Katharina Buczek
As a teenager, Virginia Pictou Noyes of Maine was known to be a popular straight-A student. She also got married young and looked forward to starting a family. But, in 1990, she faced her first major tragedy.
That year, a house fire caused the death of two of Virginia’s children. Wracked with grief, she reportedly turned to alcohol to cope.
Then, by the time Virginia was 26-years-old, she had gotten married to her second husband, Larry Noyes, and was a mother of five.
Yet, after going out to the bar with her husband and brother-in-law one evening, Virginia was assaulted and ultimately disappeared after being brought to the hospital.
One of Virginia’s brothers, Francis Pictou, remembers his last conversation with his sister. The pair spoke to each other for a final time while she was putting her children to bed.
“She was upbeat. She was happy, and she was being a mother. That’s the thing that she thrived to be,” he recalled.
However, on April 27, 1993, everything changed. That night, Virginia, her husband Larry, and his brother Roger visited a tavern together. Maine State Police reported that all of them got very drunk.
“They went to the bar, and they got in some type of argument and went outside, and she [Virginia] ended up getting hit in the face,” detailed Virginia’s other brother, David Gould.
After Virginia was assaulted, the police were called, and both her husband Larry and his brother Roger were arrested.
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