Richard Danis was 26 years old when he disappeared from the waters off Cape Elizabeth, Maine, on February 1, 1982. Public case records identify him as a White/Caucasian male with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 11 inches to 6 feet tall, and weighing roughly 150 to 160 pounds. He was described as having a full beard, a medium build, and a small pinhole at the top of his right ear.
At the time he was last known to be aboard the fishing vessel Chica, he was reportedly wearing a blue vest, jeans, a red snowmobile suit, olive drab size 10 boots, and carrying a wallet. His case is listed in NamUs as MP53363, with the Maine Marine Patrol in Augusta identified as the investigating agency.
The disappearance of Richard Danis is tied to the loss of the Chica, a gillnetter that went down off the Maine coast with three men aboard: Richard Danis, Darren Lavigne, and Raymond Gregoire. NamUs-based public summaries describe the vessel as a 40-foot gillnetter and state that it sank about 40 miles southeast of Biddeford Pool, with only a hatch cover recovered afterward. A federal appellate opinion later described the Chica as a 36-foot fiberglass, single-screw fishing vessel and gave a more detailed account of the conditions that day. According to that court record, gale warnings were visible at the Coast Guard station in South Portland on the morning of February 1, 1982, with winds forecast at 25 to 40 knots, though the forecast suggested they might decrease later.
Despite the warnings, the Chica left port around 5:00 p.m. that evening. The court record states that conditions were still severe when the Coast Guard received a distress signal shortly before 7:00 p.m. from Darren Lavigne, who was serving as master of the vessel. During a brief radio exchange, Lavigne reported that water was coming over the side and that the men were putting on survival suits before going up to retrieve the life raft. The transmission ended with the chilling message that the vessel was going over. Within an hour, two Coast Guard aircraft were searching near the coordinates Lavigne had provided, and the tanker Texaco Montana, which was close to the area, joined the effort. The search did not bring Richard, Darren, or Raymond home; only the vessel’s hatch cover and some minor debris were recovered, and the bodies of the crew were not found.
In the years that followed, the loss of the Chica was also examined through legal proceedings connected to the vessel and its operation. The federal appellate opinion notes that the case involved claims under admiralty law, the Jones Act, and general maritime law, and that there was conflicting expert testimony about the cause of the sinking. The trial court found that the casualty was proximately caused by the vessel broaching in adverse wind and sea conditions, while appellants had raised issues including the vessel’s seaworthiness, survival-suit training, life-raft stowage, and other equipment-related concerns. Those legal findings did not change the human reality at the center of the case: three young men went out to work at sea and never returned to their families.
Richard’s case remains documented in public missing-person records connected to Cape Elizabeth and the waters off southern Maine. The Maine State Police notes that Maine’s missing-person list is not a complete list of all missing people in the state and that the Office of Chief Medical Examiner serves as the official state clearinghouse, using NamUs to help manage missing-person case files. For Richard Danis, the available public record tells a spare but heartbreaking story: a 26-year-old fisherman, remembered with identifying details that make him more than a case number, was aboard the Chica with Darren Lavigne and Raymond Gregoire on February 1, 1982; the vessel encountered dangerous conditions off the Maine coast, sent a final distress call, sank southeast of Biddeford Pool, and left behind only debris, a hatch cover, and decades of unanswered grief for those who knew and loved the men.Last Seen: Feb 1, 1982
