Roger Merton Day was a 14-year-old boy from Porter, Maine, in Oxford County, when he vanished in the fall of 1973. Online case records describe him as a white male with brown hair and hazel eyes, about 5 feet 7 inches tall and approximately 130 pounds at the time he disappeared. He had a distinctive old injury: the tip of one of his middle fingers had previously been crushed or smashed flat in an accident. He was reportedly wearing a purple sweatshirt, denim jacket, jeans, and sneakers.
These details have remained important because so little else is publicly known about what happened after he left the safety and familiarity of home.
The central account of Roger’s disappearance is brief but heartbreaking. Maine State Police state that Roger was last seen at his home in Porter, Maine, and that he was supposedly going to spend the day at the Fryeburg Fair. According to Maine State Police, his father reported him missing on October 4, 1973, after Roger had last been seen the previous day; other public missing-person listings record his date of last contact or missing date as October 4, 1973. The shared point across the available sources is that Roger had expressed an interest in going to the Fryeburg Fair, and after that, he was never seen or heard from again. Investigators have not publicly confirmed whether he ever reached the fair.
The Fryeburg Fair was the place Roger was believed to have wanted to go, but the uncertainty surrounding whether he actually arrived there has left a painful gap in the case. Some reports say he was last seen on October 3, 1973, and reported missing on October 4; other missing-person databases list October 4 as the missing date. Because of that difference, the clearest way to understand the timeline is that Roger disappeared around the time he was believed to be heading from Porter toward the Fryeburg Fair, and his father reported him missing on October 4, 1973. What followed was not the return of a boy who had gone to a fair, but the beginning of a decades-long search for answers.
Roger’s case has continued to receive attention many years later. In 2018, WGME reported that Maine State Police were looking for new leads in his disappearance, emphasizing that he had been 14 years old, was last seen at his Porter home, had told family members he planned to go to the Fryeburg Fair, and was never seen or heard from again. In 2024, NEWS CENTER Maine reported on the 51st anniversary of the disappearance, again noting that police said Roger had told family members he planned to spend the day at the fair and that his father reported him missing the following day. These later appeals show that, even after many decades, investigators and the public have continued to treat Roger’s disappearance as unresolved and worthy of renewed attention.
The available public record also shows that law enforcement has continued to preserve identifying information that could help resolve the case. NamUs lists Roger’s case as MP19117 and associates it with NCMEC number 1210215. The investigating agency is the Maine State Police, Major Crimes Unit South. The case information includes physical descriptors, clothing, the distinctive finger injury, and DNA-related information indicating that a maternal reference sample was collected and processed through law-enforcement channels. Those details matter because, in long-term missing-person cases, even small identifiers and family DNA can become crucial if new evidence, unidentified remains, or a credible tip emerges years later.
Roger Day’s story remains the story of a young teenager who left behind a family, a hometown, and a question that has lasted for more than half a century. He was 14, from Porter, Maine, and was believed to have wanted to go to the Fryeburg Fair when he disappeared in early October 1973. He was described as 5 feet 7 inches tall, 130 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes, wearing casual clothes suited to a fall day in Maine. No public source reviewed confirms that he arrived at the fair, and no public source reviewed indicates that his disappearance has been resolved. The overview of the case is that Roger was last connected to his home in Porter and a reported plan to go to the Fryeburg Fair; his father reported him missing on October 4, 1973; he was never seen or heard from again; and the Maine State Police continue to be the agency connected to the unanswered search for what happened to Roger Merton Day.Last Seen: Oct 4, 1973
