The Strange Disappearance of Michael Madore

Michael Madore vanishes

Peggy and David were waiting at the door, but there was no answer. They were there at the ordained time—2:30PM—but there was no movement from the house. The vehicles were there... an old black Toyota pickup truck and a small red Ford Ranger... but there was no sign of Michael Madore.

Michael, who went by Mike, had called them on their home phone at 12:30PM, 2 hours prior. Things seemed urgent. He asked them to meet him at his house at 2:30PM—the both of them—which was strange.

It was strange because Peggy and David were married, and Peggy and Mike were having an affair. Their last name has been omitted.

But David was aware of it. He’d been aware of it since the previous fall. It was now April. It had been at least 6 months since he found out. He wasn’t happy about it, but in his words, “I took the blame upon myself.”

If Mike ever called the home phone, he wanted to speak with Peggy, not him. But not this time—this time he spoke with them both.

Peggy and David let themselves into Mike’s house. It was just as quiet inside as it had appeared from the outside, except for the dogs. Mike had two large dogs—German Shepherds—named Cupcake and Thunder.

They scanned through the modest 800 square foot single-story home and quickly located a couple of notes that Mike had left for them.

have a copy of the notes that were left in Mike’s home on Saturday, April 6th, 1996—the last time that Mike was ever heard from alive. This is what they say.

The first was addressed to Peggy.

“Hi Babe!
I’ll be in Bangor/Brewer ‘til next Saturday, 4/13/96, to get a feel of how it’s going to be being away from everyone and everything. That’s why I don’t want to (be) contacted—to see if I can do it, and more so, to prepare myself for going away. Everything I’m leaving behind is yours, David’s, and your kids’, after Saturday, April 13th, 1996, including the money I left you (a portion of what I saved, in the jewelry box on the desk by the TV) to use as you like, and to the feed dogs, etc.
I need you to be strong for me and at peace with this like I said this morning. You know how I feel about you, and I’m happy knowing you’re in good hands.
Love always,
Michael Joseph Madore
P.S. I will have a good life in Alaska, as I know you will have a good life here.
P.P.S. I left you most of the CDs. Make good use of them. We have the same taste in music.”

There was another letter, addressed to them both.

“Dear David and Peggy,
Everything is yours. I’ll be making enough money to replace it all. I only want my family (Cupcake and Thunder) to be cared for. That’s all I ask. They’re the only family I’ve ever had of my own. Please don’t separate them.
Love always,
Mike”

There was a third note. It was a transfer of property, and it was postdated to a week later—the following Saturday.

Mike had been talking about disappearing for his entire life—to become a “mountain man”—to live “off the grid”— to “go to Alaska.” But that’s all it had been—talk. But here he was at 32 years old, and on paper, it appeared that he was making that dream a reality.

Mike’s high school years

Mike had a big family, but most of the kids had already flown the coup. Mike was one of six children, but one of his older sisters had died when she was quite young, leaving five surviving siblings. The three oldest—Ann, Dick, and Karen—were much older—10-17 years his senior. He and his younger sister Therese, who went by Teri, were only 3 years apart, and the two of them grew up together in little Brownville Junction, Maine, with his mom and dad.

Mike was quite intelligent and creative. He did well in academics without even trying. There was something childlike about Mike, and he was terrific with kids. His older siblings were having children so he was an uncle by the time he was maybe 7 or 8 years old. He’d easily fall into being goofy or silly with the little ones.

After graduating from Penquis High School in 1981, he joined the Navy, and after that, he got a job in Warwick, Rhode Island, working for General Dynamics. Though he was away, he had a girlfriend back home in Maine. To protect her privacy, I’ll call her Lisa. They were already engaged at that point. Their romance continued to blossom until they got married in 1986. Mike was 23. Lisa was 19. They got a house together in a little village within the town of Milo called Derby. We’ll refer to this house by its address—9 Railroad Avenue.

We spoke to Lisa about this period of her life with Mike, and it was fraught. He became more aggressive, more violent. Lisa recalled many conversations with her sister where she shared how nervous and unhappy she was.

In 1990, she’d had enough. She got her father and Mike’s brother to help her get out of the situation. Mike was especially volatile that day, threatening people and himself with a gun, but once the dust settled, he came to accept the new situation and the subsequent divorce. Lisa moved in with her sister.

His criminal record picks up in 1991 with a theft charge in Dover-Foxcroft, a misdemeanor, for which he was found guilty. In June of 1993 he was charged with violating a restraining order. A week later he picked up another theft charge, and in June of 1994 he was charged with and found guilty of assault.

His obsession with vitamins and supplements deepened. Teri, who still lived in the area, remembered going by his house and his counters and tables were piled high with all kinds of pills and powders all promising some sort of health benefit. She begged him to see a therapist—to get some mental health support. But that was a non-starter—she said, “counseling was frowned upon by the family. That was a weakness.”

In 1995, Mike started dating a woman named Peggy who worked at AMB Video, a video-rental store, in downtown Milo.

The only trouble? She was married.

According to her husband, David, the affair was a secret at first, but eventually he learned what was really going on from a coworker of his at Guilford Industries.

Mike and Peggy spent a lot of time together. They were very close. Mike and Peggy would go out to his camp in the woods to be alone. His camp was also in Milo, between Lakeview Road and a little stream called Alder Brook, more than a mile from the nearest road. David described the way to the camp as a “little maze of trails” that Mike had carved through the woods.

And then in April of 1996, Mike vanished.

The disappearance

We have the police reports from Milo PD and some documentation from the Maine Warden Service. According to a Maine Warden Service report, “Subject [was] last seen [Saturday] 04-06-1996 leaving residence in Milo on 10-speed bike. Subject may be in possession of .357 handgun.” Peggy and David, by their own account at the time of the disappearance, did not say that they saw Mike that Saturday. They said that they had spoken to him on the phone at 12:30PM and then went to meet up with him at 2:30PM at his home. He had already left. They didn’t actually see him on Saturday. It’s unclear if this Warden report was an extrapolation from Peggy and David’s statements, or if they spoke to a witness who had seen Mike leaving that Saturday. The reason I’m interested in this quote is because I would like to establish who the last person who actually saw Mike alive was, and when.

Peggy and David didn’t call the police right away. The reports indicate that they spoke to Milo PD on Monday night around 11:00PM—over two days later. It’s unclear to me whether Peggy and David assumed care of Mike’s dogs immediately, or if they were waiting to see if Mike would reappear.

By Tuesday morning, the alarm had been sounded, and a serious search by law enforcement was undertaken.

Milo PD met with David and Peggy at Mike’s house. Peggy told the Milo PD officer that she had noticed some things that were missing: a pair of waders, a .357 handgun, some CDs, a small portable radio, and a 10-speed bike. Also, possibly some black dress jeans and some boots. According to a friend of Mike’s, familiar with his camp in the woods, there was a bog to cross, which could explain the purpose of the waders and why he might have taken them.

Peggy told Milo PD that Mike was last seen “wearing blue dress pants (with thermal long johns underneath), a gray and black v-neck sweater with two colored stripes on the front, and a second gray sweater over it.” But how she would know what he was last wearing was a bit mysterious. According to police reports, they had only spoken on the phone that Saturday... she had not seen him.

Peggy told the officer that based on the things that were missing from his house, she believed that Mike had not gone to Bangor, as he had stated in the letter, but rather to his camp—a camp she was very familiar with.

She said that his state of mind was “to get away from it all.” He was increasingly concerned about the possible death of his parents, who were 76 and 78 years old. She said, though, that he especially no longer wanted to “come between her and David anymore.” Even in speaking to David today, he believes that this was Mike’s primary motivation for disappearing.

In the Milo PD report, the officer writes that “David and Peggy advised they took a picture of Mike to the Bangor/Brewer area and showed it around to hotels, motels, stores, etc., and a Bangor police officer in the hopes they would find someone that had seen Mike in the last few days. They advised they had negative results.”

Before leaving, the Milo officer discovered another letter that was in the trashcan. It was quite similar to the final letter that was out in the open, but this one appeared to be an unfinished draft. The primary difference between the draft and the final was the date Mike picked. In the final letter, he asked for them to wait until the following Saturday before taking possession of the promised items. In the draft, he said Wednesday, April 10th. He also references the utility payments for the house in the draft, saying “keep the phone and electricity going as long as you like. Then, when you’re done, just cancel them and don’t pay any bills.”

The local paper, the Piscataquis Observer, published an article about his disappearance on Wednesday, the 17th, which was a week and a half after he was last heard from. The reporter spoke to Dick, who assured her that the whole thing had been blown out of proportion. He was confident that Mike had left for Alaska—that there were plenty of job opportunities there—that although he had a lung condition, he would get back into welding. Dick thought the whole thing had been blown out of proportion and that someone had “hit the panic button” unnecessarily.

But the most important quote from the article is this: “[Dick] said his brother had talked about going to Alaska for the past month and had—in the last week—talked with his family and decided to go.” This dovetails with something that Terri had heard from her older sister, Ann. Ann told Terri that Mike had gone to their parents’ home prior to leaving to let them know of his plans.

Alaska law enforcement had been notified about Mike’s plans—to be on the lookout for him. But the article closed with this quote: “For the Milo Police Department, the case remains open, as a missing person, until Madore is located, and they can determine that he is all right.”

18 years after Mike disappeared, Terri contacted Maine law enforcement again and begin pressing them for answers. There had been no hits... no activity... on Mike’s social security number or his credit report since he had disappeared. No one he ever knew had heard from him again. The Maine State Police detective apologized, saying that they’d forgotten about him, but it was reopened.

Where is Michael Madore?

According to the court, Mike is still legally alive. None of his siblings have pursued a legal declaration of his death. Terri hasn’t out of respect for her older brother, but it presents strange obstacles. For example, they recently tried to get access to his Navy records, but they were denied because he was still legally alive.

Mark, though he has his suspicions, is left confused, left wondering, what happened to his friend? He struggles with an ambiguous loss.

We asked Teri what she most wanted right now, and she said “To find him. To have him buried” — to answer the questions “What happened and where is he?”

Though Mike had his flaws, he was loved deeply, especially by his friends. Someone loved him enough to pay his tax bill for decades. Mark is currently in the middle of an urgent family situation, but he took time out of his crazy schedule to tell us how much Mike meant to him. Stephen told us, “I’d tell him how much I loved him if I could see him again.” And Terri will never stop being his voice.

If you have information on the disappearance of Michael Madore, please contact Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit North at (207) 973-3750, toll-free 1-800-432-7381, or leave a tip here.

This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, The Strange Disappearance of Michael Madore. To hear Mike’s full story, including interviews with his sister and friends, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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