A Canadian community is petitioning Maine officials to reopen an investigation into the deaths of three teenagers in Aroostook County in 1970.
That’s according to the website The County, which reports that a petition on change.org has garnered nearly 3,000 signatures from Nova Scotians looking for closure regarding the case of the “Cape Breton Three”.
The teens from Cape Breton Island, 15-year-old Kenny Novak, 17-year-old David Burrows, and 19-year-old Terry Burt were on a camping trip when they hitchhiked across the border into Houlton on July 9th, around 500 miles from where they were staying. After an incident with a border officer, the trio made their way to a local diner in town where a fight allegedly took place, later hitching another ride with Royden Hunt and Mike York to a secluded spot near train tracks in the town of Smyrna Mills.
The three were discovered at around 7 AM the next morning after a train ran over them while they were zipped up in sleeping bags along the tracks, with many questions about how they ended up there being posed in the years since.
“The premise that three individuals could remain motionless, zipped inside sleeping bags lying on hard railway tracks, while a freight train sounded its horn and approached with screeching brakes is fundamentally questioned, by common sense and logic,” 78-year-old Richard Novak, the older brother of Kenny who filed the petition, said.
While some believed they ended up on the tracks due to either being drunk or on drugs, an autopsy later found no evidence of substances.
The investigation into their deaths has also come under scrutiny, with the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office, then led by Darrell Crandall, abruptly closing the case.
“No interviews were done, the railroad [allegedly] cleaned up the body parts, there was no forensic investigation of the scene, there was very little blood at the scene, which may indicate they were killed somewhere else,” Novak said. He added that critical protocols such as proper forensic logging, comprehensive witness interviews and timely documentation were not followed, with the case coming to an end in just 4 hours and dismissed within days.
In addition to reopening the case, petitioners are asking for an apology from the state over how the case was handled, as well as death certificates for the boys which families still have not received.
Novak has also reached out to law enforcement about the case, including Maine’s attorney general and the FBI. A spokeswoman for the AG’s office said they “cannot confirm or deny the existence of any investigation”.
To read the original article from The County, click here.
