A teenager goes missing and her body is found several months later by hunters In the summer of 1984, fourteen-year-old Theresa "Terry" Duran, a white female, was eagerly anticipating the start of her freshman year at Gorham High School. Known for her outgoing personality and love for animals, Terry was a typical teenager who played softball and dreamt of becoming a veterinary technician. On Friday, July 27, 1984, she left her home in Gorham, Maine, telling her parents she was spending the weekend with friends.
She was expected to return that Sunday evening, but she never came home.
When Theresa didn't return as planned, her parents, Irene and Donald Duran, grew increasingly worried and reported her missing. For 35 agonizing days, they searched for their daughter, checking with her friends and scouring the local hangouts. The painful uncertainty came to a horrific end on September 2, 1984, when two people walking in a wooded area off a discontinued section of Plummer Road in Gorham discovered a decomposed body. The remains were soon identified as those of Theresa Duran. An autopsy revealed she had died from three gunshot wounds, confirming her death was a homicide.
The investigation into Theresa's murder led Maine State Police and Gorham police down a long and frustrating path. Friends and family insisted that the fun-loving teenager had no enemies. Early in the investigation, suspicion fell on her boyfriend and his friend, Mark Parker. A witness had placed Theresa with the two boys on a dirt bike on the day she was last seen alive. However, there wasn't enough evidence to make an arrest at the time. The case grew cold, but investigators continued to pursue leads.
A break in the case seemed to come in July 1986, nearly two years after Theresa's death. Mark Parker, then 18, and her boyfriend, then 17, were arrested and charged with her murder. The arrests followed a statement from an informant, Chipper Chase, who was in custody in Florida on unrelated charges. Chase implicated both Parker and the boyfriend in Theresa's killing. This was further bolstered when a woman came forward stating that Parker had confessed the murder to her.
Despite the arrests, the path to justice remained elusive. Mark Parker went to trial, but was ultimately acquitted. Prosecutors reportedly lacked sufficient evidence to bring the boyfriend to trial, and the charges against him were eventually dropped. In the decades that have passed, no one else has been charged in connection with Theresa Duran's murder. The case officially remains unsolved, a lingering source of pain for her family and community. Maine State Police continue to keep the case open, holding out hope that new information will one day lead to the person or persons responsible for cutting short a young life full of promise.
