Roberta ScruggsAs I note in the acknowledgements to Massacre Pond, I wouldn't have been able to write the book without the help of former investigative journalist Roberta Scruggs. The moose massacre in the novel was inspired by a grisly true life event. In 1999 someone slaughtered nine moose and two deer in Soldiertown, Maine, and left the corpses to rot. It was—and remains—the worst wildlife crime in modern Maine history.
Roberta Scruggs was a reporter for the Maine Sunday Telegram at the time, writing about the outdoors. For a variety of reasons she didn't cover the Soldiertown slaughter, but as the years went on and she left the paper, she found herself obsessed with the case. Nobody was paying Roberta to investigate the incident, but that didn't stop her from putting together a thousand-page dossier of interviews, evidence forms, and FOIA-obtained documents from the Maine Warden Service, including crime scene photographs and ballistic reports. She used this information to write a compelling account of Soldiertown and its unhappy aftermath, which she published online on a website she was running at the time.
Thanks to Maureen Milliken of the Kennebec Journal, that 36,000 article is available again. If you have read Massacre Pond and enjoyed it, you should really read Roberta's story. It's a gripping tale:
The Soldiertown moose killings poisoned friendships, changed lives and – even though some people are convinced they know who did it -- remain a mystery that may never be solved. The statute of limitations has expired, so the killers got away with it, but people still wonder why someone shot nine moose and two deer and simply drove away. Leaving the meat untouched was what spooked people most. It told them the killers weren’t hunters or even poachers, but something deeper and darker. And it was small consolation that the victims were moose and deer, not people. Even today when the crime is talked about in the nearby towns of Rockwood and Greenville, the words serial killing and serial killer often slip out.
The Soldiertown moose killings poisoned friendships, changed lives and – even though some people are convinced they know who did it -- remain a mystery that may never be solved. The statute of limitations has expired, so the killers got away with it, but people still wonder why someone shot nine moose and two deer and simply drove away.Leaving the meat untouched was what spooked people most. It told them the killers weren’t hunters or even poachers, but something deeper and darker. And it was small consolation that the victims were moose and deer, not people. Even today when the crime is talked about in the nearby towns of Rockwood and Greenville, the words serial killing and serial killer often slip out.
Last year, as I was thinking about my next Mike Bowditch book, I found myself remembering Roberta's Soldiertown piece. We'd known each other for a number of years (I'd been her editor at Down East magazine), and I asked how she would feel if I used the story as the starting point for a mystery novel. She happily agreed. We met at Simone's Hot Dog Stand in Lewiston, and she loaned me her enormous blue binder of research material. It felt like I was being given a treasure trove. All novelists should be so lucky.
Initially, I'd planned on telling a story that tracked the real-life massacre fairly closely, but my imagination had other ideas. I'm glad the novel decided to turn a different direction. I'm happy with how Massacre Pond turned out. But as a journalist, I appreciate the power of nonfiction to hold a mirror up reality. And so, I hope you will read Roberta's account. What happened that horrible week in October 1999 — and in the months and years that followed — should not be forgotten.