Longtime Maine State Police detective dies

A longtime Maine State Police detective who investigated some of the state’s most grisly homicides died recently after a yearlong battle with lung cancer.

Family members, friends and former colleagues Tuesday remembered Barry Shuman, who lived in Brewer most of his adult life, as a gifted and revered investigator. He was 65.

“I’ve gotten phone calls from people that I haven’t seen in 15 years giving their condolences,” Shuman’s older brother, Chuck Shuman, 69, of Brewer said. “He was very well-respected.”

Originally from the Boston area, Shuman moved to Brewer with his family in 1955, where he met and befriended William Cohen, future U.S. senator from Maine and U.S. secretary of defense.

“We go back a very long way,” Cohen said Tuesday by phone from Washington D.C. “He was a real humanitarian; he loved helping people … we stayed in touch over the years, he always made sure he looked after his friends and family.”

Shuman joined the Air National Guard as soon as he turned 18, but in 1969 “left a good job at the Guard, and took a pay cut to work at the state police,” his brother said.

He stayed with the state police for 28 years and worked as a court officer for the Penobscot Country Sheriff’s Department after that.

“He loved police work,” said Chuck Shuman, who himself was a police officer in Brewer for many years. “His whole life was being a police officer, he was at it 24 hours a day. If someone needed his help while he was off-duty, he wouldn’t hesitate.”

“That’s the way we all were back in those days, that was our life, there were no eight-hour shifts,” said Ralph Pinkham of Lamoine, who worked with and supervised Shuman for many years with the Maine State Police. “I couldn’t even give you a number of the amount of cases we worked together.”

Shuman may well be remembered for leading the investigation of one of the state’s most high-profile murder cases, the 1990 slaying of 18-year-old Lisa Garland.

The case remains significant because it was the first case that solidified the use and acceptance of DNA evidence in Maine. It took detectives five years and about 8,000 hours working the case, but David Fleming finally was convicted of the rape and murder of Garland.

“He was very fair and very thorough,” Chuck Shuman said of his brother. “He was an excellent investigator.”

Pinkham, who took some credit for convincing Barry Shuman to join the Maine State Police, agreed.

“I’d be surprised to hear anyone say anything bad about Barry,” Pinkham said.

Chuck Shuman said his brother found out he had cancer about a year and two months ago and moved to Navarre, a suburb of Pensacola on the Florida panhandle, with his second wife, Linda.

“He was going through chemo [therapy], but he was always upbeat; he always acted like he was going to beat it,” Chuck Shuman said.

The elder Shuman paused for a moment before adding, “I like talking about my brother but I don’t like to focus on his illness because I don’t remember him that way.”

“He was always hopeful, always optimistic that things would turn out well,” Cohen said.

A memorial service for Shuman will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, June 11 at East Orrington Congregational Church.