Police will likely return to Canton within a month to search for a Jay teenager who disappeared in 1986 after cadaver dogs indicated that human remains are on land abutting property owned by a man who was one of the last people seen with her.
Detective Sgt. Mark Holmquist of the Maine State Police said that it was a sign of progress in the search for Kimberly Moreau, which began on Thursday on 5 acres owned by Brian Enman and two neighboring properties. Dogs focused on a 5-acre plot to the west and that’s where Holmquist said a future search would focus.
“It just narrows the search a little bit more,” Holmquist said.
Moreau disappeared after arguing with her boyfriend and canceling plans to attend the Jay High School prom with him. Instead, Moreau, then 17, went out with a female friend and met two 25-year-old acquaintances. Police have said one was Enman, but they haven’t called him a suspect or said what led them to his property, which was cleared Sunday after police found no remains.
Still, Enman has been a focus of the case. Moreau’s father, Richard, has said Enman “knows where my daughter is,” but Enman has denied involvement in her disappearance, saying he “rode around,” drank alcohol and did cocaine that day with the three but that he dropped Moreau off alone in downtown Jay after she told him she didn’t want to go home.
Holmquist didn’t say when the next search would begin, but that it would likely be within a month and investigators have landowner permission to search there. In the search so far, the Maine State Police and other agencies have used dogs and ground-penetrating radar from the University of Maine that can detect gaps in the ground.
Holmquist said only the dogs have focused on the 5-acre plot abutting Enman’s property that they plan to search more, and radar searches there have found no results so far.
“The best way to describe this is putting a 10,000-piece puzzle together,” Richard Moreau told The Associated Press on Monday. “We’ve got to have the final piece to tell us where the body is.”
Michael Shepherd — 370-7652
Twitter: @mikeshepherdme
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