Beryl Jean Reed was 71 years old when she was last known to be in Stonington, Maine, on July 2, 1997. Public missing-person records identify her as a White/Caucasian woman with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 2 inches to 5 feet 3 inches tall and approximately 140 to 145 pounds. She and her husband, Douglas Reed, were connected to Waterville, Maine, and memorial information published about Beryl describes a life that began in Reading, Pennsylvania, where she was born on May 26, 1926, the
daughter of George and Frances May Benstead Evans. That same memorial account says she graduated from Mount Penn High School in 1944, married Douglass K. Reed on June 26, 1948, and had lived in Waterville for many years. It also remembers her as active in the Central Maine Garden Club, where she was a two-time Tri-Color Award winner, details that give some sense of the person behind the case file: a wife, community member, gardener, and older woman whose ordinary life became tied to a sudden tragedy.
On the day Beryl disappeared, she, Douglas, and two friends were flying from Stonington to Pittsfield when their chartered private plane crashed into Penobscot Bay. The flight began in a coastal Maine community and ended in the cold, difficult waters of the bay before all four people aboard could be brought home. Public case summaries state that the pilot and one passenger were recovered after the crash, but Beryl and Douglas were not. The available records do not describe Beryl as having walked away, vanished separately, or left under suspicious circumstances; instead, the known facts place her disappearance within the aftermath of an aviation crash over water, where recovery conditions can be extremely challenging and where the sea itself can prevent families from receiving the answers and physical return they need.
The official NamUs entry for Beryl Reed lists her as Missing Person case MP53572 and records her date of last contact as July 2, 1997, from Stonington, Maine. The investigating agency is identified in the public data as the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office, with the agency case number 97-3067, and the case was reported on the same date she was last seen. Douglas Reed is separately identified in public missing-person sources as NamUs case MP53577, tying the husband and wife together in the same tragedy. Beryl’s NamUs profile does not list a nickname, distinctive physical features, clothing, accessories, transportation details, or recovery circumstances in the publicly available fields, leaving the central narrative focused on the flight, the crash, and the fact that she and Douglas were not recovered while the others aboard were.
Maine State Police notes that the Maine Office of Chief Medical Examiner is the official state clearinghouse for missing people in Maine and that NamUs is used to help track and manage missing-person case files. NamUs itself describes the system as a national centralized repository and resource center for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases. In Beryl’s case, that means the public record remains a formal missing-person file rather than simply a family memory or local tragedy. The database preserves her name, identifying details, last known location, date of last contact, and the investigating agency information so that her case remains searchable and connected to any future information that might help clarify what happened after the plane went down.
Beryl Reed’s case is a sorrowful account of a life interrupted not by a long trail of uncertain sightings, but by a single catastrophic event that left two people recovered and two still missing. She was a 71-year-old woman with a long personal history, a husband beside her, and a destination ahead when the aircraft traveling from Stonington toward Pittsfield crashed into Penobscot Bay. Public sources indicate that Beryl and Douglas Reed were not recovered, and the available case information does not provide a confirmed recovery or a resolution status of alive or deceased. The overview of the case is that Beryl Reed, age 71, was last seen on July 2, 1997, in Stonington, Maine, after boarding a private flight with her husband and two friends; the plane crashed into Penobscot Bay, the pilot and one passenger were recovered, and Beryl and Douglas remained missing in a case held in public records through NamUs and investigated by the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office.Last Seen: Jul 2, 1997
