Norman Closson, III, known by the nickname Buddy, was 19 years old when he was last known to be in Bass Harbor, Maine, on February 24, 1991. He was a young White/Caucasian man with blond or strawberry-colored hair and blue eyes, standing about 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing about 135 pounds. Public missing-person listings identify him through NamUs case MP60647 and place his disappearance in Bass Harbor, a coastal community in Tremont, Hancock County, Maine.
At the time he vanished, Norman was described as wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, a black leather jacket, black hip boots, and a white baseball hat. A scar on the bridge of his nose was listed as a distinguishing feature, a small human detail that remains part of how investigators and loved ones hoped he might be recognized.
The circumstances of Norman’s disappearance were tied to the sea and to the dangerous work of commercial fishing. Online case information states that he was a crew member aboard the fishing boat Risky Business when it sank. Additional public discussion of the NamUs-listed cases identifies the vessel as a scalloper and places the loss off Frenchboro, Maine, with Norman aboard alongside captain Lawrence Wayne Robbins and fellow crew member Benjamin Eugene Day. Benjamin Day, 21, was also listed as missing from Bass Harbor on February 24, 1991, while Lawrence Robbins, 36, was listed as missing from Bernard, Maine; all three men were connected to the same vessel and the same day. The available public records are sparse, and the wording in Norman’s own listing is incomplete, but the surrounding NamUs-derived entries describe a crew caught in a maritime disaster during scalloping work off the Maine coast.
The loss of Risky Business was not an isolated sorrow in Maine’s fishing communities. A later Bar Harbor Story remembrance of people lost at sea noted that in 1991 the scalloper Risky Business and her crew, Lawrence Robbins, Benjamin Day, and Norman Closson, were presumed lost during dragging. That same remembrance placed their names among others from the region whose lives were taken or left unresolved by the ocean, underscoring the harsh reality faced by fishing families along the Maine coast. For Norman’s family and community, the official details may be brief, but the meaning is not: a 19-year-old man went out as part of a working crew and did not return.
The investigative record available to the public identifies Maine Marine Patrol, Division II, as the agency connected to Norman’s case, with the reported agency case number MP91-001326 and a reported date of February 25, 1991. Maine State Police explains that Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner serves as the state clearinghouse for missing people and uses NamUs to help track and manage missing-person case files, while NamUs itself is described by federal data sources as a national repository and resource center for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases. In Norman’s case, a paternal DNA reference sample is listed in the provided case data as complete at the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory, reflecting the continuing importance of identification resources in long-term missing-person and lost-at-sea cases.
What remains publicly known is a concise but painful story: Norman Closson, III was a 19-year-old from the Bass Harbor area, remembered as Buddy, who disappeared on February 24, 1991, while serving as a crew member aboard the fishing vessel Risky Business. The boat was associated with scalloping work off the Maine coast near Frenchboro, and the same incident also involved Lawrence Robbins and Benjamin Day. Norman’s public case file preserves his age, appearance, clothing, and identifying scar, while broader Maine and NamUs resources preserve the framework through which the case continues to be recorded. The overview of the case is that Norman was a young fisherman lost in a vessel sinking off coastal Maine, one of three men connected to Risky Business whose names remain tied to the hazards of the sea and to the enduring hope that every lost person is remembered with care.Last Seen: Feb 24, 1991
