WILTON — It has been 20 years since 40-year-old Raymond “Butch” Weed was found dead at his Main Street home by friends delivering Christmas gifts.
A photo of Raymond “Butch” Weed and his niece, Emily. Sun Journal file photo
His family still doesn’t know who shot and killed the popular contractor and member of the Wilton community on Dec. 23, 2003.
“No peace, no justice, no closure. Just unbearable pain,” his sister Rachel Weed Skidgell of Carthage wrote in an email.
Their mother died in 2018 not knowing who did it. His father predeceased him.
Local family members have had major life events since he died. His sister Donna’s child, Jack, got married and had his first child, Stella. Skidgell’s children, Jeremy had his second child, Kole; and Joel got engaged and had his first child, Paityn. Emily graduated from high school.
Skidgell’s brother would have been involved in every event. She misses everything about him.
“His laugh, his stupid jokes, the way he valued family. No matter what was happening in life, family came first,” she said. “He had our father’s family values. Family first, everything else is second.”
Butch gave the best hugs and bear hugs, she said.
Skidgell has not received updates from police on the case in years but Maine State Police Detective Cpl. Reid Bond has been in contact with her older brother, William “Bill” Weed.
Knowing this person is possibly still out there is frustrating to her and her family.
“We never stop caring about or investigating our unsolved homicide cases,” Detective Cpl. Michael Chavez of the Maine State Police Unsolved Homicide Unit, wrote in an email Thursday.
Bond of the Major Crime Unit-South is the primary investigator.
“He has looked into several leads over the past year, and he continues to dig whenever time allows,” Chavez said.
Bond’s unit and Chavez’s unit have collaborated recently on certain investigative avenues that could be helpful.
“One of the toughest parts I’ve found working unsolved cases is trying to meet the expectations of the family members, especially when time has flown by without positive results,” Chavez wrote in an email Thursday. “I can’t begin to imagine how life altering such an event could be and use that perspective to help keep the flame lit, so to speak, for each and every case I touch.”
Chavez has learned that these cases are unsolved not because of poor police work, but because they were extremely complex at the beginning — lack of witnesses, limited evidence and no confession, he said.
“Twenty years is a lifetime of no answers,” Skidgell said. “To put it in perspective, my daughter Emily was 2 when he was killed. She is now 22.
“Butch was there by my side holding my hand the entire time during the delivery,” she said. “He was one of the very first to hold her when she was born.”
All that sisters Rachel Skidgell and Terry Campbell had of their brother, Raymond “Butch” Weed, in 2013 were photographs. He was killed at his Wilton home on Dec. 23, 2003. New technology at the time was used to analyze the collected evidence. Amber Waterman/Sun Journal file
He was so excited that he was going to be able to watch her grow up, “but instead she didn’t get the chance to know him.” Twenty missed birthdays, 20 Christmases, Easters, graduation, “all of it missed,” Skidgell said.
Her brother “Butchy” loved Christmas, she said.
“Butch would have loved seeing all of his grandnieces and nephew on Christmas,” she said. “The year he was killed, he called me the day before it happened. He was so excited telling me what presents he had gotten all the kids, proud he picked out each gift on his own. How he couldn’t wait for them to open them. He was so excited but he never got to see them open the gifts — never got to see them again,” she said.
Skidgell doesn’t know if the family will ever get answers to the case.
“Hope is a tricky thing. A double-edged sword,” she said. “Hope keeps you going, won’t let you give up but it also can let you down and bring the pain back to the surface. As I have said many times over the past 20 years, I personally will not give up hope. No matter what I believe there is someone who knows, who knows who did this.”
She prays they will do the right thing and tell the truth of what they know.
“Let us have our closure,” Skidgell said.
“Butch was an amazing human being and he is forever in our hearts,” she said. “He lives on in his nieces’ and nephews’ memories of him, their stories of him, when they were little, he was the strongest, toughest, funniest man alive. That’s what keeps Butch alive in our hearts.”
“The killer may have taken his life from us but not his spirit. His passion for life lives on in his nieces and nephews,” Skidgell said.
Tips on the case may be given to the Maine State Police by calling at 207-624-7076.
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