March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

1991 disappearance remains a mystery > Pennsylvania man hasn’t been heard from

DOVER-FOXCROFT — It’s been nearly four years since Thomas Grant Jacoby of Lebanon County, Pa., gave his mother a hug and then disappeared into the Maine woods.

Except for scattered pages of a personal journal found off the Appalachian Trail that could have been her son’s, there have been no new leads in the investigation of his disappearance.

A few weeks after his high school graduation in 1991, Jacoby packed camping gear, a bicycle and his father’s .38 caliber revolver into his mother’s car, wrote his girlfriend a note that he would be camping and left for Maine.

En route to Maine, Jacoby wrote a letter to his family postmarked in Portland that was “troubling,” according to his mother, Judy Robertson of Glen Arm, Md. She immediately notified police.

Robertson said neither family members nor Jacoby’s friends were aware that he was despondent, as the contents of his letter suggested. He was described as full of life, a lover of sports and the outdoors. He was eagerly anticipating college life, where he would play football, according to his Robertson. But police believe that Jacoby could have been depressed over his mother and father’s divorce and his mother’s relocation to another state.

Chief Deputy Dale Clukey of the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department said Jacoby apparently stopped at the Twin Hills picnic area on the Milo Road when he arrived in Piscataquis County. He left his new L.L. Bean sleeping bag, tent and flashlight in a trash can there. These items were found in July 1991 by a visitor to the site, but were not reported to police until November, the day after police found Jacoby’s discarded bicycle about five miles north of Millinocket and the day the Bangor Daily News ran a story about the find.

Six months after his disappearance, Jacoby’s car was found abandoned in Spencer Cove parking lot near Millinocket Lake. Inside the vehicle were keys to the vehicle, his wallet, and some loose change, including Canadian money.

Robertson believes her son left his sleeping bag and tent first in Milo, then traveled on to Canada, where he obtained the Canadian money. She believes he then traveled back to Millinocket Lake, where he left his vehicle, and began to walk the Appalachian Trail.

Since then, Robertson has written to every hiker who signed the register at Baxter State Park in July and August 1991 and enclosed a photograph of her son. One hiker provided Robertson with a slide he had taken of a man sitting on the edge of Cooper Brook. The slide was later computer enhanced and enlarged enough for Robertson to make positive identification of her son.

The last clue in his disappearance may be the scattered pages of a journal that a guide from Penobscot found in an area south of Cooper Brook off the Appalachian Trail.

Because she believed her son might take employment with a guide service or hunting camp, Robertson sent letters about her son’s disappearance to Maine guides. But it wasn’t until he read a NEWS account about Jacoby’s disappearance that contained the fact that he was last seen at Cooper Brook, did Wallace Wardell Jr. contact Robertson.

In a letter to Robertson in November of 1993, Wardell said that a couple of years earlier he and others had found pages of a personal journal scattered through the woods, while on an annual fishing trip to Cooper Brook. On this trip, he noticed some papers strewn through the woods near the Cooper Brook lean-to. “They caught my eye because they were writing paper, not the usual litter left by fishermen or hikers. What it turned out to be was someone’s diary (daily log and happenings etc.),” he wrote. He said the men briefly looked at some of the writings and thought it quite peculiar that a hiker would discard his or her diary.

Clukey said if police had known about the journal pages earlier, the site could have been searched and it could have been determined if they were Jacoby’s.

“Personally, I don’t think he’s dead. That’s just a gut feeling. I just can’t believe he would come all the way up here and do everything he did, just to kill himself,” Clukey said. He believes Jacoby may have changed his identify and may be working in Maine or Canada.

The .38 caliber revolver and a bank card have never been recovered, although no funds have been withdrawn since his disappearance, according to Clukey.

“I’ve never seen a case like this before. He had everything going for him, he was already enrolled in college. It’s strange,” Clukey said.

Jacoby is about 5 feet, 10 inches tall, weighing about 165 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. He is left-handed and has a small birthmark above his right eye. Anyone with information about Jacoby should call the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department at 1-800-432-7372 or Robertson at (410) 592-3109.


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