Philip King Letarte was a White/Caucasian man with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 11 inches tall and 165 pounds, whose disappearance has remained part of Maine’s long-running missing-person record for decades. NamUs lists him as 64 years old when he was last known to have contact in Woodland, Maine, on June 2, 1986, while Maine State Police and some later public summaries describe him as 65; the difference appears in public records, but the central facts of the case remain
consistent. He was in Aroostook County, in the Woodland/New Sweden area, when an ordinary errand became the beginning of a painful unanswered story.
On June 2, 1986, Philip left the Tibbetts Road home of Robert Ericson in Woodland at about 3:00 p.m. According to the Maine State Police, he told Ericson he was going to Gary’s Exxon in New Sweden to buy cigarettes, a walk of about 3.5 miles. NamUs-related summaries also describe him as leaving the Robert Erickson residence to cash a check at a local gas station, returning briefly afterward, and then leaving again. These details suggest that Philip was still moving through familiar rural roads and local places shortly before he vanished, but they also leave important gaps about where exactly he went after that brief return and who, if anyone, may have spoken with him afterward.
The next reported sighting came after he left the residence. Maine State Police say that on June 3, 1986, a man matching Philip’s description was seen standing on Colby Road. NamUs-derived accounts identify the area as Colby Siding Road and describe him as appearing “feeble and confused,” a detail that gives the case a particularly vulnerable and heartbreaking quality. One later local news article about missing Aroostook residents reported a possible sighting on June 6, 1986, rather than June 3, showing that public summaries are not perfectly uniform; the most direct law-enforcement source places the sighting on June 3. What remains clear across the available accounts is that a man believed to be Philip was seen along Colby Road after he left, and after that, no confirmed public trace of him has been reported.
At the time he disappeared, Philip was reportedly wearing a dark blue sweater, a dark shirt, and blue jeans. His physical description—brown hair, brown eyes, approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall, and about 165 pounds—has been preserved in missing-person listings so that anyone with old memories, records, photographs, or recollections from the Woodland, New Sweden, Tibbetts Road, Gary’s Exxon, Colby Road, or Colby Siding Road areas might recognize the significance of what they know. The Maine State Police identify the case as connected to their Major Crimes Unit/Northern resources, and NamUs lists the investigating agency as Maine State Police Troop F in Houlton.
Philip’s disappearance appears to have begun with a simple trip on a rural Maine afternoon: he left a Woodland residence, reportedly headed toward a gas station in New Sweden, returned briefly according to NamUs-related summaries, left again, and was later possibly seen on Colby Road or Colby Siding Road in a condition that suggested confusion or frailty. From that point forward, the public record offers no confirmed explanation for where he went, what happened to him, or why he was never seen again. The case remains a quiet but enduring story of a man who vanished from Aroostook County in 1986, a family and community left without answers, and an investigation anchored in a small number of known details: Philip King Letarte was last connected to Woodland, Maine, on June 2, 1986; he may have been seen the following day on Colby Road; he has not been publicly reported found; and the available official sources continue to preserve his name, description, clothing, route, and circumstances in the hope that the missing pieces will one day be known.Last Seen: Jun 2, 1986
