This is my last column. After 16 years with this newspaper – 10 as a reporter, six as an editorial writer – it’s time to trade this wonderful experience in for a new one in Washington, D.C.

What to write about in this last column has been on my mind for several weeks. A phone call and a recent news event led to my decision to write about the saddest, most maddening thing I encountered during these last 16 years. This is about Mike Phillips.

I first met Mike in 1991: I was a reporter covering the murder trial of Richard Uffelman, he was the 12-year-old son of the victims. His parents, Florence and Michael, had been shot to death two years earlier on the road fronting their Machiasport home during an after-supper walk. This was the infamous “videotaped murder” – the explosion of gunfire from the Uffelman home across the road had been recorded by a camera the Phillipses had set up in their kitchen window to document the persistent harassment they had been subjected to by their neighbor. The camera also recorded the terrified shrieks of a little boy watching, from that kitchen window, his parents being slaughtered.

Throughout the trial, I sat directly behind this sweet, sincere kid and his sister Sandra, with whom he had gone to live with in Indiana after his parents were killed. On the stand, Uffelman lied about himself – he was an undercover government agent rooting out an espionage ring at the Cutler Naval Station -and about Mike’s parents – they were part of the conspiracy. Uffelman proudly described how he had turned his large and stately home into a fortress: more than 40 loaded firearms stashed throughout, secret passages, elaborate alarm systems, caches of ammo, food and gold coins lest the spies succeeded and civilization collapsed. Uffelman even more proudly described how he had trained his two sons, 10 and 12, in military tactics so well that they, too, opened fire at their dad’s command. At the precise second the video reached the crucial moment, Uffelman, carefully timing it with his wristwatch, leapt from his chair at the defense table and lunged, screaming, at Mike in a heartless attempt to distract the jury. Mike ran from the courtroom, shrieking in terror again. That’s the sad part.

Uffelman was convicted of those two murders. Three years later, 1994, Mike won a wrongful death civil suit in Maine Superior Court and a judgment of $513,000. That sum, the judge made clear, was based not upon the theoretical value of a little boy’s parents’ lives, but upon an assessment of the tangible Uffelman assets that should be available to Mike: the insurance settlement on Uffelman’s house, which had mysteriously burned to the ground shortly after his arrest; the estate of Uffelman’s deceased father, the huge collections of guns, cars, military memorabilia and gold coins.

About as good an ending as one could hope for.

Here’s the maddening part. Two years ago, I got a call from a woman in Elkhart, Ind., named Brenda Everett, the mother of Shelly, the young woman Mike was going to marry. The ending, Brenda told me, had not been good. Mike had yet to receive one cent of that settlement. No one in Maine government could explain what happened to those considerable assets, no one offered to find out. All that was left were the four guns the Uffelmans used in the shooting and the vacant lot where the Uffelman house once stood. All Mike could hope to get, then, were the murder weapons and the scene of the crime. Provided he could pay to have the guns shipped to Indiana and pay the back taxes on the land.

I went to Elkhart that summer, 2001. Mike was still sweet and sincere, but growing up had been hard. Sandra – she’d lost here parents, too – couldn’t cope, her marriage had broken up. Mike spent most of his teen years in a group home, hadn’t done well in school, messed around too much with drugs and alcohol, worked a series of dead-end fast-food jobs. Thanks to Brenda and Shelly, things were looking up.

He was planning on going back to school, getting married and having a real life. Just some of that settlement, a fraction of what he was rightfully owed by order of a Maine Superior Court, would be a great help.

Help, however, was something Maine government was determined not to offer.

There were clear signs those assets had been diverted, that is, stolen. Uffelman, despite being in prison, not even holding a low-wage prison job and owing Mike $513,000, had somehow been able to send his two sons to college. The younger, when not attending classes at a $35,000-a-year private school, was traipsing around the country participating in competitive ballroom dancing. He’s going to what Uffleman boastfully described to me as “an Ivy League caliber” college, wearing a tux and doing the tango.

Mike’s trying to scrape enough coins together to go to community college, wearing a paper hat and cleaning the fryer.

This raised serious questions; the answer from the King administration and the state Attorney General’s Office was “tough luck.” Upholding the judgment was a civil matter, Mike needed to hire a lawyer and chase the money down; he had to prove an order of a Maine Superior Court had been defied. That Mike couldn’t afford a lawyer also was tough luck – he didn’t qualify for state legal aid because he wasn’t a resident of Maine. That he wasn’t a resident of Maine because his parents had been murdered here when he was 10 didn’t matter. Eventually, he got the murder weapons – they sold for $1,100 less shipping costs – but never could pay the back taxes on the crime scene.

I called Brenda the other day. Things have not gone well. Mike and Shelly split up – he didn’t go back to school, wrote some bad checks, had fallen back into some bad habits and quit showing up at work. They hadn’t seen or heard from him since last summer. “Mike just gave up on himself,” Brenda said.

“But,” she added, “Maine gave up on him first.”

Put another way, a tough, resilient kid almost overcame the worst thing that could happen to any kid. It took the government of the state of Maine telling him to go to hell to finish him off. That was the phone call. Here’s the news event.

You probably read last week about the Maine Superior Court justice who ruled that a guy who’s in jail for burning his house down can sue the insurance company for not paying his claim. Maine’s justice system has the time and resources to entertain a frivolous lawsuit by an arsonist but can’t lift a finger to help a kid whose parents were murdered and then who was robbed by the murderer. Hope you’re as mad as I am.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.