3 found stabbed in home in remote northern Maine; police seek driver of victim’s pickup

3 found stabbed in home in remote northern Maine

AMITY, Maine — Two men and a boy were found fatally stabbed in a home in remote northern Maine, putting townspeople on edge as police hunted for someone who apparently took off in a pickup truck belonging to one of the victims, authorities said Thursday.

The bodies were discovered by a relative around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday in the home on U.S. Route 1 in Amity, a town of 200 residents near the Canadian border.

The victims were 55-year-old Jeffrey Ryan and his 10-year-old son, Jesse, who lived in the home, as well as 30-year-old Jason Dehahn, a friend who also lived in Amity, police said.

The driver of the pickup “is a person of interest and should be considered dangerous,” said State Police spokesman Steve McCausland.

The deaths sent shock waves through Amity, a farming and logging community about 200 miles northeast of Portland. Residents are wondering what really happened in the tidy mobile home with a tree house and an aboveground pool in the front yard, resident Larry Hamilton said.

“Somebody has to be pretty cold to stab a kid,” Hamilton said. “That’s what bothers everybody so much, that there was a kid involved.”

Ryan and Dehahn lived two or three houses apart, said Selectman Joseph Ledger, who has delivered firewood to both homes in recent years.

Ledger said Dehahn was a drywall hanger while Ryan was disabled and didn’t work. He said Jesse Ryan would have attended elementary school in the next town.

State police detectives were gathering evidence and interviewing relatives and friends, police said. The bodies were taken to the medical examiner’s office in Augusta, where autopsies were scheduled.

Police wouldn’t talk about evidence, a motive or possible suspects.

Authorities in Maine and at Canadian border crossings were concentrating on locating Jeffrey Ryan’s 1989 Ford F-150 pickup truck with Maine registration 4155 RY. The vehicle was missing from the home when the bodies were discovered, McCausland said.

By 7 p.m., police had received a lot of calls from the public about suspected sightings of the truck, but McCausland said none were confirmed.