Shirley McAvoy, 32, of Pittsfield, Maine, was last seen at home on August 9, 1990. She had recently separated from her husband and was seeing a man who called himself Jerry, described as a mid-30s white male with sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, crooked teeth, pockmarked skin and a Southern accent. That man had been staying at her house in the days before she vanished.

On August 10 a man matching Jerry’s description was seen driving Shirley’s red 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme away from her home; the car later turned up repainted and sold in Darien, Georgia. Shirley’s two dogs were also missing. In early October friends found a large dried pool of blood under Shirley’s living room couch, and testing identified the blood as hers, prompting a homicide investigation. Skeletal remains wrapped in a quilt found November 20, 1990, in Spotsylvania, Virginia, were identified as Shirley’s; her feet had been bound with a cord and decomposition made a definitive cause of death hard to determine.

Jerry remains the primary and only suspect; his identity has never been established.