Sarah Cherry would have turned 47 last May. Thirty-five years ago this summer, the 12-year-old Bowdoin girl was tortured and killed in her hometown. Late the next winter, a jury in Rockland convicted Bowdoinham farmer Dennis Dechaine of her murder. He continued to claim his innocence and has been living out a life sentence.

The nation’s joy Monday night at finding an abducted New York 9-year-old girl alive got me thinking of the Sarah Cherry case again, and of Sarah Cherry. The if only’s are haunting and pointless. As news reports pointed out Monday night, every abduction is different, and some have different outcomes than the one in New York where, thank God and the authorities, Charlotte Sena and her family were reunited. 

Sarah Cherry’s murder was one of Maine’s most heinous crimes and resulted in one of the most closely followed trials and appeals. It is still fresh for me and perhaps others who did not know Sarah Cherry but will always remember the search, her body being found in the woods, and her and her family’s loss and everything that followed in the courts.

At 22, I was only 10 years older than Sarah Cherry when she was killed. I covered her disappearance, the search and all that followed in the case in the days, months and the first several years in the courts up and down the Midcoast; got anonymous tips; interviewed Dechaine at the then-Maine State Prison in Thomaston; and eventually, too immersed in the case, realized I needed to let it go.

To the reporters who have followed the case since, thank you for picking up the baton and please remember that, while the story has continued – as recently as last spring with a new trial request – the story is also always Sarah Cherry, her life, and how she died.