NEWPORT, Maine — A team of cold case detectives on Friday was looking for evidence in an area off Old County Road to try to solve a homicide case that dates back nearly 40 years.
The skeleton of Ellen Choate of Pennsylvania was found in July 1977 in a wooded area off Old County Road, two years after her disappearance. She had been hired to work at a Bangor child care center but got off her northbound Greyhound bus in Newport and never was seen again. The person who took her life has never been identified.
“Her body was found in a shallow grave,” Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said Friday. “We have six investigators looking in that same area today for any additional evidence. They will probably be there for the rest of the afternoon.
“This is an unsolved homicide and this is just a follow-up as part of the continuing investigation,” he said.
The medical examiner determined that Choate had died from a gunshot wound to the head at least two years before her body was found.
She disappeared while en route from Philadelphia to a nursery school teaching position in Bangor at the Children’s House Montessori School on Essex Street, according to news accounts at the time.
Former Newport Police Chief Jim Ricker said at the time that the Pennsylvania woman appeared to have ties to Newport, where she sporadically stayed with friends at a commune on Stetson Road.
“[We’re] revisiting that area looking for any additional pieces of evidence,” McCausland said.