Irene Duran has lived with an agonizing mystery for 25 years now: Who killed her 14-year-old daughter?
The decomposed body of Theresa May Duran, who was nicknamed “Terry,” was found in Gorham on Sept. 2, 1984, 35 days after her mother reported her daughter missing. She had been shot to death – “shot three times,” said her mother.
In all these years, no one has been punished for the crime, yet she hasn’t lost hope her daughter’s killer will be apprehended.
“It would be a relief,” said Duran, 74, if she learned the identity of who gunned down her daughter. “My husband died not knowing who did it.”
“How can anybody sleep at night?” she wondered about the one responsible.
Typical teen
Theresa was born Oct. 21, 1969, in Westbrook. She attended White Rock Elementary School, Shaw Junior High School and was to be a Gorham High School freshman in 1984.
Her brother, Donald Duran Jr., 44, was 18 at the time his sister was murdered. “It affected him bad – real bad,” said Irene Duran, whose husband died in 2002.
Duran described her daughter as smart in school and popular.
“She had a lot of friends,” Duran said.
She said her daughter, who had a cat, loved animals and would have liked to have been a veterinary assistant. Theresa had a collection of stuffed toys and enjoyed swimming and rollerskating. In school, she played soccer and softball.
“She was a sweetheart, she’d help anybody out,” her mother said.
Theresa was fussy about her clothes and changed them often, but was less fussy about her room.
“She was a typical teenager,” Duran said.
Duran recalled that her daughter was to stay at a girlfriend’s home on a Friday and Saturday, July 27 and 28, 1984, and had planned to return to her home on Sebago Lake Road on Sunday evening, July 29. But her daughter uncharacteristically didn’t return.
“She always came home. It wasn’t like her. I reported her missing on Monday morning,” Duran said, and an American Journal news story at the time said that Gorham Officer Jody Thomas answered her call.
Duran and her husband, Don Duran Sr., combed Gorham themselves for their daughter. “My husband and I, we checked every place,” she said.
They knew the Gorham area well. The couple moved to their home on Sebago Lake Road in 1973. Irene (Gallant) Duran, a native of Westbrook, and her husband were married in 1953. He grew up in Gorham on Gambo Road off Sebago Lake Road.
Theresa had a boyfriend whom her parents had met once, but later told her they did not like him. Duran said her daughter had had a fight with her boyfriend but she went back with him. But, Theresa told her parents little about the relationship.
“She listened to others’ problems but she wouldn’t tell us hers,” Duran said.
The day she reported her daughter missing, she said, she asked the boyfriend if he’d seen Theresa on the weekend. She said he replied no, but she believed he was lying.
Contacted this week through a Web site posting about the murder, a childhood friend of Theresa’s, Terry Scruton of Shawnee, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, said that he grew up just around the corner from Theresa in White Rock and “we often played together along with the other neighborhood kids.”
“She was a couple years older than me, though, and as we got older, she started hanging out with a different crowd and we (meaning myself and the rest of the neighborhood kids) saw less and less of her,” said Scruton, now a reporter for Sirius XM.
This week, Gorham Chief of Police Ron Shepard said the girl’s body was discovered in the woods off Wescott Road in Gorham. Shepard, who declined to reveal details because of a continuing investigation, did not confirm or deny whether the body was even buried. Two people walking in the woods found the body, Shepard said.
After Theresa’s body was found, Duran said, Thomas and a state trooper went to the family’s home. “I knew something was wrong because Jody didn’t smile that day,” Duran said
She said Thomas asked whether her daughter had any birthmarks. Duran said she had one on her right foot.
Theresa was clad, according to the news reports, in dungarees and a dungaree jacket.
“Last time we saw her she had jeans on,” Duran said. “I remember quite well when she disappeared. Everyone thought she had run away and you can imagine how shocked we were when they found her body in the woods.”
Two suspects
In July 1986, two years after the body was found, both Theresa’s boyfriend, who was reported as 15 at the time when the body was found, and a friend, another boy, 16, were arrested for the crime. The oldest was acquitted after a trial later in the year. Duran said the boyfriend never went to trial because of lack of evidence.
The Maine State Police lists the case as an unsolved homicide. Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Public Safety Department, said last week the case is still open.
“Homicide cases are never closed,” McCausland said.
State police still have two suspects, but Lt. Brian McDonough, manager of the state’s southern criminal division, declined to release any information.
“(We’re) pretty tight-lipped about any suspect,” McDonough said.
Then-Gorham Police Chief Ed Hagan said that no weapon was found at the site where the body was found. Since, police haven’t released any information about the gun, caliber or the bullets.
Shepard said Gorham police “over the years” have passed on information about the case to state police. A state detective regularly reviews evidence in the unsolved homicide cases with the attorney general’s office, state medical examiner and the crime lab. “There’s a system in place for a regular review,” McDonough said.
Duran frequently visits the family gravesite at Hillside Cemetery in Gorham, where both her daughter and husband are buried. Last week, Duran talked about the pain of losing Theresa.
“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” she said. “No one knows what it’s like.
“I just wish this case was solved.”
Irene Duran’s daughter, Theresa May, was killed on a July day in 1984, a crime that has gone unsolved for more than 25 years. A small angel with a broken wing guards her grave in a small cemetery in Gorham, next to her father, who died of cancer in 2002. (Photo by Rich Obrey)Send questions/comments to the editors.
