Islander’s death under investigation Southwest Harbor woman’s ‘severe’ injuries spur probe

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – Police are investigating whether the injuries that led to the death of a local woman were caused by an accident or an assault.

Jacqueline Evans, 83, a retired college educator who lived alone, died Sunday morning at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where she had been hospitalized since Friday, police said.

“She had some severe injuries, and she passed away,” Detective Sgt. Stephen Pickering of the Maine State Police said Sunday. “Now we are helping Southwest Harbor [police] figure out what happened.”

Evans was found lying on her kitchen floor at about 11:15 a.m. Friday after a friend went to the woman’s seaside cottage on Alder Lane to help her run errands. The elderly woman reportedly had trouble getting around and required some assistance.

Police said the friend found the front door locked, grew worried and called for help. A short time later, officers and emergency medical technicians entered the cottage and found Evans on the floor. She was unconscious or semiconscious at the time, they said.

Pickering said investigators were questioning Evans’ neighbors, family members and acquaintances over the weekend. He said nothing in her house seemed disturbed, and nothing appeared to be missing.

He declined Sunday to describe the woman’s injuries, pending the outcome of the investigation. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.

“She had some injuries, and we are trying to determine how they happened,” he said.

Evans is a former mathematics professor from Massachusetts who has lived in Southwest Harbor for the past 30 years. She earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1953 and wrote a book about mathematics in 1970.

She has a relative in Hampden, but the rest of her family lives in Massachusetts, police said.