DETROIT — The investigation of a man found dead in his home on Main Street early Thursday morning expanded to nearby Palmyra, where authorities interviewed another man in connection with the death and seized evidence.
Police said the death is suspicious, but by Thursday night no additional details had been released.
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The man’s name was withheld late Thursday as detectives attempted to locate family members to notify them of his death, according to Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
An autopsy is scheduled today at the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta, McCausland said.
Somerset County sheriff’s deputies and Pittsfield police officers were called to the Detroit home just after 3 a.m. Thursday for a report of a man who was dead in his home, according to McCausland.
Detective Lt. Carl Gottardi of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department said when investigators from the department arrived they found the body of the man, believed to be middle-aged, and called state police, which handles most homicides in Maine. The state police Major Crimes Unit arrived and processed the scene, and the body was removed from the home about 10 a.m., police said.
Later, a member of the State Police Evidence Response Team was seen leaving a mobile home on remote Dogtown Road in neighboring Palmyra carrying paper shopping bags marked as evidence. A state police detective could been seen speaking with a man in his police cruiser at the end of the mobile home driveway.
Police said the activity in Palmyra was related to the Detroit death, but would not comment further.
The Palmyra home, on a rugged, unimproved section of road in the Somerset County town, is owned by 44-year-old Dave Lafleur, who said police asked him to stay at a friend’s house Thursday until the search was completed.
“I know there was a murder in Detroit last night,” Lafleur said outside his home Thursday afternoon. “Supposedly one of the guys stayed here and I didn’t know about it. He’s a friend of mine. I not sure if he’s the one that did it or not.”
Trooper Scott Duff said he was called in on his day off to assist at the Palmyra scene as evidence was removed from the home. “I understand there is one person dead, that’s all I know,” Duff said.
Lafleur said police removed a pair of pants, a shirt, sneakers and other items worn by the person they interviewed in connection with the Detroit death. He didn’t know where his friend was Thursday afternoon.
McCausland would not say whether the man they questioned in Palmyra, or anyone else, was in police custody.
Detectives from the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit were still gathering evidence from the Detroit home and conducting interviews with anyone who had contact with the man in the past couple of days, he said.
Shortly after 12:30 p.m. Thursday, an officer dressed in camouflage led a police dog toward the mobile home at 24 Main St. in Detroit, where the body was discovered and removed. There appeared to be two mobile homes separated by a two-bay garage on the property. The homes are about 50 yards off the road, directly across the street from the Detroit post office and beside the Detroit Heritage House, a church.
Two older model GMC pickup trucks, a logging skidder and a mobile tent garage were all in the yard Thursday. State police investigators placed about a dozen yellow evidence markers in the middle of the yard as part of the investigation.
The road was open to traffic all day and the property was cordoned off with yellow emergency tape.
Shortly after 11 a.m., a dog was removed from the home in a crate.
No one answered the door Thursday at the only nearby house.
A man and two women standing in the shade outside The Maine Store, a village market on Main Street, would not comment on what they had heard of the death or who lived at 24 Main St.
Megan Burke, who lives with her boyfriend in a nearby apartment complex, said she had no idea what went on in the early morning hours of Thursday.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
dharlow@centralmaine.com
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