlord later asked, “Which key(s) didn’t Steve have to re-enter Apt 3 when rescue arrived?” Since Bouchard had been given the deadbolt key, he could have opened the door himself.
Something else that doesn’t make sense is that Bouchard and his friends were interviewed together, which doesn’t happen very often. Why was there a break in the process?
It’s important to note that Bouchard has never been even remotely linked to the case, let alone a suspect. However, Alice’s family is still not sure what this means.
Alice’s mother Frances didn’t give up on the case, even though it went cold over time. In order to find out what happened with her daughter’s death, she kept in touch with Maine State Police, did her own interviews, made copious notes, offered rewards, and hired a private investigator.
Rosamary Driggers, Alice’s sister, said, “She never gave up hope and she never stopped trying.”
Bill Stokes, who was Deputy Attorney General in 2009, said he thought Alice’s case was “very solvable,” but he wouldn’t say how. He would only say that it was being looked at. This seemed like a big step forward, but it didn’t work out, and Frances died soon after.
Even worse, in 2016 State Police Lt. Brian McDonough told WGME that “we have a pretty good idea of what happened and who is responsible for it.” But still, no one was named as a suspect.
Yet still waiting
Alice was k*illed 35 years ago, and her family is still waiting for the person who did it to be caught. They are still angry that investigators from the District Attorney’s office haven’t been in touch with them and that there isn’t much information out there about the case.
Mark Sweet, a reporter from the area, put together a website with information about the case to bring more attention to Alice after becoming interested in her story. Her family says this is helping to keep her name alive.
But they say what they want most right now is a sudden new clue that could lead them to Alice’s k*iller for good.
Rosamund said, “I don’t want him to be able to get away from this. I want him to have to face what he did, like we all have to.”
It will be interesting to see if the k*iller was a stranger who got to know Alice in some way, or if it was someone from the area all along. This could happen thanks to DNA technology or even a tip.
