The Unsolved Murder of Dorothy Milliken

Dorothy “Dotty” Milliken: an unsolved murder in Maine

Dorothy Rancourt, who went by Dotty, was born to parents Lois and George Rancourt. George went by his middle name, Ronaldo. Ronaldo had served in the U.S. Navy during World War 2, and he’d returned to Maine in the fall of ’45, to find that the shy and hardworking girl he’d pined for in his youth was still unwed, and began courting her. Within a year, the two were married, but there were some complications—Lois already had two children—these would be Dotty’s two much-older maternal half-brothers.

When Dotty’s mother, Lois, was fourteen, her family sent her to live with a well-off childless couple that was closer to her school—her family’s home was too remote, too rural, to have bus service, and this was a way for her to continue schooling. The couple, Myrtie and Edwin, was known to house rural children for some extra income, and they were friends of Lois’s mother. While living there, 15-year-old Lois became pregnant. Her family took her back in during her pregnancy, and at the age of 16 she gave birth to a little boy. Myrtie and Edwin, who had no children of their own, offered to raise the child, and Lois’s family took them up on the offer. Lois returned to school and returned to living with Myrtie and Edwin, newborn son in tow. Two years later, Lois gave birth to yet another little boy, but this time, now 18 years old, she kept the child, and returned home to live with her family. With the help of her parents, she raised her son, Bob. It wasn’t until years later that her parents learned the dark truth behind her pregnancies: the man that had kindly offered to house Lois—Edwin—who was in his fifties, had been abusing the very girl he’d been entrusted to look after. When Lois’s father learned this secret, she and her sisters had to hide his shotgun to keep him from shooting Edwin.

Now, newly married, Ronaldo wanted to adopt Lois’s 2nd child—10-year-old Bob—and raise him as his own. But Lois’s mother refused this, and she continued to raise her grandson. So, Dotty would never live with her older half-brothers during her childhood.

In 1947, the couple had their first child together, Dotty soon came on July 5th, 1949, and 2 more children would follow—4 kids in all. Ronaldo worked hard as a woodsman and a farmer to provide for his family. He didn’t have much, but what little he had he gave freely to others—always a gentle and generous man. Sharon Kitchens wrote in her book that he was very compassionate; one of his daughters told her that if hunters came asking around about a deer, he’d claim not to have seen one, hoping to spare the life of a creature he found too beautiful to kill.

Dotty in particular was close with her father, and would study his interactions on errands about town, standing alongside him like his little shadow.

Her mother, Lois, cared for the children and the home while Ronaldo worked. For many years, even though she was married, Lois felt judged by people in the community for what had happened in her youth, but she withstood the scrutiny with grace. She taught her children, “if you don’t have something nice to say about a person don’t say anything at all.” Young Dotty would go on to become a woman who would also bear a burden in silence.

The early years of Dotty’s life, however, were full of joy and playfulness. The farmhouse they lived in was set amidst hundreds of acres of fields, a place of wild freedom. Dotty and her sister Mary Ellen would spend their days adventuring—climbing trees, swinging from beams in the barn, and fishing and swimming in the local brook. They loved to brush and lay upon the backs of their family’s horses, feeding them apples and riding them through the pastures.

Dotty was beautiful, even at a young age, with her shining blue eyes, silky dark hair, and a porcelain complexion fit for a doll. She was known for her voracious appetite—she loved her mom’s American chop suey and brown bread. She had some curious culinary proclivities, drowning her eggs in ketchup, and, on more than one occasion, biting into a whole onion as if it were an apple.

It was a humble but happy childhood.

High School years

In 1963, Dotty was 14 and a freshman at Sabattus High School. Sabattus is a small town and agricultural community in central Maine—today, its population is just shy of 5,000 people. The school had no gym or cafeteria, and the building had only recently been fitted with indoor plumbing. On her first day of classes, Dotty was told that half of her grade would leave school before graduation. Only twenty kids, in fact, went on to graduate with her; many students quit by fifteen to work the family farm. Others enlisted early to serve in the Vietnam War.

Dotty didn’t let these words of warning dissuade her. She loved to play basketball, and would practice on the second floor of the town hall building. She was a scrappy player, as assertive on the court as she was spirited off of it. Her team won most of their games and would often celebrate at the McDonald’s in nearby Lewiston. Dotty had also formed a close-knit group of friends from a young age, and remained close with them through high school: Glenda, Sheila, Sue, and Diana. Sharon Kitchens wrote in her book that they were, “emblematic of small-town kids in the 1960s who weren’t raised with a lot of money or parental supervision, but who, like all kids everywhere, had fun at times and struggled at times. While some dreamed of leaving, others only knew they wanted to stay.” Amongst the group, Dotty was known to be the bold, feisty, and funny one. She’d entertain them by putting on a British accent, and was notorious for filling her pockets with little rocks she’d find and keep as treasures. Many a stone was gathered with her friends on the shore of Long Beach at Sabattus Pond. The beach was a popular teen hangout spot at the time; a concession stand with changing stalls, picnic tables and a jukebox sat along the waterfront.

On Friday nights, the weekly Police Association League held dances at Lewiston City Hall, and Dotty would pile into a car with her friends and sometimes her sister Peggy. Once, they got a flat tire on the way back from a dance, and Dotty was the only girl in the car who could manage to swap it out—she was strong, despite her small build, at just 5’1 and 110 pounds.

Perhaps it was at one of these dances during her junior year that Dorothy met Terry Standley. Terry was a charming, blond-haired seaman who worked aboard a missile cruiser which was being worked on at the nearby shipyard, Bath Iron Works. The two hit it off and attended numerous dances together. He was well-liked by her family and friends—some of whom also dated handsome young sailors—the nearby Naval Air Station in Brunswick provided a steady stream of uniformed men. During a one-week senior class trip to Washington, DC, she brought a photo of him along, placing it at her bedside. When Terry’s ship left Maine permanently, she was heartbroken. Terry managed to hitchhike up from Boston a few times, but eventually he returned home to Oregon.

This heartbreak may have turned Dotty down a darker path her senior year. She started spending time with a new friend, Glenys, who was “tougher and more jagged” than the rest of her friends.

The two girls would cruise around in Glenys’s blue ’62 Pontiac convertible and hang out in parking lots in nearby Lisbon with older boys. Often, these older boys were dropouts who’d had brushes with the law—the type of guys Dotty’s other friends wouldn’t go near.

Among these ruffians was Gerald Arsenault, perhaps the most troublesome of the lot. In his younger years, Gerald was known for being mean-spirited, dangerous, and a heavy drinker. He was said to have once shot a tree close to where someone was standing, to spook them. At a parade in Lisbon Falls, he once threw a firework into the crowd, laughing hysterically as it exploded. It was odd, then, that his good buddy, Peter Milliken, was a church-going Boy Scout. Gerald had a way of rubbing off on his impressionable friend, however, and soon Peter had a rap sheet of his own. Everything was always in excess with these two—they drank too much, smoked too often, drove too fast, and made too much trouble. But for sweet and sassy farmgirl Dotty, the allure of their darkness was enticing.

Peter later recalled the first time he met Dotty: it was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and he was working on his brown-and-white ’56 Buick four-door in a gas station parking lot. Glenys pulled up in her shiny convertible with Dotty, her sidekick. The two girls hollered to him and invited him for a ride. Peter hopped in, and he couldn’t help but grin as he caught a glance of the pretty dark-haired girl in the passenger’s seat.

Despite her affinity for bad boys and her wilder late-teen years, Dotty graduated from Sabattus High School in 1967. She glowed about her lifelong best friends in her yearbook, writing of them, “These girls have really made my years in High the best years of my life. I will never forget one of them. And no person will ever be able to say anything bad about them to me. I won’t take it. They really are the greatest girls I have ever met.”

Summer of 1967

Following graduation, Dotty moved into a 3rd floor, one-bedroom apartment on Bates Street in Lewiston with one of her closest childhood friends, Sue. Despite being the nearest city to her hometown, Lewiston felt like a whole new world to Dotty. The city was more than ten times the population of her small town—the second largest in Maine—a bustling city set along the Androscoggin River. Sue worked at the phone company, and Dotty took a job at a Kresge’s (KT: KRESS gee — an S sound, not Z) department store, a Detroit chain that was later rebranded as Kmart. Once their hometown friends caught wind that the girls had their own place, everyone in town showed up to party at their small apartment. Sometimes, the space was so full of friends that there’d be people sleeping in the bathtub. Sue recalled that when Dotty had been drinking, she’d “walk in with a big rock. Every time. Wherever she went. I’d wake up in the morning, and there’d be a big rock in the bed with sand on it.” Dotty would line them up along the wall, and even years later when she was married, she kept a bureau full of rocks collected from everywhere she went. It was a curious hobby, perhaps Dotty wanting to quite literally hold onto something solid in these fleeting moments of young adulthood. Sue recalls this as a fun time in their lives—except for when Dotty went out with her friends from Lisbon. That rougher crowd was not Sue’s idea of good company, and she found them to be too wild for her.

Throughout that summer, the girls could often be found hanging out at local bars in nearby Topsham and Brunswick, coastal communities about half an hour from where they lived. Their favorite spot, however, was closer to home, in Lisbon—the Heathwood—a large, smoky dance hall that was popular at the time. It featured a sunken dance floor and a stage for live performances. Peter and Gerald also drink there. Perhaps Gerald had been there the night of Saturday, July 1, 1967, when in the early hours of the morning he struck and killed a nineteen-year-old boy on the side of the road in Naples, ME, about 45 minutes from the club. It is believed he knew he had hit someone, but continued down the road to a nearby camping area, where police later located him. He was only charged with “death caused by violation of law” and released within hours on a $1,500 bail. Within a week, he pleaded no contest to reduced charges of “reckless driving” and “leaving the scene of the accident.” Gerald was fined just $100 and received a six-month suspended sentence (in other words, no jail time), and his license was suspended for just ten days. Over the next year he’d add to his criminal record, with violations ranging from littering to possession of stolen property, and multiple DUIs.

While Gerald was sorting out his legal woes, Dotty was celebrating her birthday. She turned 18 on July 5, 1967, officially entering adulthood, though she was already quite independent. Seven months later, on February 9, 1968, Dotty reached another milestone in her life, achieving a dream she’d held since her high school days: she joined the military. More specifically, she joined WAVES, a branch of the U.S. Navy whose acronym stands for “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.” She spent three months at basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. According to Dotty’s sister, Peggy, she hated Texas, lamenting that everything was brown, “even the toilet paper.” When she returned to New England, she was stationed at Westover Air Force Base in Springfield, MA. During this time, she’d hitchhike between home and the base with her friend Sue, a three-and-a-half-hour journey that seems unimaginable to hitchhike today. At the time, this was a more common way of getting around, but its popularity was fading.

Military, marriage, and children

Whether it was during these visits home, or prior to her military service is unknown, but Gerald and Dotty began seeing one another. On April 12, 1968, the pair eloped. Dotty’s friends didn’t understand the appeal—Gerald was a violent drunk.

They weren’t the only young couple around getting hitched; their good friend Peter soon followed suit, marrying Dotty’s old friend Glenys in June of that same year. Glenys and Peter would be divorced within a year, but not before they had two children together, which, of course, means that it was a shotgun wedding.

Things in Dotty’s marriage weren’t faring much better. She’d left the Air Force in November of 1968, less than ten months after enlisting, because she became pregnant. She was given an honorable discharge. Dotty gave birth to her first daughter, Tonia Arsenault, in June of 1970. Her marriage was not a happy or safe one to bring this new child into. She and Gerald had moved into an apartment together just up the road from the Heathwood, back in Lisbon. There, an upstairs neighbor overheard Dotty one day calling for help. When the neighbor checked on her, he found her alone with clumps of her hair strewn about the kitchen floor. Baby Tonia cried out from her crib, and Gerald was nowhere to be found, having fled the horrific scene that he had created. On another occasion when they were living in a house on Main Street in Lisbon, Gerald shattered all the windows in a drunken rage. It was the middle of winter, and baby Tonia was in the room, but Gerald didn’t seem to care. Friends noticed that Dotty would show up with bruises on her, but she never complained to them about her marriage. She left him that year, separating sometime in 1970. She was now a single mother, navigating parenthood and the end of her first marriage at the young age of 21.

Second marriage to Peter

Though separated, Dotty and Gerald were still very much in one another’s lives. One weekend in early 1971, they went out to dinner at an Italian eatery called Graziano’s Casa Mia (BW: grat zee AH nohz; caw suh MEE uh), along with their good friend Peter. Underneath the table, Peter and Dotty were playing footsie, and years later Peter recalled Gerald saying, “I can see what you’re doing.” Peter replied that he couldn’t help it—that he had always loved Dotty. A few weeks later, Peter and Dotty would become an item. It was an awkward love triangle—Dotty and these two men who were best friends. On June 15, 1971, her divorce with Gerald was finalized. She began working as a dental assistant at a family-owned practice in Lewiston, and was focused on her new relationship, her new job, and her baby girl, Tonia. Peter and Dotty continued seeing one another over the next two years, and in June of 1973, they got married.

Photos of the occasion show Dotty in a white ankle-length dress with puffy sleeves and wide-brimmed sun hat with a long, red ribbon. Peter smiled proudly alongside her in a white tux with a black bowtie, a flower pinned to his lapel. Her parents and loved ones attended and supported the new couple, who had each found a second chance at love after their first marriages had ended. Though it was a second marriage for both, the celebration must’ve been particularly special for Dotty—there had been no bouquet toss, first dances, or cans trailing behind a car the first time around. That summer, they moved into their first shared home, an apartment on Shawmut Street in Lewiston.

But it was not the honeymoon phase that Dotty had hoped for. Peter—like Gerald—was a heavy drinker, and he wasn’t faithful to her, either. She once caught him in bed with another woman, and he continued to run with a rough crowd, as he had in their younger years. During the summer, Peter made regular trips to do roofing and side work with his brother Dana, who lived four hours north, in Presque Isle. He’d be gone for days, leaving Dotty to balance work and caring for Tonia on her own. Dana drove long-haul trucks all over the country as well, and Peter would sometimes join him, doing mechanical work on the truck as they went. If these long absences bothered Dotty, she didn’t say it; perhaps it was more peaceful to have him gone than deal with his drunkenness and infidelity right under her nose.

On July 9, 1974, a little over a year after the couple had married, Dotty gave birth to their first child together, Erica. She was born at Central Maine General Hospital in Lewiston, which is now known as Central Maine Medical Center today. Peter had been present for the birth. Much to Dotty’s relief, he was not on one of his many out-of-town trips.

By the late spring of 1976, they moved into an old farmhouse on a narrow dirt road owned by Dotty’s grandfather in Sabbatus, Maine. The road used to be called Pleasant Ridge but is now known as Sutherland Pond. It needed a lot of work to be livable. It had no indoor plumbing, uncommon at that time, even for rural areas, so the family used an outhouse. Peter rented a sander, refinished the old pine floors, updated the wallpaper, and installed a heater in the home. Though a wood stove sat in the center of the kitchen, it would not be enough to heat the space during the winter months. A pump sink sat under the one window of the kitchen, and open shelving worked as a simple storage space for their daily needs. With two bedrooms and a living room, the old farmhouse offered enough space for the family—a shared room for the girls, and one for Dotty and Peter. While the home had its shortcomings, Dotty didn’t complain about living there. And sure, it wasn’t anywhere near stores or amenities, but it was a rent-free solution to their housing needs, a relief to their growing financial pressures, and she loved to watch her children play in the sprawling yard.

In May of 1976, little Erica broke her arm. They took her to the hospital, and although Erica was treated and would make a full recovery, the bills came as an unwelcome surprise. Their finances were already a cause of stress which had only grown since they’d learned they had another child on the way. That same month, a baby shower was held, and the generosity of friends and family must’ve been a great source of comfort and stability for Dotty. As for her relationship with Peter, things were not as secure. He squandered the little money they had, drinking it away, or buying too many guns. Sometimes, Dotty would hide money away for essentials, like groceries—only to later find that her husband had taken it. That summer, an incident had occurred—which Dotty later relayed to her brother, Bob, and a friend—Peter had become so angry with her, he’d punched a hole in the dashboard of their car.

Dotty was on edge, and it was apparent to her own children. Tonia later recalled that during that summer, she was helping to potty train her little sister Erica. The training potty was kept inside the home—not in the outhouse. Tonia remembered that, “at night, I would use the training potty so I didn’t have to go out to the shed. One night I remember trying to be a big girl—going to bed with a flashlight and thinking, ‘I am going to the outhouse [tonight].’ I did, and when I came out, my mother was standing there with a shotgun.” Tonia wonders years later why Dotty was so terrified in that moment, and why she’d felt the need to arm herself. “That’s a question I have,” Tonia later said. “What was she scared of?”

The summer months rolled along, and on August 15, 1976, Peter Arron Milliken made his entrance into the world. He was born at the same hospital in Lewiston as his sister, and Peter proudly held his newborn son at Dotty’s side. The boy would come to be known as “Little Pete” and was the last child the couple would have together.

The following month, Dotty got together with the old gang from high school, who were eager to meet her newest child. Dotty was nearing the end of her maternity leave, and she was feeling more and more isolated and bound to her rural home. Some of the gals came in from out of town, and they gathered together at Dotty’s rustic farmhouse. It wasn’t often the women were able to get together—life had taken them in different directions. Dotty’s old friend Sheila remembers everyone joking and laughing that night, but Glenda recalls that Dotty was a little quieter than normal. She asked if Dotty was nervous to be in such a rural area alone, particularly with Peter travelling so often. Dotty dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. She wasn’t afraid of anything, and if she was, she certainly wouldn’t admit it.

Sue later recalled a scene from their evening together: she said that little six-year-old Tonia was eager to be included. She’d brought a newspaper clipping into the room, something to show off to the group of ladies. Dotty explained to her daughter that this was a special night that she’d been looking forward to. She added that these were her best friends from childhood, and that it was very important to her that she got to spend some time with them. Dotty asked Tonia to go and play in the living room. Sue later said that Dotty had spoken so gently that Tonia was happy to comply. Tonia, though only six, seemed to understand the importance of what Dotty was asking at the time, but it was more important than any of them knew—it would be the last time Dotty’s friends would see her alive.

Fall of 1976

That fall, the increasingly cramped quarters of the family home became even more full as Dotty took in a young woman whom she’d babysat in her teenage years. The two had grown up near one another, living just a couple of hundred yards apart. Now, Gail Ann Hinkley, who was 19 at the time, moved in to the Sutherland Pond Road home with her baby boy, Jeremy. She was a lovely girl, standing 5’5” tall, with high cheekbones and a round face framed by long, brown hair. She’d been dating a boy she was over the moon about when she’d gotten pregnant, but when she’d shared the news with him, he’d split. She didn’t get along with her own father, and her mother had moved away to Florida, which left Gail with few options—so Dotty offered her the sofa in their living room until she could get on her feet. They took turns watching the children, and I imagine Dotty was thankful for some help around the house.

Life continued on in the Milliken family home as Dorothy counted down the few remaining days she had until returning to work as a dental assistant. One fall evening, in early November, she’d been out with her husband—perhaps running errands, or visiting with family—and returned home to find a single lit candle burning on the kitchen table. No one had been home at the time, and the unattended and open flame deeply unsettled Dotty, as her siblings and daughter Tonia would later recall. When she spoke with her brother Bob about the candle, he suggested that perhaps it had been Peter, playing mind games with her. “It couldn’t have been,” she’d replied, as they’d been together all evening. Bob suggested that it could have been one of Peter’s friends, Randy. Perhaps he’d been trying to scare her, taunt her—he was incredibly loyal to Peter. The two could have coordinated it as a prank. No matter the culprit, or the intent, it got to her. Dotty blew out the flame, unaware that her own life would soon, too, be extinguished.

The night of Dorothy’s murder

On a late Friday evening in early November, Dotty went to a 24-hour laundromat in Lewiston to do some laundry. She pulled up to Beal’s Laundromat in her white car around 11:45PM and brought in a big pile of dirty clothes. Beal’s was on a busy street that went through the downtown of Lewiston, but at midnight, it was pretty dead. The laundromat was a standalone building with a row of windows that faced the street. The glow of the lighting made it easy to see in, but hard to see out.

Dotty likely smoked her Virginia Slims cigarettes, drank soda, and went about her business until something happened in the early morning hours—between 2:30AM and 4:30AM.

How it began isn’t clear, but how it ended was with the arrival of a newspaper boy at 4:45AM.

Though it isn’t reported, I suspect he was delivering the Lewiston Sun Journal to Beal’s when he noticed there was something on the side of the building—it looked like someone crumpled up on the sidewalk. His first impression was that it was a sleeping bag. As he got closer, he realized that it was the body of a woman. Her head was a bloody mess. She had been bludgeoned to death.

The boy ran back to the road, crying out for help, trying to get the attention of the nearest adults, praying for a cop to drive by as the city was just barely coming to life.

Meanwhile, the woman’s body continued to cool—there was no saving her.

Dotty Milliken... was dead.

This is part one of two. Part two will be released on June 17th.

Read The Murder of Dorothy Milliken: Cold Case in Maine by Sharon Kitchens

Green Hand Bookshop in Portland, ME.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/40MikT6

If you have any information on the murder of Dorothy Milliken, please contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit South at (207) 624-7076 x9 or leave a tip online. The family is offering a $10k reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for this crime.

This text has been adapted from part of the Murder, She Told podcast episode, The Unsolved Murder of Dorothy Milliken, Part One. To hear Dorothy’s full story, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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Dorothy’s childhood home in Sabattus (Sharon Kitchens)

Dorothy Milliken, ~22 years old, card to Tonia in June 1971 on her 2nd birthday (Sharon Kitchens' book)

Dorothy Milliken, ~23 years old, June 1973, wedding to Peter Milliken (Tonia Arsenault)

Dorothy Milliken, ~23 years old, June 1973, wedding to Peter Milliken (Tonia)

Dorothy Milliken, ~23 years old, June 1973, with her parents (Tonia)

Sources For This Episode

Newspaper articles

Various articles from Bangor Daily News, Journal Tribune, Kennebec Journal, Lewiston Daily Sun, Morning Sentinel, Portland Press Herald, and the Sun Journal, here.

Written by various authors including Daniel Hartill, James F. Kiley, Jan Oblinger, Jason Wolfe, John S. Day, Mark LaFlamme, Michael Carson, Nancy Grape, Stephanie Cain, and Tom Robustelli.

Online written sources

'Dorothy L. Dottie Rancourt Milliken' (Find a Grave), 12/17/2012, by u/Oldsteps

'Peter A. “Pete” Milliken' (Find a Grave), 5/31/2015, by u/Glenys King

'A Lewiston woman was beaten to death 45 years ago, and her daughter thinks she knows the killer' (News Center Maine), 11/5/2021, by Chris Costa

'Daughter Wants Answers In Mother's 1976 Beating Death Outside A Maine Laundromat' (Oxygen True Crime), 11/8/2021, by Jax Miller

'Milliken, Dorothy L. "Dottie"' (Maine State Police), 7/31/2024

Online video sources

'A Lewiston woman was beaten to death 45 years ago, and her daughter thinks she knows the killer' (YouTube, NewsCenter Maine), 11/8/2021

'Maine's Unsolved' (YouTube, NewsCenter Maine), 1/6/2025

Interviews

Dorothy’s daughter, Tonia, and Sharon Kitchens

Books

“The Murder of Dorothy Milliken,” by Sharon Kitchens

Photos

Photos from Google Maps and various newspaper articles.

Credits

Research, vocal performance, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey

Research, photo editing, and writing support by Byron Willis

Writing by Kimberly Thompson.

Additional research by Liz Bean, Amanda Connolly, and Ericka Pierce.

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.

Dorothy “Dotty” Milliken: an unsolved murder in Maine