Reeves K. Johnson III was 31 years old when he vanished from the Kittery, Maine area in early February 1983. He was a White man with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 7 inches tall and 130 pounds, and he wore eyeglasses. He had moved to Kittery from Pennsylvania in 1977, rented a small cabin on Jewett Court, and worked as a welder at Donnelly Manufacturing in Exeter, New Hampshire.
Those who have described his life in Maine have painted a picture of a quiet, independent man who played guitar, kept mostly to himself, rode his bicycle around the area, and stayed closely connected to his family, especially through regular Sunday phone calls. He also lived with severe hypoglycemia, a medical condition that could become dangerous without proper care.
The exact date Reeves was last seen has been reported differently across public records and reporting. NamUs lists his date of last contact as February 2, 1983, while other sources report that he last went to work on February 3, 1983, and did not return the next day. Because the available information is not fully consistent, the exact date is not known with certainty. What is clear is that by mid-February, Reeves had stopped communicating with his family, had not appeared at work again, and had not followed the familiar patterns of his daily life. When his father became worried after Reeves missed family contact, Kittery police were asked to check on him. An officer went to his one-room cabin and found troubling signs: the door was open or unlocked, the pipes were frozen, there was no indication that anyone had been there recently, and many of his belongings were gone.
The condition of Reeves’s cabin deepened the concern that this was not a simple decision to leave. A snowstorm had struck the area shortly after he was last known to be at work, yet there were no tracks in the fresh snow around the cabin when police later checked the property. Numerous personal items and valuables were missing, including his television, guitar, record player and amplifier, records, clothing, and valuable welding equipment. Some items were left behind, including guitar strings he had purchased shortly before he disappeared, stereo equipment packaging, damaged speakers, and his contact lenses. To investigators and family, the mix of missing and abandoned possessions created an unsettling picture: the home had been emptied in a way that did not look like a careful, ordinary move by Reeves himself.
In the days after Reeves disappeared, someone conducted financial activity connected to him. Public accounts state that his bank accounts were drained or nearly drained, checks were used for purchases, and items such as groceries, thermal underwear, bookshelf speakers, and car stereo equipment were bought in the Portsmouth and Stratham, New Hampshire area. The purchases stood out because Reeves was known as financially responsible, and some of the items did not seem to fit him, including thermal underwear in sizes that were not his. Bank tellers reportedly identified the person making withdrawals as Reeves, but the circumstances have remained clouded by uncertainty, including the possibility that someone may have been impersonating him. His red 1972 Volkswagen was later found at an Exxon station in the Elwyn Park area of Portsmouth, where a mechanic said a man identified from a photo as Reeves wanted quick repairs because he was heading south. What “south” meant has never been firmly established.
One of the most haunting events in the case happened after Reeves’s final paycheck became part of the search for answers. A detective had asked Donnelly Manufacturing to hold the check until Reeves came to claim it, hoping that would confirm he was alive and safe. Instead, after someone identifying himself as Reeves called asking about it, the check was mailed. Reeves’s parents traveled from Philadelphia and watched his post office box, hoping their son would appear. A man they did not know arrived with the key to the box. When Reeves’s mother, Barbara Johnson, confronted him and asked where her son was, the man said Reeves was at an apartment in Portsmouth and that she could follow him there. As they left the post office, he ran away and was not seen again. Barbara managed to take a photo, but the man raised his hand, blocking his face; investigators have said the visible detail included a bright red hat.
For decades, the case remained painfully quiet, with few leads and no recovery of Reeves. His family was left with absence instead of answers, a kind of grief made harder by the lack of certainty. In 2021, Kittery Police Detective Brian Cummer renewed attention on the case and began rebuilding the timeline from limited old records. Investigators later publicized new details in hopes of reaching people who knew Reeves in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One lead came from a 1978 letter in which Reeves mentioned a woman named Cheryl, believed to have been a former girlfriend; police have said she is not a suspect, but they hope she may know more about Reeves’s life, friends, or routine. Another later-discovered detail showed that Reeves had worked as a dishwasher at the Borderline restaurant on Route 1 in Kittery in 1981, across from the Kittery Trading Post, and investigators asked former employees or anyone who remembered him to come forward.
Reeves Johnson’s case remains an unresolved missing person case, with no public case-resolution status indicating that he has been found alive or deceased. The Kittery Police Department has continued seeking information, and a $6,000 reward has been offered for information leading to his recovery or whereabouts. At its heart, the case is the story of a 31-year-old man who built a modest life in Maine, kept regular contact with the people who loved him, and then disappeared amid a cluster of disturbing events: an emptied cabin, unexplained purchases, depleted bank accounts, a repaired Volkswagen, a stranger at his post office box, and decades of silence. The overview of Reeves K. Johnson’s case is that he vanished from the Kittery area in early February 1983 under circumstances that investigators and his family have long considered suspicious, and the central unanswered questions remain what happened to him, who handled his belongings and money after he disappeared, and where Reeves can finally be found.Last Seen: Feb 2, 1983
