Reeves Johnson: missing since 1983

In October of 2021, I read an article on Seacoast Online that I had no idea would change my life. It was about a missing man from Kittery, Maine named Reeves Kemp Johnson III. He’d been missing since 1983.

As somebody who knows the names, faces, and circumstances of most all of the unsolved cases in Maine by heart... the first thing that intrigued me was that I’d never heard the name Reeves before... Reeves Johnson. He was 31 when he went missing... lived a quiet life... came from a good family… an unlikely candidate to simply vanish.

And then I saw the photo—it was a man wearing a red trucker cap with his hand blocking the camera from capturing his face. The photo is haunting. And the story of how it was captured even more so.

Detective Brian Cummer was putting this almost 40-year-old case out into the public for the first time since the initial investigation to seek answers for Reeves’ surviving family, so I reached out to him and introduced myself and the show. Much to my surprise, I was invited down to view the case file, and to interview him and the family.

We spent 2 days at the Kittery Police Dept working with the files, learning about the case, talking with Reeves’ siblings, Sally and Hugh, and we produced an episode that we released a month later, in November 2021.

Since then, our relationship with the Kittery Police Dept, Brian Cummer, and the Johnson family has evolved into a really special collaboration with one goal in mind: to figure out what happened to Reeves Johnson in 1983.

Reeves Johnson Growing Up

Reeves Johnson grew up in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia called Broad Axe with his parents Kemp and Barbara. He was one of three children—the middle child, born in September of 1951. His siblings were Sally, who was the oldest, and Hugh. The name Reeves was a family name that his father, Kemp, shared. They were both Reeves Kemp Johnson – the father (who was the second) went by Kemp, and his son (the third), Reeves.

Sally: “Reeves and Hugh especially were very close. Then the boys were together up in the attic. They were so close in age. They played together all the time. I was a little bit of an outlier.”

Reeves and Hugh both went to Germantown Academy, one of the nation’s oldest private day schools, founded in 1759. Sally, too, went to private schools and eventually boarding school.

Sally: “He was the kind of guy that knew everybody, but had a few good friends. He was very happy with his own company… very happy reading. I don’t think he particularly got bored. In other words, if he wasn’t reading a book, he’d just be sitting there with his own thoughts.

Hugh: “Reading was what he did all the time; and eventually he started to sketch and draw... He would read anything and everything—stuff that was really way beyond his age level/grade level—and be able to understand it.”

Trinity College, Hypoglycemia

Reeves had his eyes set on a small New England liberal arts school situated in the downtown of Hartford, Connecticut, called Trinity College. He applied early decision and was one of the roughly 500 freshman that were admitted in the spring of 1970 as part of the class of ’74.

In his junior year he studied abroad in Italy, and when he returned from that trip, he was a changed man.

Sally: “When he came back from Rome, he was sick. It was obviously hypoglycemia, but it was an unnamed condition at that point. A lot of the symptoms of hypoglycemia can be paranoia, schizophrenia, mood swings, he could sleep 18-20 hours a day. But again, that’s low blood sugar. That’s your body crashing, which we now all recognize. And for him, he was a very severe case.”

Reeves dropped out of school and returned home to Philadelphia to live with his parents. His parents took him to numerous doctors around Philly looking for answers. They couldn't figure out what was going on.

Sally: “It was the early seventies, so he had a full beard, he had long hair. He looked a little like Rasputin. So, there was this totally sweet wonderful human being, but doctors of the day would take one look at him and say, ‘Tell him to stop taking drugs.’ Well, he wasn’t taking drugs.

Over the next few years, Reeves learned how to manage his new diagnosis – primarily with diet changes.

1978: Move to Kittery

When he was 26 years old, after five years of living with his parents, he decided to move to Kittery, Maine, where he eventually settled into a small single-room rental cabin, right off the main traffic circle in Kittery, on Jewett Court, a street that no longer exists.

Kittery is the southernmost town in Maine, right on the border of New Hampshire. Back in the 70’s, it was a rustic, rough-around-the-edges, little town. The neighboring border city was Portsmouth, and just beyond that was Exeter, where he found work at Donnelly Manufacturing. They were a medium-sized company with about 200 employees that made things out of sheet metal. At first Reeves worked as a general laborer for Donnelly, but at the suggestion of his boss, he undertook welding classes. After graduating, his family all remembered his pride at his accomplishment: it was the first educational program he had succeeded at since leaving Trinity.

1983: The Disappearance

On Sunday, January 30th, Reeves had his last weekly call with his family, and later that week, on Thursday, February 3rd, 1983 Reeves worked his last day at Donnelly Manufacturing.

On Friday the 4th, he didn’t show up to Donnelly. He had not shared anything with his family about any plans to quit—quite the contrary, he was proud of his welding work—but after Thursday the 3rd, Reeves didn’t work another day at Donnelly. This was the last day that Reeves was reliably identified as alive and well. This final day at work—Thursday the 3rd—is what we’ll refer to as Day 1.

According to his bank records, that same day he deposited a $70 check, withdrew $30 in cash, and purchased a set of guitar strings.

On Day 2 (Friday, February 4th), Reeves’ checkbook was used to spend $208 dollars in today’s money at a grocery store called Shaw’s in Stratham, New Hampshire. The town of Stratham lies between Exeter and Kittery. $208 dollars is a lot for a single guy living in a tiny one-room cabin with a barely-functional kitchen.

On Day 4, Sunday, February 6th, Reeves was supposed to have a call with his sister, Sally. His parents were overseas on a trip, and they had asked Sally to check in on Reeves for them for their standing Sunday call. She called him twice, but he didn’t pick up.

Also on Day 4, there was a big snowfall and the snow would sit, undisturbed, in front of Reeves’ door, for many more days. It would later be determined that sometime between Day 1 and Day 4, all of Reeves’ valuable belongings were removed.

Days 7-12: The purchases

On Day 7, Wednesday, February 9th, somebody used Reeves’ Ocean National Bank checkbook to make a purchase at a Portsmouth specialty shop called Damart, a winter thermal wear undergarment retailer. The total spent was about $160 in today’s money, and it was for 2 different articles of clothing: Though we don’t know exactly what the garments were, we know that one was a heavyweight material, size small, and cost about $87 in today’s money, and the other was a regular weight extra-large and cost about $75 today.

On Day 8, Thursday, February 10th, someone went to Reeves’ bank and withdrew $30 from his checking and $50 from his savings, leaving only a few dollars left in each account. Kittery PD Detective Ron Avery later visited the bank and spoke with the branch manager to verify who came in that day. The bank tellers identified the person withdrawing the money as Reeves.

On Day 10, Saturday, February 12th, someone went to a Radio Shack in South Portland and wrote a check from Reeves’ checkbook for $260 in today’s money for a pair of bookshelf speakers. We found the exact model from a 1983 catalogue, and they are called “Realistic Minimus-7” speakers. In addition to purchasing the speakers, a down payment of about $80 was made on a Pioneer brand car radio and cassette player. The full cost of it was $738 in today’s money.

The following day, Sunday, February 13th (Day 11) a check for the $650 balance to take home the car radio was written out to Radio Shack in South Portland, bringing the total spent at Radio Shack to close to $1,000.

That entire week (from Day 5 to Day 9) Sally had been calling Reeves’ cabin repeatedly to no avail. When her parents returned home to Philly from their vacation on Day 10, she told them what was going on and her attempts to reach Reeves.

The next day, on Sunday, Day 11, Barbara and Kemp tried to reach Reeves by phone again for his normal weekly call. When they were unsuccessful, they contacted the police department on Monday, February 14th, which was Day 12.

Days 13-20: The wellness check

On Tuesday, February 15th, Day 13, Officer Bromfield of the Kittery Police Department contacted Reeves’ landlord and asked for his help in performing a wellness check at Reeves’ cabin. They found the snow in front of his cabin door undisturbed—it was clear that nobody had been there since the snowfall more than a week earlier. The door was unlocked. They found the interior of the cabin freezing cold—the plumbing pipes had even frozen. The place was abandoned.

They could tell that the cabin had been cleared out, and it was later determined what things of Reeves’ were missing:

A black and white television set, a nice acoustic guitar, a Pioneer record player and amplifier, and all of Reeves’ vinyl records. A Huffy-brand bicycle was gone, all of his expensive welding equipment, and strangest of all, every single piece of Reeves’ clothing was missing. All that was left behind were the guitar strings purchased on Day 1, a pair of slightly torn stereo speakers, the box for the record player and amp that was kept for a future move, and his contact lenses.

Unbeknownst to the cops or his family, that same day—Day 13—Reeves’ red 1972 Volkswagen Beetle was towed to a nearby mechanic’s shop for repairs. The mechanic on duty at the Exxon service station in Elwyn Park, New Hampshire, later identified the man who dropped off the vehicle as Reeves based on a snapshot that police presented to him.

Reeves’ checkbook was used again on February 19th (Day 17) at the same Shaw’s grocery store in Stratham, NH for a second grocery purchase of $185.

On Day 19, the mechanic who was working on the repairs to Reeves red Beetle said that somebody claiming to be Reeves came to the shop and attempted to pay for the repairs with a check. When the mechanic refused the payment, the man left on foot.

Days 20-21: The Donnelly check

Kittery PD had previously called up Donnelly Manufacturing and asked them to hold onto Reeves’ final paycheck and to ask anyone looking for it to come in person to pick it up. But when Barbara called Donnelly to ask about it, they told her that Reeves had called and that he requested the check be mailed to his post office box in Kittery, and, despite the request of law enforcement, the check was in the mail. Either the person on the phone didn’t get the memo about Reeves being missing or they were convinced the person on the other end was who they were claiming to be.

Day 22: The Man at the Post Office

At this point, the police and Reeves’ parents had no knowledge of these many purchases and the repairs to his vehicle. Barbara asked the Kittery Police Department if they could keep a watch at the post office. They said they unfortunately didn’t have the resources to do so, but a lack of manpower didn’t stop Barbara and Kemp Johnson. They instead asked if they could step in and assist, and were granted permission to stake out the Kittery Post Office themselves, hoping to encounter their son.

Barbara and Kemp spent two days waiting. They showed up as soon as they unlocked the front doors—and stayed all day—waiting for somebody to show up and get the check from Donnelly Manufacturing that sat amongst junk mail inside Post Office Box 451.

On the afternoon of Thursday, February 24th, 1983—Day 22—somebody did show up to open box 451—somebody who had a key. Only it wasn’t Reeves. The man was young—maybe 20s or early 30s—white, about 5’10” with longer reddish-brown hair, and a beard. He wore dark green coveralls, a short-brimmed red baseball cap with a white logo, and had the key to Reeves’ mailbox.

The man opened Reeves’ PO Box and pulled out the mail… opening, reading, and tossing out everything except for the check from Donnelly.

Petite Barbara snapped a photo and confronted the man, demanding to know where Reeves was and why he had his mailbox key. The man replied, “He’s with me in an apartment in Portsmouth. I’ll take you to him if you have a car.”

She followed him out of the post office... but just as soon as they got out the door, the man took off running on foot. Barbara and Kemp never caught up with him. As luck would have it, Kemp was away at that moment, and it was Barbara alone who had to deal with the situation.

They developed the film right away, but when she flipped to the photos in the post office, her heart sank.

The photo of the man.... the only photo she had taken of the man stealing her son’s mail at the post office... was a photo of his hand covering the exact spot where his face should be. He had foiled her attempt and successfully eluded being captured on film.

Reeves’ final check was never cashed, and it was eventually cancelled by Donnelly.

The final days

This encounter at the post office on Day 22 was the final known action taken by Reeves or whoever was impersonating him. There were no more purchases. There were no more sightings. The car was abandoned.

Sometime around Friday, February 25th, Reeves’ landlord and his daughter spotted Reeves’ red Beetle at the Exxon in Elwyn Park. Up until this point, no one had known where Reeves’ car was at.

That same day, Ocean National Bank closed Reeves account. It was overdrawn by $226 in today’s money and the checks from the purchases made at Damart, Radio Shack, and the second round of groceries at Shaw’s had bounced.

And that was it… 3 weeks after his final shift at Donnelly, Reeves was gone.

What was initially believed

In the early days, both Detective Avery and Reeves’ family believed that he was alive but just out of touch—they believed that he wanted to disappear for a while. They had numerous witnesses that told them so. But were these sightings accurate? The people who said they saw him likely didn’t actually know him that well, and they were being asked to recall a specific day perhaps two weeks or more after the fact. Was their memory that good?

Reeves’ appearance—his long hair, his facial hair, his height, his complexion—was so ordinary in 1983 that Reeves could have been easily misidentified by any number of people. I say he looks like the “everyman of the 80s.” The last day that there is conclusive evidence that Reeves was alive was on his final day of work, Thursday, February 3rd. Everything after that could have been done by someone who had a passing resemblance to Reeves.

The purchases that were made were out of character for Reeves. He was financially conscientious and would include in his letters home to his parents regular updates on his bill payments. Things were tight. The notion that he would have spent $1,800 (in today’s dollars) in just a couple of weeks was completely out of character for Reeves. The checks bounced. His account was overdrawn and the bank promptly closed it.

The second thing that was strange was the condition of his cabin.

When the police conducted a wellness check, they found most of his valuables gone, but what was left raised questions. He needed glasses or contacts to drive—indicated on his driver’s license and by his family—and his contacts were left behind. His brand-new guitar strings that were just purchased before he disappeared were left as well. Why would Reeves leave these things and abandon his place? Not to mention how suddenly it all happened. He worked on Thursday and by Day 4, the Sunday snowstorm, his place had been cleared out. Where was all of his stuff moved to? His car, later found at the mechanic shop, was empty. Where were his things?  Someone had transportation other than Reeves’ red Volkswagen.

But the most important thing was the man in the post office.

This man had a key to the box—a key that only Reeves would have. Did Reeves give him the key? Or did he take it? The only reason that he was there was to collect Reeves’ final paycheck. Was he getting it for Reeves? Or for himself? In order to cash it, he would only need to convince a bank teller that he was Reeves, something that a man with a similar appearance could accomplish. If everything were above-board, why would he want to stop her from identifying him?

2024 updates to Reeves’ case

After producing the original episode on Reeves in November 2021, we kept working on the case, and dug for more information. Over time, the relationship went from producing an episode on the case to working on the investigation with Detective Cummer... who I should actually call Sergeant Cummer because he was just promoted this month. I’m happy to say he will still remain the lead on the case.

Since we started working together, we have called dozens of people who used to work at Donnelly and learned more about what it was like there. Unfortunately, key people who would have been great to talk to, like the manager in the welding department at that time, have passed. The most baffling thing is that we haven’t found a single coworker who remembers him.

Sgt Cummer: “Their accounts of him were very vague. It was almost like somebody who was there but nobody was really close to. Some of these people didn’t even know he was missing. Some of the people at his business where he worked did not realize he was missing. They thought he just moved onto another job..”

For a while, it started to shake our confidence in the timeline of when Reeves worked at Donnelly—was he there for five years as we had originally thought? We knew at the very least he was working there in 1983 when he disappeared, and from Sally and Hugh, we thought he’d started in 1978... but what if they were mistaken?

Further confusing us was the first major clue we discovered: the identification of another one of Reeves’ employers.

Brian had the idea to look through Kittery’s police records from around the time of Reeves’ disappearance to see if anything piqued our interest. Most of these records hadn’t been opened since they were originally sealed in manila envelopes with now-rusty metal brads.

We were specifically looking for police reports on certain types of crimes: robberies and break-ins, fraud and bad checks, and maybe certain violent offenses. I took on the dispatch logs, and  I saw Kemp’s request for a wellness check on February 14th and the call to officially report Reeves missing the next day.

Once that report was made, Kittery PD put out a BOLO to other nearby departments for Reeves and his red Volkswagen Bug. York PD, the next town north from Kittery, called back and said they had a record of Reeves being given a traffic warning. During that exchange Reeves gave the officer a couple of important pieces of information about himself that were new to us: one, that he lived at a York address in 1981, and two, that he worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant called Borderline.

This is the only reference we’ve seen to Reeves working anywhere but Donnelly Manufacturing.

I started digging into Borderline. It was only in existence for a short time, and it was difficult to find out much about it, but I did find out that it was located on Route 1 across from the Kittery Trading Post, which is still going strong today. It was located approximately where the Weathervane Restaurant is today. Before it was Borderline, it was a Chinese restaurant called Dragon Seed which had been in operation for 20 years, opening in 1960 and closing in 1980. Borderline Restaurant was short-lived, and was foreclosed on in 1982. It was also known as the Captain’s Table Restaurant and Lounge during its brief life.

Sgt Cummer: “We still don’t have a clear timeline of when he worked for who. There’s some disjointed information about when he worked for Donnelly and when he worked as a dishwasher… whether it was two jobs at once… I would love to be able to say he worked at these places at these times, but those records don’t exist. You can’t go to the IRS or to the state of Maine… they just don’t exist anymore. So his employment records… there’s just nowhere to get them to verify where somebody worked in 1983.”

Finding Cheryl

After the success of searching the dispatch logs manually, we thought maybe digitizing everything would help. There were a lot of records at our disposal: dispatch logs, police reports, the family’s blue box of records, and Brian’s case file that had grown from a few pages to a full binder.

We hadn’t looked at the family’s box for well over a year. Now we knew what we were looking for, and could come at it with a fresh set of eyes and better context. Plus, having it digitized meant we could review stuff from home, and everything would be organized.

In February of 2023, around the 40th anniversary, we took 2 scanners and 2 days at the Kittery Police Station to get the job done. Around midnight on day 2, we were in the home stretch. We were exhausted, and pushing through the last pieces of the family’s box. The very last letter in the box was a letter from Reeves to his dad in 1978. It read, in part:

“Happy Father’s Day! Sorry I didn’t get in contact with you last week, but I was planning a longer letter in reply to yours and never got to it. Cheryl always has my spare time over-planned anyway.”

Cheryl. His girlfriend’s name was Cheryl.

It had to be kismet—a pivotal moment in the movie version of this investigation. This moment made everything worth it: the cold, the monotony, the rusty staples and sore finger tips... It felt like the universe telling us to keep going: “The information is out there and you will find it. It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it.”

Her name is spelled C-H-E-R-Y-L, and she lived in the Seacoast Maine or New Hampshire area in the late 70’s.

She likely had a York address at some point. We believe she had a young child at the time, and she dated Reeves in at least 1978 when he was 27. She was likely in her 20s or early 30s, which would make her about 65 to 80 years old today.

Oh, and Cheryl isn’t a suspect.

Cheryl is the first person we’ve come across who was close with Reeves while he was living in Maine, even if only for a short period of time. We have got to find her. It’s possible she doesn’t live in New England anymore, and she probably doesn’t even realize that her boyfriend from 1978 is missing. So, Cheryl—the real Cheryl—if you see this? We would love to talk to you.

I Wish

There are a lot of things I know all of us investigating this case wish we had.

I wish we had a clear photo of the man in the red hat. I wish Detective Avery had thought to have Barbara sit with an artist to do a composite sketch. I wish we had the letters from Reeves PO Box that were handled by the mystery man. I wish that they’d dusted for prints in the cabin and on the mailbox, or maybe even tried to see what luminol brought to light at 6 Jewett Court.

I wish more articles and news stations would have considered this newsworthy back then, and that the photo of the man had been seen by locals in 1983. I wish Unsolved Mysteries wouldn’t have turned down Reeves’ story in the late 80’s. I wish we could still access things like bank records, tax records, and employment history prior to 1983. There’s a lot I wish we had. But looking back, I understand why we don’t. Hindsight is 20/20.

In 1983, without any real signs of foul play beyond circumstance, they had a philosophical young adult who maybe left his life behind for a fresh start... in 2024, we have 41 years of no social security, job, or banking activity, and no letters or phone calls to family. 

Sgt Cummer: “It is a lot easier to be on the outside investigating this than being on the inside investigating this. I mean… just the time period between when he actually went missing and when he was reported [missing]… and the fact we didn’t have the same tools then that we do now. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have cameras everywhere. We couldn’t track people or ping their phones back then. When I read this report and it said Reeves wrote a check and bought some groceries at this grocery store… well… we don’t know that… and we don’t expect that all now… but that’s all they had to go on. Well, who else would have wrote it? Now we know it wasn’t Reeves. But at the time, they’re tracking Reeves in what they think is real time (in relative real time).”

There’s no use wishing for what we will never get back. We have to work with what we have, and keep pushing to find more moments of kismet.

Learn more about Reeves from our original episode.

• Follow the Reeves Johnson Facebook page

• Share this blog, share this episode.

• Have information? Call the Kittery Police Dept. at (207) 439-1638 or Brian Cummer at bcummer@kitterypolice.com.

This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, Reeves Johnson: Inside the Investigation. To hear Reeves Johnson’s full story, and interviews from police and family, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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Sources For This Episode

Online written sources

'Where is Reeves Johnson III. Family, police seek clues…' (Seacoast Online), 10/19/2021, by Ian Lenahan

Official documents and correspondence

Letters, various authors and recipients, primarily to or from Reeves or his parents, 1983 - 1985

Missing person report, 2/15/83

NCIC database report, 2/15/83

Detective’s case narrative/summary, Feb/Mar 1983

Detective’s original notes, Feb/Mar 1983

Photo Sources

Kittery police file images by Byron Willis & Kristen Seavey

Catalogue images from Ebay and from Radio Shack’s archives

Interviews

Brian Cummer, Detective, Kittery Police Department

Hugh Johnson, brother

Sally (Johnson) Swartz, sister

Dave Swartz, brother-in-law

Episode Credits

Vocal performance, research, writing, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey

Research, photo editing, and additional writing by Byron Willis

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.