The Unsolved Murder of Susan Hannah
Caroline Chamberlin and her daughter, Susan Hannah
Caroline finds her missing daughter
Caroline was staring vacantly at the posters in the lobby of the hair salon when her stylist called her over. She grabbed her purse and started to walk to the chair when something caught her eye. Amidst the models with towering dos, teased and frozen with Aquanet hairspray, one stood out. She was in disbelief. She had been searching for her daughter for nearly a year, and here she was, in an artist’s sketch, looking back at her from the wall of her hair salon. She called her stylist over and explained that she recognized Susan on the poster, and plied her for details on the poster’s origin. They were able to connect Caroline with the artist who drew the hair models, and he explained that he had encountered Susan on public transportation in Connecticut. With the help of a private investigator, Caroline tracked down her 15-year-old daughter, and later said of their reunion: “She was very angry, but I just hugged and kissed her until she started laughing.” The relief she felt unleashed a flood of emotion that washed over her daughter and reminded her of the unconditional love that bound them.
Though she declined to be recorded, we spoke to Caroline for several hours about Susan’s life, and she related this incredible story to us.
Susan’s early childhood
Susan was a precocious and beautiful, blue-eyed child, with wispy dirty-blond hair. She grew up in Pine Point (though her address was technically Scarborough), a coastal community in southern Maine, sandwiched between Old Orchard Beach, and Portland. She was born in 1969, and spent her childhood at the end of Snow Road—a pretty residential street—just a one-mile walk from Pine Point Beach.
She had horses—her home’s property had a riding stable—and her mom got her an English riding outfit complete with a cute riding cap. Her gear was beautiful—once used by a former governor’s daughter. She took lessons every week with a local teacher and had ponies at her home stable and that was where she often spent her time, taking them out and brushing them. She competed in ‘walk, trot and canter,’ and, at 10-years-old, won 2nd place at a competition, earning a cherry-red ribbon that she would keep until the end of her short life.
She was the youngest of three children, five years younger than Ginger, her older sister who was the middle child, and nine years younger than Bobby, her older brother. She went to local schools: Blue Point Primary, the Dunstan School, and the Wentworth School. Her parents, Silas and Caroline, after 18 years of marriage, divorced in 1977 when she was 8-years-old, and though she lived primarily with her mom after that, her dad wasn’t far: his new home was next door.
She was an active child, never spending too much time in front of the television. When Susan was little, Caroline sewed cute matching outfits and perhaps planted a seed for crafting that would later blossom in Susan.
Her mom went to work at Sears & Roebuck, first working on the floor and then moving to the credit department, where she would begin her career as a collections manager, and on Sundays, she found time to teach at Blue Point Congregational Church. She stayed busy.
Susan loved to go shopping: to AC Moore, a craft supply store in South Portland, to flea markets, and flower shows. Caroline taught her how to crochet and knit, and she still has some of the doilies and Christmas ornaments that Susan created. She got her ears pierced and even convinced her mom to do the same. Her mom, asked, does it hurt, and she assured her it did not! Caroline was in for a surprise…
Susan ran away from home
Susan’s interest in boys started young. Caroline later recalled that after failing in 8th grade, she went to summer school in order to be eligible for high school, and it was there that she fell in love with a boy, and got her first bouquet of flowers. This first taste of love ignited a passion for romance that would follow her through her short, bright, life.
Caroline thought that her daughter might benefit from the structure of an all-girls Catholic school, and so she enrolled her in Katherine McCauley High School in Portland, where she began 9th grade. She hated it, and begged Caroline to let her return to public high school, so after one brief semester, she returned to Scarborough High.
In the summer between her freshman and sophomore years, she hung out with her older friends, and met another boy, who she fell in love with. She stopped riding horses, she quit school, and she ran away to Connecticut with Jerry Hutchins, who was seven years her senior. He was 22 years old, and she was 15.
The widely circulated photo of Susan looks like a woman in her twenties, but she is actually only 14 in the image. Her hair is done up in a classic 80’s style, she’s wearing earrings and a thin gold-chain necklace, and is wearing a V-neck sweater. She’s wearing very natural-looking makeup, but the whole appearance gives the illusion of someone much older.
For 8 months, she didn’t call or write to her family, and she lived with Jerry and his sister. She found some work with a moving company, packing houses and apartments. They didn’t have a car and instead used public transportation. In a letter to her friend, Keira Hume, she was ecstatic to share some big news: she was engaged. But things were difficult. Living on her own as a minor posed numerous legal difficulties, and she said that “the cops were ruining her life.” She even confessed that her fiancée had been arrested. But she was in love. She wrote about a brief separation from her beau, “It hasn’t even been 24 hours yet, and I’m already going to pieces. I can’t handle life anymore.” She confessed that she thought of her boyfriend when she heard Steve Perry’s song, “She’s Mine”, on the radio. The refrain is “She's mine, all… mine; Don't show your face here no more; She's mine, all… mine; Don't hang around here no more.” It’s a rock ballad from 1984 and it’s about jealousy, possessiveness, intimidation and fending off rivals.
After her mom retrieved her from Connecticut, she was home for a couple of a weeks and was moping around. Caroline later said, “she wasn’t the little kid she was when she left.” Caroline gave her daughter the option of returning to Jerry in Connecticut, and Susan took her up on it. She returned to New Haven and stayed for 2 months before returning home again.
Shortly after, the relationship fizzled, and the marriage was never to be.
A new man, Jon Hannah
Back at home, Caroline taught her how to drive a stick shift and helped Susan to pass her driving test. She returned to Scarborough High for a time, but eventually dropped out. She was drinking a lot. She had a new boyfriend, Bob Hunt, who was 19 years old, 3 years older than her. For Susan’s 17th birthday, Caroline and she went on a cruise to Nova Scotia, Canada.
And around this same time, Susan went to a hospital in Westbrook and stayed for a week to detox. She started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and counseling.
When Susan turned 19 in 1988, she met Jon Hannah. He was working on the beach between Pine Point and Old Orchard at Sea Scape Condominiums as a maintenance man. Susan was working at Scarborough Downs, the large historic racetrack not far from her home. The horses felt like a familiar reminder of her simpler youth. There was a restaurant in the building, and that’s where she worked as a server.
Jon and Susan fell in love, and things moved quickly. They were engaged within months, and set a summer marriage date: July 1st, 1989. Susan overlooked Jon’s recent run-in with the law: he had been busted for trafficking marijuana on Old Orchard Beach. The judge had given him a year of probation with mandatory substance-abuse counseling.
Caroline recalled that Susan ordered a book, “How to Plan Your Own Wedding,” and she followed it step-by-step. Susan idolized Princess Diana. From the time that she was a young girl, she would devour any article written about her. If they were at the grocery store and a gossip rag had a photo of Princess Di, she had to have it.
Silas later said he tried to talk his daughter out of marrying because she was young and had expressed a renewed interest in education.
On her wedding day, Susan wore a gown that was inspired by the one worn by Princess Diana. But instead of the ivory off-white one Diana wore, hers was a shiny pure white. The sleeves were full length, lacy, and embroidered. The train was nearly as long as Diana’s and the shoulders were just as puffed. She wore a gauzy white hat and a wide white choker collar and held a bouquet of white roses. She was so thin that Caroline later recalled that the seamstress told Susan that she couldn’t take in the dress any more.
Susan & Jon got married at the church she grew up at: Blue Point Congregational. Susan was 19 years old and Jon was 25 and their life together coincided with the fresh start that Susan envisioned for herself.
In the honeymoon that followed they took a trip to Nova Scotia on the ferry, called the Scotia Prince, and got a fancy room at the Ocean Walk Hotel and Motel on East Grand Ave between Pine Point and Old Orchard. It was given to them by their friend, Mike, who managed there.
Jon & Susan’s life together
Susan and Jon both worked for the Ocean Walk that summer—Jon was maintenance and Susan was head of the chambermaids (responsible for room turnover). It was 1989 and they lived in a party town and they partook in the lifestyle, going out bar-hopping and listening to music. Toward the end of the season, Susan was short-staffed; many of the girls on Susan’s crew returned to college, so Susan recruited her mom to help on the weekends. Caroline was working full time during the week and long weekend days, too, to help out her daughter.
Jon and Susan lived in a seasonal beach cabin after the wedding and got a couple of pets: Tommy, their cat, and Cujo, a large black St. Bernard mutt that was named after Stephen King’s famous dog. They got him from one of Jon’s friends who ran the dog pound at Old Orchard.
Susan was trying to get her life on track. She began attending meetings of the Scarborough chapter of the Eastern Star, a sister organization of the Masons (for women only), which was overseen by her father, Silas, who was a master mason. “She was the baby of the bunch,” her father said with pride. He was very happy that Susan had taken an interest. She liked the tradition, friendships, and the chance to dress up, but more importantly, she and her father each knew they shared something special.
As the warm season ended, Susan and Jon moved to a motel on West Grand Ave where Susan cooked her first Thanksgiving. They hit some hard times. They couldn’t find work over the winter because of the strong seasonality of the town: the cold weather drove the tourists away and it went into hibernation. They had to give up the motel and moved again to Jon’s mother’s cabin. Caroline visited them in January and found them shivering. They had no heat and it was freezing cold. She insisted that they come live with her, back in Susan’s childhood home, on Snow Road.
Being home reduced the financial strain on the young couple and allowed Susan to refocus on her education. She studied for the GED through a Scarborough Adult Education program and passed the test in June of 1990, achieving her high school equivalency. It was presented to her at an informal graduation ceremony at Scarborough High School, and she was considering her college options. Susan was very proud of her diploma.
Around this time Caroline and her second husband, George Chamberlin, got divorced, and like Silas, George stayed close-by, finding another home on Snow Road. Jon and Susan began fighting, and they sought counsel from the Reverend Earle Dunham-Bergmann, the minister at Blue Point Congregational. They went to him regularly to try and sort their differences.
Their relationship unravels
In the winter of ‘91/’92, Jon and Susan had been living with Caroline for about two years when things came to a head. Caroline had cleaned out her Aunt’s house after her death and taken some things and stored them in the attic. She went to Florida on a long weekend trip, and while she was gone, Jon and her own son, Bobby, fleeced the house of many valuables and pawned them. Caroline later said, “That’s when the downfall happened. He was looking for drug money. It started the division. Susan didn’t want anything to do with it.” Susan was livid. Caroline hadn’t even had the chance to go through her Aunt’s things, so she didn’t even know what all was missing. They never got the stuff back and they even took everyday things like frying pans from the kitchen.
We spoke to Dorothy Cummings, Susan’s stepmom, and she recalled seeing Susan walking down Snow Road going out for the evening with Jon in tow, and the two of them hollering and screaming at one another, drawing looks from curious neighbors. Jon wanted her to stay home, and Susan had made up her mind to go out.
In late February Susan told Jon to get out. Caroline said that Susan was fed up with the cocaine trafficking and cocaine use, but that Susan kept her out of it. Jon went to live with his mother; she had a house in Stone Village (off of Route 9, halfway between Pine Point and Old Orchard). Though they were still married, Susan wanted space, but Jon wouldn’t leave her alone. Caroline recalled that Jon was following her everywhere and blowing up her phone. He was jealous and tried to intimidate Susan—to control her.
Jon broke into the house when it was empty and cut up a bunch of Susan’s shoes. Later, he ran his mouth to a reporter, “lovingly” saying, “She used to walk down the street decked out like a friggin' whore.” When he broke in he also destroyed some of her clothes and a photo album of their wedding, scratching out her face with scissors. Susan was furious and she called the police. Bob Hunt, a friend of Susan’s, later said, “I was with her at the house when she told the police that Jon was dealing cocaine and she gave up his friends from Massachusetts. This all happened after he broke into her house.”
On March 5th, 1992, Jon came to the house when Susan was home and insisted on taking their dog, Cujo. Susan wasn’t letting him in, so Jon pushed the door in and shoved her. He took the dog and left, so Susan, the next day, went to court a filed for a restraining order. In her application, after recapping the previous incidents at the house, she wrote, “He has kept me isolated from my friends. He does not allow me to do anything. He has made threats to me such as 'You are going to get raped' and 'I am going to hurt you.' I fear for my safety.”
Jon was served the same day with a summons to appear in Portland District Court on March 27th for a hearing. He asked the court to move up the date because he said he wanted custody of Cujo and didn’t want to wait. The court agreed, and the new date was set for March 18th.
A judge heard arguments from them and granted the protection from abuse order that Susan petitioned for. The judge gave custody of Cujo to Susan, and allowed Jon to return to the house, with an officer present, to “get his personal tools, possessions, and bed.”
A mutual friend of theirs, Tammy, later said, “They didn’t trust each other, didn't like certain friends, didn't have enough money, and didn’t have their own place. Both Sue and Jon hadn’t had easy, normal lives. They argued in the weeks they were separated because they still loved each other in their own way. But they didn't know how to let go and separate on friendly terms.”
Divorce filing official
On April 8th, Susan signed an affidavit that was required by the court in her divorce filing. She was representing herself, and she asked the court to divide her and Jonathan’s income and assets (which amounted to almost nothing). She also asked the court for alimony from Jon. Judge Jane Bradley waived the filing and mediation fees of $170 because she had no income, no savings, no real estate, and no car.
Susan’s disappearance
The next weekend, which was Easter weekend, Susan babysat her niece, Jasmine, on Saturday morning, and then went with her mom to visit her grandmother, Priscilla, at a nursing home just south of Scarborough in Biddeford. They stopped at a grocery store, picked up some food and makeup, and headed back to the house. Caroline popped a chicken into the oven, and was prepping some potatoes when Susan told her that she was going to go and take a walk to the beach and that she would be back in time for dinner. It was about 3:00PM, and that was the last time that Caroline saw her daughter alive.
Police, reporters, friends, and family later tried to piece together what happened the rest of that evening, but there were conflicting accounts and haziness that obscured the truth.
Caroline believes that Susan met a friend at the beach, who had a motorcycle, and got a ride to South Portland on the back of his bike. After the 25-minute ride north, they arrived at a bar called The Doctor’s Lounge on Westbrook Street in the Redbank neighborhood where they drank beer and shot some pool. It had a reputation for being a little rough around the edges, and a hot spot for bikers to congregate. After a short time, she believes that they drove 30 minutes south, past Pine Point, to Old Orchard Beach, where Susan was spotted at The Whaler, a windowless basement bar that still stands today. It was known as a hangout for locals, and Susan knew the bartender. Some acquaintances were quoted in the newspapers as having seen her there at 10:00PM. A friend of her father’s, Danny Greeno, was there, and she asked him for a ride home, but he said that he was in no condition to drive. She was last seen by employees of The Whaler at 1:20AM, and that’s when Susan started walking the 3.5 miles home. John Cummings, Susan’s uncle, had a motel room at the LaRochelle Motor Lodge just a block or two from the bar, and he was in his room. He later told police and reporters that he looked through his window and saw Susan outside of his room talking to a man he didn’t recognize before returning to watch television. He described the man as, quote, “medium build and thin”.
And that’s it. Susan was never seen or heard from again.
The days following
The next day was Easter Sunday, and her stepmom, Silas’ new wife, Dorothy Cummings, returned home that morning to discover that her dog, Taffy, was very anxious and eager to get out. She knew that Susan hadn’t been by to take care of her, and Susan had agreed to care for Taffy while they were out of town. This struck her as odd.
Susan missed church services and the visit that she had planned to see her grandmother. At first, police and friends thought it was possible that Susan had decided to take a spontaneous trip. After all, she had run away to Connecticut as a teenager and neither called nor written for months. But Caroline knew this time was different. She took nothing with her except a purse containing less than $30. Caroline believed that if Susan were planning to run away, “she would have taken the makeup on her bureau and some clothes."
Susan had plans for the future. She had drawn up a plan for a flower and vegetable garden on graph paper at she and her mom’s home. She dreamt of a walkway into the woods to a brook lined with flowers. She had ordered seeds and seedlings from a company. She wanted orchids, pumpkins, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and green peppers.
A friend later told the press that “Susan had taken control of her life. She’d changed a lot and mellowed out, trying to take on some responsibility.” She was planning to take some college classes, and the University of Southern Maine was offering her one for free that she intended to take in the fall.
Her friend Peter Bump, called several times throughout the day to check on her, but he only got Caroline, who was calling around and searching for Susan.
On Monday, she missed an important date with the Eastern Star: she had been voted in to hold the position of “electa” in the organization and it was the day of her ceremony to be installed as an officer.
At that point, there was no question in the mind of any of those who loved her: something had happened to Susan.
Caroline remembered a call that she got from Jon. She recalled that he was frantic and hyper on the phone. He said, “I didn’t have anything to do with Susan’s disappearance.” When Caroline hung up the phone, she called the Scarborough Police Department. They sent a detective to the house and they took a report. Though Susan was officially a missing person, foul play was suspected.
Jon Hannah… under a microscope
All eyes turned toward Jon Hannah, and he provided an account of his Saturday evening. He said that at about 7:00PM, he and three friends went to Aqualounge in York for their Casino Night, where they played blackjack all evening until about midnight. The four then went to The Dugout, a bar in Old Orchard Beach, until closing time around 1:10AM, at which point Jon returned home on Lake Avenue. His roommates, Kenny and Candy, were home, and he saw them briefly while they were on their way out to a party. They returned home an hour later, shortly after 2:00AM, and Jon said that Kenny woke him up. He sat and chatted with him for a few minutes and then headed to bed.
Caroline realized that she couldn’t care for Susan & Jon’s huge dog, Cujo, so she asked Jon if he could take care of it.
It wasn’t until May 14th that a missing person notice was posted in the local newspaper called the Sun Times. It said that Susan was, quote, “last seen wearing jeans, black boots, and a gray/maroon windbreaker, carrying a black purse. She 5’1”, 85 pounds, has brown hair and blues eyes, and is 22-years-old.” By this point, the detective working on the case was Eugene O’Neil with the Scarborough PD.
Jon recalled that the police were ever-present in his orbit. He said they would come by “trying to be his friend”. He said that Eugene told him, “I don’t think you did it, Jon.”
In early July, Jon went to the Scarborough police station to answer what he thought were routine questions, and was surprised when they searched his car and trunk. He said, "They took my car, searched it for blood, and asked me, ‘where's the friggin’ body, Jon?’" He said he’d never hit a girl in his life. In an interview with Tim Gillis, a Sun Times reporter, he said, “they suggested that maybe I would hit a girl with how much Susan hurt me. I've chewed all my nails right down. They've put me through mental anguish. She had no life insurance. I'm a young guy. Why wreck my life, and wouldn't I be the top suspect? I'm not that dumb of a guy. They're making me sound like the devil in disguise, but I was doing the best I could for my wife. I’ve got a great alibi… I don’t know why they’re calling it murder."
Jon claimed that he didn’t learn of Susan’s disappearance until “a few days later”, when Silas had come to ask him if he knew anything about Susan on Monday. But that didn’t ring true with Susan’s family and friends, who had heard that Jon was talking about her disappearance on Sunday with people. He also claimed that the last time he had had any contact with Susan was five weeks prior to her disappearance, but the hearing on the restraining order was only 4 weeks prior, and subsequent to that he came over a few times to collect things from the house. Caroline said that he also contacted Susan several times in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, trying to make amends, and Dorothy Cummings, Susan’s stepmother, said that he would hang around Blue Point Variety and the Blue Point Congregational Church, hoping to encounter Susan.
Something that came out in the interviews conducted for the Sun Times article was that Susan would sometimes become violent when she drank, and an anonymous source said that they recalled on more than one occasion, seeing Susan slap Jon.
In the same newspaper on the same day as the follow-up article on Susan, an op-ed was published, by, quote, “friends of Sue and Jon”. It read, in part,
“… A lot of people have their suspicions at to what might have happened, but they have their doubts.
Nobody in this world is perfect. Jon is innocent until proven guilty. And time will tell what happened to Sue or where she is.”
Jon told the Sun Times that he had suggested a lie detector test and sat for one in late July with the Maine State Police at their Gray barracks. During the test he was asked several times about his involvement with Susan’s disappearance. Though they didn’t show him the complete results, they told him he had failed. They even read him his rights. On the way home, the officers said that the next time they saw him it was going to be with a murder charge.
Police approached Jon’s roommates, Kenny and Candy, several times and told them, “If Jon goes down, you’re going down with him.” Jon believed that they were trying to drive a wedge between them to undermine his alibi. Jon claimed that he was trying to secure a lawyer to stop the police from harassing him, and said that, “someone is going to get sued very shortly.”
By mid-August, Jon was no longer living with Kenny and Candy.
Susan’s birthday
On August 19th Susan would have turned 23 years old. In a news article that was published the next day, Caroline reflected on Susan’s life, “I felt from the very beginning something bad happened to Susan. We went through this before when she was a teenager, and she fully understood the pain she caused me.” In a card that Susan gave her for Mother’s Day in 1991 she wrote, “Thank you for helping me discover the beauty all around me… for encouraging me always to be myself and accepting me just as I am.”
In September, another tragedy happened in Caroline’s family: Priscilla, Susan’s grandmother, passed away, and she died not knowing what had happened to Susan.
Peter Bump’s efforts
For the next year there were no more published articles about Susan’s investigation or disappearance. In the meantime, her friend Peter Bump, took some initiative to work on her case. He said he spent hundreds of dollars on phone calls trying to piece together information. He had a number of photo prints made and he posted them in bars, stores, and restaurants. He conducted searches through woods and along railroad tracks, grasping for clues. He said, “If I had the money, I’d put out a $25,000 reward, and I think people would talk. I want the answer.”
Reporters reflect after a year without progress
In 1993, on her next birthday, another round of articles came out. Local detective, Eugene O’Neill, speculated on the possibility that she was alive, but had chosen to vanish, “If you really want to disappear, you could change your identity, but usually it’s the criminal element that would do that. I don’t think Susan would have the knowledge or the desire. She was getting her life together here.”
Reporters caught up with Jon again, who was living in Old Orchard Beach with his mom on Lake Avenue. He told Kim Strosnider with the Portland Press Herald that Susan’s request for a restraining order was, quote, “a bunch of lies.” He said, “All I wanted out of our marriage was my dog.”
Caroline told the Herald that she had kept Susan’s room exactly as it was for a year, but now she had a friend living with her and had to make room for them. She wasn’t sure what to do with some of Susan’s old stuff. She reflected on the void that Susan had left, “The not knowing is terrible. I’m missing a part of me. I feel my heart’s been ripped right out.”
Shortly after the Portland Press Herald published an article that was entitled, “Hope fades for woman missing”, the state police made an announcement that they were increasing the manpower devoted to her case.
Diving operation
On Wednesday, October 6th, a large RV called a “mobile command center” from the Maine State Police pulled up and parked on the pier at Camp Ellis, which is just south of Old Orchard Beach. They had boats in the water and a team of divers taking turns going under. They worked all day, from 8:30AM – 6:00PM, and news organizations got word of the big search. Reporters turned up Thursday for day 2. Police from Scarborough, Saco, Old Orchard Beach and the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency joined as well. The target of their search was about a mile from the pier, halfway between Ram and Stage Islands. They positioned 3 boats out there where the water was 20-35 feet deep, and the divers had a visibility of about 10-12 feet. One team manned a small submarine-type vehicle that allowed the divers to ride the bottom. At first they were using hand shovels, working on the bottom of the ocean, but the work was slow-going. They located a dredging contractor not far from the search site that had some hose and a large 2,700-pound air compressor that they borrowed. The compressor was linked by a flexible red hose to a section of four-inch PVC pipe fitted with handles for gripping. After they loaded the apparatus onto one of their boats, the divers used the device to vacuum sand from a four-foot hole in the ocean floor, speeding up their work dramatically. Spectators were there gawking from the shore. At 1:45PM, a diver breached the surface and handed a round object covered with seaweed to the boat team who loaded it into tan evidence bags. They brought it ashore and took it to the mobile command post.
The police would neither confirm nor deny that the search was related to Susan Hannah’s case, but the presence of particular officers and the timing of the search led reporters to their own conclusions.
Furthermore, they asked Jon Hannah to come to the pier for questioning again. He spent about 15 minutes inside the mobile command center, and he later told reporters that the detectives kept repeating themselves: “We want the story. Tell us the truth, Jonathan. Where is she?” Jon’s mom, Frances, said to the press, “He’s told his story. I know my son is innocent. He wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything.” Jon later went on to WCSH-TV (Channel 6) to offer his own $2,000 reward.
In addition to the dive operation, police used trained dogs in a land search on the same days.
A grim discovery at Libby Mountain
On Saturday, November 13th, 1993, Jeff Libby was traipsing through the woods at the base of Libby Mountain in Limington. It was a remote area just off a logging road a quarter mile from route 117; the perfect spot for hunting season.
Under the crunch of the fallen leaves, Jeff stumbled on what appeared to be a black boot. Upon closer inspection, he realized there was a skeletal foot still inside the boot. Jeff continued his day of hunting, and the next day, on November 14th, called the Maine State Police in Gray who immediately responded to the scene.
According to Stephen Holt of the Maine State Police, the skeleton was mostly intact; only a few bones were discovered away from the rest. It wasn’t initially clear whether it belonged to a man or a woman, but police garnered clues from the clothing found at the scene—clothing that most likely belonged to a woman. They also found a pair of black boots and women’s jewelry.
Through dental records, police matched the skeleton to Susan Hannah, and Caroline confirmed the ring and necklace found at the scene belonged to her daughter. Susan had finally been found.
It had been a year and a half since she went missing, and police said the condition of her remains indicated she’d died around that same time: April 18th, 1992. But Detective Love later said that “too much time had elapsed for police and experts to determine whether Susan was killed in the woods, or killed in another place and left there. During that time, the person or people involved may have had time to put their stories together and arrange their alibis.”
Limington is super remote and about 45 minutes away from where she was last seen in Old Orchard Beach. Whether she was killed there or not, somebody drove her to Libby Mountain.
Law enforcement began a search of the area with the assistance of a K-9 team from the medical examiner’s office that lasted a few days.
By Thursday the 18th, the news hit the press: the remains discovered were officially identified as Susan Hannah. Investigators attempted to quietly send Maine State Detective Clifford Howard and Scarborough Detective Eugene O’Neill to Hollywood, Florida to surprise-interview Jon for a fifth time, who had moved there for work. Jon caught wind of their travels when a local news station leaked the investigative plans. “We were headed down and I suspect he knew we were coming,” Steve McCausland, spokesperson for the police said. “In hindsight, it made no difference.”
The funeral
The burden of planning Susan’s funeral fell on Caroline’s shoulders, and her church stepped up to help her out with the planning. “I was a basket case,” she told a reporter.
Around 200 mourners gathered at Blue Point Congregational Church in Scarborough for Susan’s funeral on Sunday, November 21st. Caroline decided to have her cremated and placed her remains in an urn shaped like an angel. That afternoon, the small church was bursting at the seams and additional chairs had to be brought in to accommodate the crowd.
Police were amidst the crowd, undercover, and law enforcement was quietly perched across the street, videotaping the people that were coming and going and writing down the license plates of the cars.
According to the Biddeford Journal Tribune, Jon was in Florida at the time working on an asphalt paving crew. Neither his friends nor his family attended.
Peter Bump spoke at the funeral: “I will never forget her laughter and her cute and bubbly smile. Sue, to me, was a special person, one of those people who are rare to come along in life.”
The minister, Earle Dunham-Bergmann, knew Susan and had a couple of stories. He had asked her to consider teaching Sunday school. He also recalled how she would, quote, “prance” into his office to say hello. He referred to a sheet of typing paper, on which Susan had once practiced her keyboarding skills. In addition to the names of friends and family and her address, she had typed the Lord's Prayer. He said,
“I would look at this and say this is a very religious girl … this is a girl with a sense of humor … this is a girl that loves her family.”
The sheet of paper he held read, “I know how to type. Ha ha ha. Thank God for small miracles,” and the Reverend said,
“This is how I remember Susan—as a small miracle.”
In a church fellowship hall, Susan’s family had displayed photographs of her, a red ribbon she won at a horse show, a yellow baseball cap that was part of her uniform when she was a girl, and some greeting cards she had authored including a Christmas card Susan had sent to her black Labrador, Cujo.
Susan’s ashes were buried in a double plot at Scarborough Cemetery. Someday, her mom will be buried with her, and both of their names are engraved on the light-gray granite headstone. Mourners laid red roses in front of a picture of Susan.
Reflection
After the funeral, reporters went to the bars where Susan was last seen and asked around about her, and what happened that fateful Saturday night, but they were left with more questions than answers.
It was later revealed that the search of the ocean floor didn’t result in any meaningful leads in the case, but the police still keep Susan’s case open. And though little has happened (visible to the public) since her death, Susan’s name still appears on the current version of the Maine Unsolved Homicides list. Despite the fact that 30 years have passed, memories of friends and family of Susan are still fresh.
Dorothy recalled the impact to Silas:
“Life went on, but her father had a real hard time. He thought from the beginning that something had happened, but I believed that she had just taken off. He didn’t do anything. Stopped going to work, stayed home all the time. It was very frustrating for me. I realized he was just waiting for the phone to ring.”
Peter Bump recalled Susan’s love for animals and nature. Susan would talk to him about how birds would land on her in the garden, unafraid. Caroline recalled that Susan had parakeets and dogs as pets. Dorothy remembered that Susan loved feeding the birds. The outdoors beckoned to Susan and she was rarely found in front of the television.
Everyone we spoke to said that Susan would flit in and out of their homes and their lives with such joy. Dorothy said she would “always come ditty-boppin’ in” to their home on Snow Road. Her sister, Ginger, said that no matter how bad things were, she always remembered Susan’s smile. Tammy said that she “always had a smile on her face. It was a pretty smile—one that you don’t forget.” In looking at old photos of Susan, you can tell she has a lot of practice at smiling, so much so that her eyes would be often squeezed shut. And her smile was endearing, Ginger said that “everybody just loved her; a beautiful person all the way around, inside and out.”
And she wanted to be loved by a romantic partner from a very young age. Dorothy quipped, “Susie had a lot of boyfriends—I can’t imagine Susan not dating someone.” But she was also decisive and willful, and when she was done with a relationship, she was done.
Everyone remembered her as on the go, always moving, a “free spirit”.
But Susan had some regrets. Caroline recalled that the private Catholic school she went to in 9th grade “was quite a change to her and she resisted it. She always said to [her] afterwards, I should have stayed.” Perhaps Susan recognized in herself, the need for structure.
Keira said, “I don’t know how somebody could do what they did to her. I just hope the truth comes out. I want the truth of who did it because I think they should be punished.”
Caroline said, “Maybe an arrest will never be made. That’s crossed my mind. But even if an arrest is never made, I feel God’s punishment will be there.”
Caroline and Susan used to walk the beach together. She reflected, “in the summertime, it was the sun and warmth and the easiness of the water. And other times, it was just the peacefulness.”
I hope that Caroline is able to walk that familiar beach today and talk to her daughter, and find moments of peace.
If you have any information about the murder of Susan Hannah, please call the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit South at (207) 657-5710 or leave a tip.
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Susan (Cummings) Hannah, 3 years old
Susan Hannah, 6 years old, 1974-1975
Susan Hannah (left), 9 years old, on Snow Rd, Scarborough, ME
Susan’s childhood home, on Snow Rd, Scarborough, ME
Susan Hannah, 10 years old, 1979
Susan Hannah, 10 years old, 4th grade photo
Susan, 11 years old, and her cousin, riding Boots and Star
Susan, 12 years old, with grandmother Priscilla Page
Susan, 13 years old, teaching her nephew piano
The Dunstan School, Scarborough, ME
Susan Hannah at 14 years old
Susan at 15, with her boyfriend, Jerry Hutchins
Susan at 16, doing some modeling
Susan at 16 years old
Susan, 16 yrs, at a modeling competition w/fellow contestant
Susan (leftmost), Keira Hume (3rd from left on couch), Caroline (rightmost)
Rev. Earle Dunham-Bergmann
Caroline (left), and Susan (right)
Susan at her father, Silas Cummings’ marriage to Dorothy Cummings
Scarborough Downs, 1989 (Susan worked in the restaurant)
Susan Hannah, Keira Hume, at Susan’s wedding
Silas Cummings, walking Susan down the aisle
Silas and Dorothy Cummings
Jon’s father, Norman Hannah
Marriage of Susan Hannah and Jon Hannah, and the wedding party
Susan Hannah and Jon Hannah
Susan and Jon’s dog, Cujo, near their beach cabin
Order of the Eastern Star event, Susan in blue
Susan’s graduation ceremony, with Silas and Dorothy Cummings
Caroline (seated), Susan Hannah, and Jon Hannah
Susan at her 19th birthday
Susan, reading poetry with her stepmom, Dorothy Cummings
Keira Hume (left), Susan Hannah (right)
Susan Hannah (left), Jon Hannah (right)
Susan Hannah with her niece
Susan and Jon Hannah (church directory photo)
The Whaler (bar in Old Orchard Beach, ME)
The Whaler (bar in Old Orchard Beach, ME)
Former LaRochelle Motor Lodge Motel (Milliken St, Old Orchard Beach, ME)
Blue Point Congregational Church, Scarborough, ME
Blue Point Congregational Church, Scarborough, ME
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from Bangor Daily News, the Biddeford Journal Tribune, the Portland Press Herald, and the Sun Times, here.
Written by various authors including David Hench, Dennis Hoey, George Chappell, Jill Higgins, Joyce Turrell, Kim Strosnider, Lee Burnett, Michele Valway, Nok-Noi Ricker, Rebecca Tauber, Teresa Richard, and Tim Gillis.
Online written sources
'Unsolved killings frustrate police, torment families' (Portland Press Herald), 4/17/1994, by Alan Clandenning
'ME - Susan Hannah, 22, Old Orchard Beach, 19 April 1992' (Websleuths), 12/23/2016
'State police seek help in nearly 25-year-old homicide case' (Bangor Daily News), 4/27/2017, by Nok-Noi Ricker
'Susan Roberta Cummings Hannah' (Find a Grave), 10/9/2017
'State police still searching for Scarborough woman’s killer in 1992 case' (Portland Press Herald), 4/22/2019, by Dennis Hoey
'Maine police ask for help solving 1992 cold case' (News Center Maine), 4/23/2019, by AP
Photos
Photos from Susan’s friends and family, newspaper articles, Facebook, and Google Maps.
Interviews
Special thanks to Caroline Chamberlin, Dorothy Cummings, Ginger Cummings, and Keira Hume for sharing their memories with us.
Credits
Co-research, writing support, vocal performance and audio editing by Kristen Seavey
Writing, co-research, photo editing by Byron Willis
Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey