Identity of body in question

BEALS — State medical examiners late Sunday were trying to determine if the badly decomposed body of a man found floating Saturday off Great Wass Island was the remains of missing Rockport fisherman Tim Richards who apparently drowned March 18 at Bucks Harbor.

Lobster fishermen Clinton and Brent Libby were tending their traps about 14 miles southwest of Moose Peak Lighthouse at 7:30 a.m. Saturday when they found the body. The body was face down and clad in blue jeans and white socks.

The Libbys notified the Coast Guard’s Jonesport Station and stayed alongside the corpse until a USCG crew retrieved it at 9:30 a.m. The body was transported from Jonesport to the state medical examiner’s office for a post portem examination Sunday to determine the cause of death.

Marine Patrol Officer Robert Burns of Jonesport said he hoped examiners would be able to determine if the body was that of Richards, who was in his 30s when he apparently fell out of his small canoe while trying to board the Master Joel, a 65-foot fishing trawler from Southwest Harbor. The vessel was moored about 400 yards from the B.B.S. Lobster Co. wharf.

Richards, one of several crewmen on the trawler, was described as 6-feet tall, 220 pounds, and was wearing blue jeans and a gray jacket.

He was last seen at about 1:30 a.m. on Friday, March 18, navigating the canoe toward the vessel. At about 8:30 a.m., a fellow crew member reported to the Coast Guard that Richards was missing. Later, a crew member found the canoe washed ashore. His gray jacket was found turned inside-out and tangled on a boat mooring about 100 yards from the wharf. Temperature of the water was about 40 degrees.