The story that emerged Monday differed sharply from initial accounts of the stabbing of a former University of Maine at Presque Isle soccer coach, who was left for dead in the Glenburn woods.

Investigators said that Frank J. McGrath, who resigned last month after a 25-year coaching career and induction into the UMPI Athletic Hall of Fame, told them his attacker was a male prostitute he met at a Bangor park rather than a hitchhiker he picked up along Interstate 95.

McGrath, 59, was recovering Monday at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor from exposure and from stab wounds to his throat, chest, back and head. Hospital spokesman Mike McCarty said he was listed in fair condition.

A family walking on a tote road Sunday near the Roundstone Drive Extension heard a man calling for help and encountered McGrath walking toward them. McGrath apparently had spent three days injured in the woods. The coach’s family reported him missing on Thursday, and the Presque Isle Police Department issued an attempt-to-locate bulletin Friday.

The former coach first told investigators that, while driving home to Presque Isle from a house-hunting trip in Portland, he had picked up a hitchhiker on Interstate 95, who then stabbed him and fled in McGrath’s car.

His story changed Monday, according to Detective Sgt. Fred Clarke of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department.

“It seems he encountered … a male prostitute while he was parked at (a park on) Valley Avenue,” said Clarke. They struck up a conversation and went to the Glenburn woods, where “a disagreement developed,” according to Clarke.

The park along the Kenduskeag Stream is a known meeting place for homosexuals.

Attempts to speak with McGrath were unsuccessful on Monday. St. Joseph Hospital policy allows only relatives to visit in the intensive care unit.

Meanwhile, said Clarke, the search for the car — a beige 1986 two-door Honda Civic with Maine license plate 71592T — and the assailant are continuing. Investigators have yet to focus on one person, but McGrath reportedly described a man in his mid-20s, with a thin beard and stocky build.

According to Clarke, a woods crew saw the man flee the woods early Thursday afternoon, and corroborated McGrath’s description. The crew first saw no vehicle near their job site. They left the area for a while, said Clarke, and upon returning about 40 minutes later, saw the car and then saw the suspect get into it and leave “in a hurry.”

McGrath resigned from UMPI in August after being on the faculty and the coaching staff for more than 25 years. He coached basketball, soccer, and baseball, and served as associate professor of health, physical education and recreation. In the 1970s, he was named collegiate coach of the year twice — once for basketball and once for soccer — and a year ago, he was inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame for his service to its athletic program.