The killing that sent shockwaves through small-town Maine: ‘Everyone’s life has been ruined here’

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Mushero said in an interview, pulling out a vape pen to settle his nerves.

These days in Frankfort, there aren’t a lot of people eager to talk about Young.

It’s been half a year since Young, then 17, was charged in the death of Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart — a brutal crime that drew national attention to Young’s hometown and to a campground an hour’s drive south in Union, where Stewart was killed.

Stewart, a 48-year-old contractor from coastal Maine, had planned to spend parts of her summer inland, at Union’s Mic Mac Cove Family Campground. On the evening of July 2, one of her first nights there, Stewart set off paddleboarding on 600-acre Crawford Pond. She never made it back.

Early the next morning, first responders found her body, bludgeoned and strangled, close to an island in the pond. Authorities spent two frantic weeks searching for a suspect. Then, on July 16, they arrested Young, who had also been staying at Mic Mac with his parents.

Young was charged with murder and entered a denial, equivalent to a not guilty plea. The Maine attorney general’s office is seeking to move his case out of juvenile court and try him as an adult, but a judge has yet to rule on the matter. Young’s attorney, Jeremy Pratt, declined to comment for this story, as did his parents, Jesse and Tara.

Because nearly every record in the case remains under seal, at least for now, little information has emerged about what authorities learned in their investigation. But newly surfaced police reports and interviews with those who knew Young fill out a portrait of a young man who struggled with behavioral disorders, faced bullying and physical violence, and did not receive enough of the mental health treatment he needed.

In Frankfort, residents are wary of discussing the young man who grew up among them. His extended family lives in this quiet community of 1,200 people on the Penobscot River, a town once famous for a granite quarry that closed long ago. “He’s just a very angry kid,” said one neighbor, who declined to provide her name.

Up and down this part of Midcoast Maine, those who knew Stewart remain shocked by the brutality of her killing, and deeply frustrated by the lack of any official explanation, as the case progresses behind closed doors.

“Your brain can’t grieve in the normal way,” said Bethany Parmley, a lifelong friend. “And it’s never-ending.”

Sunny Stewart was looking forward to a summer by the water.

Her family had moved from the Boston area to Union when she was in third grade, Parmley said, and she loved the ponds that dot the wooded town known for its annual blueberry festival. Stewart had settled half an hour south in the fishing village of Tenants Harbor, but remained fond of Union. Last summer, she hauled an old camper she’d repaired up to Mic Mac campground, hoping to spend time there when she wasn’t too busy with work.

“Her intention was to use it for a staycation,” said Caroline Keefe, a longtime friend. “Have friends and family, do cookouts, use the pond, just be in nature.”

The weather had been lousy that June, and Stewart hadn’t been able to spend much time at the campground, recalled Parmley, who’d first befriended Stewart in third grade. But near the end of the month, a mutual friend was in town, and Stewart decided to host a barbecue at her campsite.

“She’d be the one to call and say, ‘So-and-so is going to be home for the next week. Let’s get everybody together,’” Parmley said. “She was the glue who kept everyone connected through our adult life.”

Stewart was close with her sister, Kim Ware, and her nephews, but she never married and had no children of her own. “She was a very independent person,” Parmley said. “Her friends were her family.” (Ware declined to comment for this story.)

Stewart’s other love was the water. After studying marine biology in college, she worked a series of jobs that kept her close to the sea. Her friends called her a “Jill of all trades” — she was a ship captain, a lobsterwoman, and a bartender on a beach in the Virgin Islands, where she lived on a sailboat.

“She was not afraid to try anything,” said Michael Taylor, who met Stewart nearly 25 years ago. “She could come across as intimidating, but she was super fun and adventurous and silly and very affectionate.”

Tennie Komar considered Stewart an adopted daughter, they were so close. “Her personality was just like her name,” Komar said. “If she zeroed in on you, she gave you a lot of attention, and she wanted to know you.”

Stewart eventually moved to a small home with a slate roof she restored in Tenants Harbor and became a contractor, focusing on carpentry and finish work. She was particularly interested in encouraging other women to enter the trades.

When Keefe was going through a tough period in her early 20s, Stewart invited her to help out on a demolition job — and then spent the next five years mentoring Keefe, who was two decades younger.

“She just instilled this immense competence and confidence and sense of empowerment that I had never felt before,” said Keefe, who now runs her own interior painting and gardening business. “I’ve never been friends with another woman who’s been such a champion for other women.”

Stewart’s strength, independence, and ferocity made it all the more confounding to friends when they learned she’d been brutally killed just days after the barbecue.

“At every step of the way, it was like, this can’t be real,” Parmley said. “This doesn’t make sense. How could this have happened?”

For two weeks, police combed the area for clues as the deepening mystery drew national attention but few leads. At one point, authorities requested voluntary DNA samples from men who’d been near Crawford Pond, which is surrounded by camps and homes but has no public access. Katharine Lunt, owner of Mic Mac campground, later told ABC News she assumed a stranger was responsible.

“It’s not a place where these things happen,” she said. “It’s not a place where we’re suspect of each other.”

During the two-week investigation, Young did nothing to arouse suspicion, Lunt told the Midcoast Villager, a local news organization that has covered the case extensively. He was instead a helpful presence at the campground. He offered to help people wrangle their pets and lent a hand with yard work. He made wood crafts to give as gifts to other campers.

On July 16, Young approached authorities offering to help. He said he had information about the case. Young led them out on the pond and to the island, but guided them to the opposite end from where Stewart’s body was found.

Something about their time with Young made investigators suspicious.

Later that night, police returned to his family’s camper and spent two hours there. At the end of their interview, at around 10:30 p.m., they took Young into custody.

After Young’s arrest, Lunt reviewed security footage from cameras she’d set up around the campground, according to the Villager. One video, which authorities had reviewed during their investigation, showed comings and goings on the waterfront on July 2: Young heading out in an aluminum boat and, later, Stewart setting out on her paddleboard.

Only Young returned.

When Mushero first met Young in third grade, he was a happy, outgoing child who loved to play outdoors. As they were growing up, the pair spent weekends at Young’s home in Frankfort, building treehouses, fishing, riding four-wheelers, and walking through the woods, Mushero said.

By middle school, Young’s behavior had begun to change. “The more the years went by, he got quieter and quieter,” Mushero said. “He didn’t talk.”

Mushero also began to notice violence in the household. He said he saw both parents scream at Young, and his father, Jesse, hit him with boards, sometimes drawing blood. Mushero’s older sister, Ivy, who dated Young’s older brother, described similar events.

“I’ve seen his father whack him with a stick quite a few times,” Ivy said.

Jaxon and Ivy Mushero’s mother, Danielle Michaud, recalled her son calling her one night when he was staying at the Young home. “I’m scared,” he told her. “The father’s being mean and yelling and screaming.”

Court records obtained by the Globe document an incident of violence in the household. In March 2015, when Young was 7, his father had been drinking and pushed his mother, aimed a gun at her, and fired birdshot into the wall behind her, according to an affidavit filed in court by the Maine State Police. Records don’t indicate whether Young or his brother was in the home at the time.

Jesse Young pleaded guilty to a charge of domestic violence reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon. He participated in a program for batterers and avoided jail time.

Years later, in January 2023, 15-year-old Young showed up to school with a black eye and told a teacher his father had hit him, according to police records obtained by the Midcoast Villager. When a sheriff’s deputy sought to speak with Young, a special education student at the school, he refused and asked for his mother to pick him up.

Jesse Young later told a sheriff’s deputy that he’d hit his son when the boy erupted over being asked to help out with yard work.

“He gets pissed off when you tell him to do something that he doesn’t want to do — and just started swearing in my face, throws shit,” Jesse Young said on an audio recording of the interview. (Neither parent is explicitly identified in the recording, but it’s clear that the subjects are Jesse and Tara Young.)

During the interview, Young’s parents maintained they had to get physical with their son to keep him from hurting them or others. He suffered from a host of mental health conditions, Tara Young told the deputy, including intermittent explosive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

The parents told the deputy, Merl Reed, that Young had recently beaten up his mother, splitting her lip and giving her a black eye. She showed Reed a photo.

“Ouch,” Reed said.

Without Young’s medicine, Jesse Young said, “you’ve got an animal on your hands.” He said his son would go on a rampage — smashing vehicles with a pickaxe, punching holes in the walls of the home, taking down trees. Jesse Young said these explosive episodes terrified his son, and when they passed, Young would apologize.

“He’s the sweetest, nicest kid you’ll ever meet in your [expletive] life. And then he’s like a crazy little psycho,” Tara Young said, with a sad laugh. “And it sucks, and there’s nothing we can do.”

“I’m telling you, the kid turns evil,” Jesse Young said.

Young was receiving some services at school and had taken part in programs at Northern Light Acadia Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Bangor, Tara Young told Reed. But he’d been stuck on a waitlist for in-home behavioral health services for years.

Jesse Young fretted that his son could soon find himself in more serious trouble.

“He’s gonna end up in jail if he…” he said, trailing off. Messing up when you’re a kid is one thing. “When you’re 18 and you’re doing this shit, now you’re in trouble.”

Throughout the interview, Reed repeatedly reassured Young’s parents that Jesse Young was unlikely to face consequences. “I don’t see anything coming out of it, to be honest with you,” the deputy said, adding that his office had been inundated lately with similar referrals related to other families.

Records don’t indicate whether Reed was aware of Jesse Young’s earlier domestic violence conviction, and Waldo County Sheriff Jason Trundy declined to comment. District Attorney Natasha Irving, whose office chose not to prosecute Jesse over the black eye incident, said it can be difficult to bring charges in cases of alleged abuse, particularly when a child — the only witness — refuses to talk.

“With parents, you have to be able to show that it wasn’t within the normal bounds of parental discipline. You have to be able to show that the parent was reckless, intentional, knowing,” she said. “And I think when the factors here were looked at, there wasn’t any criminal act on behalf of the parent.”

Irving said it’s the mental health treatment infrastructure, not the criminal justice system, that should have better intervened to support the Young family. But, she said, services simply aren’t available for young Mainers in need.

“I don’t know how many people in our community have to suffer,” Irving said. “In this instance, a woman was murdered. And if this kid wasn’t on a waitlist for years, because [services] don’t exist in Maine, potentially this could have been prevented.”

Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said the state could not comment on specific cases involving juveniles. But she said her department had been “working diligently to improve access to behavioral health services for children in Maine,” particularly since the state reached a settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice in November 2024 requiring reforms.

As Young grew older, his behavior grew more violent, according to Jaxon and Ivy Mushero.

“He was really aggressive all the time — like, angry all the time,” Jaxon Mushero said. Young was a big, strong kid — court papers list him as 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighing 250 pounds — and he would get in fights at school, according to Mushero.

“He was picked on a lot,” he said. “People would make fun of him.”

In the interview with Reed, Jesse Young said his son had “gotten stove all to hell in school” and had “come home with skin taken right off his face.” Tara Young claimed a teacher had “beat the hell out of my kid and nothing was done about that.”

Nicholas Raymond, superintendent of the district that includes Young’s former high school, Hampden Academy, declined to comment.

Mushero, who describes himself as Young’s only friend, said he tried to discuss Young’s mental health issues with him, but to no avail. They had certain challenges in common. At one point, Mushero said, they took part in a program at Acadia, the psychiatric hospital, at the same time.

Young also resisted discussing any violence he allegedly faced at home.

“He’d always tell me, like, I’m afraid to tell somebody because I’m afraid that somebody’s gonna judge me for it,” Mushero said. “And he didn’t want to get in trouble by his parents even more.”

Mushero said he has not spoken with his friend since Sunny Stewart was killed last July, and he’s not sure whether he’ll ever make contact again.

“It’s kind of tough to even sort out all those types of things,” he said. “I don’t even know.”

Six months after Stewart’s death, on a brisk, clear afternoon in late January, a trio of snowmobilers crossed frozen Crawford Pond, passing through the closed campground. They stopped at Mic Mac Market, which is also owned by Lunt, to fill up with gas. A sign on the market door displayed Stewart’s name and a silhouette of a woman on a paddleboard at sunset.

“#JUSTICEFORSUNNY,” it read.

As in Frankfort, residents of Union seem unwilling to talk publicly about the crime that shook their community last summer. The snowmobilers did not want to be interviewed, and Lunt did not respond to repeated requests for comment. At her market, employees said she was not available.

Stewart’s family and friends also want justice for Sunny — or at least answers about what happened.

“We get so few bits and pieces of information,” Parmley said. “I know it’s very frustrating for the [Stewart] family. They have no closure. This is ongoing for them.”

If a judge finds Young competent to stand trial and allows him to be tried as an adult, authorities are expected to unseal details of their investigation and their reasons for charging him. If Young is convicted as an adult, he would face 25 years to life in prison. If tried as a minor, he could only be held in a juvenile detention facility until his 21st birthday, according to the Maine judiciary.

In late January, the Midcoast Villager reported, Young was the subject of a closed-door hearing in a Rockland courthouse, but attorneys on either side of the case declined to discuss it. He has been held at Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, the state’s only secure juvenile facility.

In the months after Stewart’s death, those closest to her sought to celebrate her life in the way she lived it: visiting the Virgin Islands, paddling together on Crawford Pond, and tossing sunflowers from a procession of boats in Tenants Harbor on what would have been her 49th birthday. During that memorial, Kim Ware stood on the shore of an island and scattered her sister’s ashes on the water.

They’ve all struggled to make any sense of what happened last summer.

Taylor, who now teaches vocational skills to those with mental illness at a state hospital, said he’s tried to consider what could have led a person to kill his friend.

“I mean, I’ll never understand,” he said. “But all I can do is have empathy for people who are in pain.”

In the days and weeks after Stewart’s death, Keefe felt physically terrified — unsure whether the killer was somebody she knew, or a perfect stranger. “As a single woman who’s grown up in Maine and gone out into the woods all my life, my illusion of safety was completely shattered,” she said. “Walking to my car felt life threatening.”

When a 17-year-old was charged in the crime, Keefe was even more shocked.

She’s not sure what she hopes will happen next in the criminal justice system — what justice even means for her friend and for the troubled young man accused of killing her.

“I think one of the things I really hope for is systemic change to prevent these sorts of victimizations of all parties,” she said. “Everyone’s life has been ruined here.”

Paul Heintz can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @paulheintz.