Dead body discovered on island Whale-watchers spot corpse; autopsy today

WINTER HARBOR – A body found Sunday on Jordan Island has been sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta for an autopsy.

The body was spotted on the southwest shore of the island by people on a Bar Harbor whale-watching boat at around 11 a.m., Sgt. Marlowe Sonksen of the Maine Marine Patrol said Monday.

Sonksen said the Marine Patrol assisted in the recovery effort, but is not involved in the investigation. Maine State Police and the Bar Harbor Police Department are investigating the death, he said.

Efforts Monday to contact investigating officers or their supervisors were unsuccessful.

Bar Harbor police have been investigating the disappearance last month of Chris Conley, 30, of Bar Harbor. A police spokesman said Monday they have no information whether the body found Sunday is Conley’s.

A spokesman with the Medical Examiner’s Office said an autopsy is expected to be performed today.

Sonksen said he did not know whether the body was that of a woman or a man.

Jordan Island is in Frenchman Bay about a quarter-mile from the mainland portion of Winter Harbor. Bar Harbor, on the western side of Frenchman Bay, is about four miles away from the island.

Jordan Island is roughly 1 mile long and a half-mile wide.

According to Winter Harbor Town Manager Roger Barto, at low tide a channel of water separates Jordan Island from a sandbar that sticks out from the mainland. There might be some camps on the island but no one lives there year round, Barto said Monday.

Earlier this month, Acadia National Park rangers, Bar Harbor police, Maine Warden Service officers, search-and-rescue dogs and volunteers conducted large-scale searches for Conley on Mount Desert Island.

A house painter who officials have said has a history of disappearing for a few days at a time, Conley last was seen the morning of April 28 leaving his uncle’s house in the Bar Harbor village of Hulls Cove.