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Dark Downeast
The Disappearance of Stefanie Damron (Maine)
00:22:43
Stefanie Damron’s parents say that their 13-year-old daughter walked out the door and into the woods one September afternoon in 2024, and she hasn’t been seen or heard from since. They have their own suspicions about what happened to her, but so far, a multi-agency effort hasn’t been able to prove what happened to Stefanie more than a year later. Active missing persons cases are some of the most challenging cases to cover. At the same time, active missing persons cases, especially when a child is missing under suspicious or concerning circumstances, are the cases that need the most urgent attention. Uncovering information while leads are still warm is critical. That’s why I’m releasing two episodes today. These two missing persons cases out of Maine need a signal boost in a big way. So please, listen, share, and get their names and faces out there. Investigators need more information to bring them home.
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Here on the east coast, history runs deep, and as the autumn nights grow long and the wind rattles through the pines, I tell stories that still chill the bones across New England and beyond. Every week, my friends Rasha and Yvette from so Supernatural bring you stories of hauntings, unexplained encounters, and mysteries that refuse to be solved. Listen to so Supernatural every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. Dark down east is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. They say if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. When you go with Amica, you're getting coverage from a mutual insurer that's built for their customers, so they'll help look after what's important to you. Auto, home life and more. Ameca has you covered. At Ameca, they'll help protect what matters most to you. Visit ameca.com and get a quote today Stephanie Dameron's parents say that their 13 year old daughter walked out the door and into the woods one September afternoon in 2024 and she hasn't been seen or heard from since. They have their own suspicions about what happened to her, but so far a multi agency effort hasn't been able to prove what happened to Stephanie More than a year later. Active missing persons cases are some of the most challenging cases to cover. At the same time, active missing persons cases, especially when a child is missing under suspicious or concerning circumstances, are the cases that need the most urgent attention. Uncovering information while leads are still warm is critical. That's why I'm releasing two episodes today. These two missing persons cases out of Maine need a signal boost in a big way. So please listen, share and get their names and faces out there. Investigators need more information to bring them home. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is the case of Stephanie Dameron on Dark Down East. All we know for sure about the disappearance of 13 year old Stephanie Dameron was that she was last seen on September 23, 2024 and there have been no credible sightings since since Stephanie's mother and father reported her missing the very next day on September 24. But despite extensive investigation and search efforts by Maine State Police, the FBI's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team and other state agencies as well as local volunteers. More than a year later, Stephanie has yet to be located. While both state and federal authorities continue the investigation into Stephanie's disappearance, there has been a concentrated effort by concerned community members to get more attention on this case. I've received dozens of requests to cover Stephanie's story and get it out to a wider audience. So that's exactly what I'm doing. Stephanie's family, including her father, Christopher Dameron, who sometimes goes by Dale in select media coverage, and her mother, Lisa Marie Dameron, have made public statements and given interviews to various media outlets and social media platforms regarding their recollections of the day their daughter disappeared and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. But Stephanie's family has also been the subject of intense scrutiny and at the center of online rumors and speculation. The family's versions of events that I'm about to share with you cannot be verified with law enforcement, as they're keeping this case exceptionally close to the vest so as not to jeopardize the ongoing investigation. For that reason, you're going to hear the phrase according to insert family member's name a lot because it's the only way I can cover this case and it very much needs to be covered. So according to Christopher and Lisa, it all started with an argument on September 23, 2024. In an extensive live streamed interview with the Locating the Lost podcast, Christopher Dameron said that on the afternoon of September 23, 2024, he and his wife Lisa were in Presquyle, Maine for a job interview at the chain restaurant Ruby Tuesdays. Lisa told Dateline NBC reporter Nicolas Vinuela that they left four of their children, including Stephanie, at home in New Sweden with their grandfather that day. Around 3 o' clock that afternoon, while Lisa and Christopher were still in Presque Isle, Lisa got a text message from her oldest daughter, reportedly sent from the grandfather's phone. The oldest daughter's name is public in other sources, but for privacy reasons, I've decided not to use her name and will refer to her as the oldest daughter or the oldest sister. Lisa's oldest daughter said in the text that Stephanie had walked into the woods after they got into an argument about something and she hadn't come back yet. According to Christopher, the oldest daughter was going over to their neighbor's house to see if she could find Stephanie there, and he assumed that if Stephanie had in fact gone to the neighbor's place, she'd probably stay there until they got home to sort out whatever disagreement the girls were having. Lisa didn't find the situation worrisome at the time either, because Stephanie often turned to the woods when she was upset or wanted to be left alone. All of the Damron children were comfortable outdoors and could find endless entertainment in the woods surrounding their remote home. Christopher said that he and Lisa got home around 5:30 30 that night to find Stephanie wasn't at the neighbors nor had she returned home from wherever she went. They started looking for her. But again, Stephanie's family was not super concerned yet because they say Stephanie had done this before. At least twice Christopher and Lisa have said that they turned over every stone for their daughter, driving all over the place to see if they could find her. But the entire night passed without Stephanie. Her family reported her missing the next day, September 24, 2024. Christopher was under the impression that he had to wait 24 hours to report Stephanie missing, but even still he called at 11am the next day shy of the 24 hour mark. He knows now that there is no minimum time requirement for reporting anyone missing, especially a child. Media alerts began days later with photos and descriptions of Stephanie. She is a white female, 5ft tall, 130 pounds with green eyes and shoulder length brown hair. She was last known to be wearing blue jeans, a long sleeve blue shirt and black Harley Davidson hiking boots. The earliest information regarding her disappearance from Maine State Police indicated that she was last seen on September 23 when she walked out of her house and into the woods behind her home in the small rural town of New Sweden, Maine. As of September 2024, the Dameron family lived between two dwellings in New Sweden, Maine, one of which was situated on a large plot of land on West Road where Stephanie stayed with her older sister and her grandfather. Now the grandfather you'll keep hearing about is not a blood relative by the way, but he is known as the grandfather to the Damron children and Christopher refers to him as his own grandfather too. According to the Team Stephanie website, the grandfather is a close family friend and he has lived with or been close to Stephanie and her family nearly all her life. There is also another close friend of the family referred to as Uncle Andrew, although he is not a blood relative either. The Team Stephanie website clarifies that he met the Damron family when they moved to Maine and he helps them out with amenities like a generator for their home. He also allows members of their family to live on his property in a fifth wheel camper while they work to improve their home. The Damrons home, where Stephanie was living at the time of her disappearance, is described in some sources as a yurt and Christopher clarified that while technically it is a yurt, a more accurate description is a hexa yurt. It's constructed with OSB building material as a legitimate dwelling with multiple rooms. The Damerons had moved to Maine from Texas in search of an environment better suited for their way of life. They value the privacy and peace that comes with living off the grid and their children, including Stephanie, are homeschooled. Maine felt like the right place for their family. According to Christopher, moving out of Texas was also meant to put some distance between them and painful memories of an incident back in 2015. According to arrest logs printed in the Jacksonville Daily Progress On September 12, 2015, Christopher, who was 38 years old at the time, and Lisa, who was 37, were both arrested on charges of abandoning, slash endangering a child, possession of a controlled substance and public intoxication. Christopher explained this arrest in an interview, saying that he was smoking weed in a car with his children present, which resulted in both he and Lisa temporarily losing custody of their children. He stated that custody was reinstated six months later, which he says is sooner than it usually happens because they did everything they could to prove their fitness as parents. It wasn't the last time that Child Protective Services in Texas and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services Child and Family Services Division would be involved with their family. Christopher said that because of their lifestyle, Child and Family Services made regular visits to their home. He claims that each time they passed whatever inspections were needed to prove a suitable environment for the kids. So when Stephanie was reported missing, Child and Family Services was also brought into the fold. Within a few weeks, several other three letter agencies joined the effort to find her too, including the FBI. The first few weeks of school are in the books and now's the time to keep that momentum going. IXL helps kids stay confident and ahead of the curve. IXL is an award winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're brushing up on math or diving into social studies. 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Quince.com downeast By October, multiple states, state and federal agencies had joined the search effort for Stephanie, including Maine State Police, Major Crimes Unit north and the Computer Crimes Unit, as well as the Boston Division of the FBI and the FBI's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, also known as CARD investigators canvassed the neighborhood around Stephanie's home. They conducted an expansive grid search of the area, utilizing K9 units from the Main Warden Service and Maine State Police, and even expanded the investigation across the United States border into Canada, according to reporting by Melissa Lizott for the Bangor daily news. On October 26, 2024, a group of local citizens concerned for Stephanie's safety began their own search and awareness efforts. They spent nearly 11 hours walking property near Stephanie's home and said that they came up with several leads which they shared with the authorities working the case. But as of December 2024, when Maine State Police and the FBI held a joint press conference to bring attention to Stephanie's case, investigators had conducted hundreds of hours of interviews, searches and investigative measures and still had yet to uncover any credible information or sightings of Stephanie. During the press conference, FBI Special Agent Kimberly Milka announced a $15,000 reward for information leading to Stephanie's safe return and or the arrest and prosecution of anyone who might be involved in her disappearance. The press conference didn't reveal many new details about the case, but Maine State Police Major Scott Goslin opened the floor for questions. He confirmed during the Q and A that it was not uncommon behavior for Stephanie to leave home without notice, which was thought to be why her family waited to report her missing. He also disclosed that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services was involved in the investigation, which was routine in a situation when a child goes missing. To their knowledge at the time, Stephanie didn't have current access to electronic devices and had limited access to social media. As of that press conference, every scenario was still on the table. Stephanie could have run away. She could have met someone online and arranged to meet them in person that day, or something else entirely. The winter months in Aroostook county in northern Maine, including the town of New Sweden, are particularly brutal. Weather conditions and snow cover on the ground made searching for Stephanie out in the wilderness next to impossible. It wasn't until the spring thaw that ground efforts resumed. Mark Fortier reports for NBC Boston that during the first weekend of May 2025, Maine State Troopers, game wardens, FBI agents, and volunteers got back into the woods with drones overhead, K9 units sniffing the soil, and even horses navigating difficult terrain. But the renewed search did not lead to Stephanie. Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss estimated that nearly 4,500 acres of wilderness had been searched since Stephanie had been reported missing. However, as of that May 2025 search, there seems to be nothing that conclusively indicates Stephen Stephanie is still in the area surrounding her home. What happened to Stephanie? With every possibility still on the table, there are a few theories that have dominated the conversation about her disappearance. It is possible that Stephanie ran away and she's living somewhere else now, maybe even in the woods. Stephanie's great aunt Jerry Harms, explained in an interview with TikTok creator Jasmine Jackson on her account, Brooklyn Squad, that the Dameron kids were all very comfortable with the woods and being outdoors. It was their playground and their safe space. As her mother and father have already said, Stephanie was known to go cool off in the woods when she needed some alone time. Jerry said, quote, she's a smart girl. That's one thing I'm grateful for. I feel like if she's found a cabin out there or something. Stephanie's a survivalist. She knows all about surviving. She knows how to live off the land. End quote. So far, the investigation has not uncovered any evidence that Stephanie is living somewhere else. Stephanie's mother said in the Dateline NBC interview that the grandfather told her Stephanie just walked out the front door where he was doing some repairs, looked at him with tears in her eyes, and just kept walking. So maybe she did walk out there for some peace, upset after an argument with her sister, but later met some sort of trouble along the way. If there was an accident in the woods or she got injured somehow. Is it likely that the extensive ground search would have found her by now? It feels like an accident would have been uncovered by now, but foul play. If Stephanie encountered someone who harmed her and took measures to conceal what they'd done, maybe that's why the ground search hasn't found her yet. Christopher has said that if he knew the kind of people who lived around the property that he and his family now live on, he never would have bought it. He said there are some quote unquote characters that he wouldn't want his kids around. Christopher said there are two areas he'd like to see searched that to his knowledge, as of March 2025, hadn't been checked yet. Both of the locations are within walking distance from where Stephanie was living. He said that if anything bad happened to Stephanie, it probably would have happened at a party spot not far from their home. He actually said in his interview with Locating the lost quote, if you wanted to drop a body, that would be the perfect place to drop a body. There, I said it. End quote. Christopher said that he and his son did as much searching in that area as he was physically able, but it was wasn't an easy spot to access. He lives with disabilities that impact his mobility. Christopher also noted that there was a pond between New Sweden and the town of Fort Kent called Soldier Pond. Again, that location isn't easy to get to, but he and his wife intended to search that location in the spring of 2025. It's unclear if those two specific locations were further searched by the family, law enforcement, or volunteers as of this episode's original release date. But there's another theory involving foul play, one that Christopher has discussed in interviews and feels is the most likely scenario. He feels that his daughter met someone online and that person picked her up on the afternoon she disappeared. Stephanie's great aunt Jerry, made one of the first public mentions of this. She shared that there was some concern that Stephanie may have been talking to someone online and she could have walked to the end of the driveway to get picked up by this mystery person. Jury said that Stephanie probably would have talked to and trusted anyone because she was impressionable. Christopher expanded on this theory in media interviews, including a TikTok account called onpatrol missing. He said that even though the grandfather's cell phone couldn't connect to the Internet, to his knowledge, he believed that Stephanie and her older sister would take their grandfather's cell phone after he fell asleep and use it to get on a dating website. He said the Girl swapped numbers with people on the site and called strangers they met online. But he's also not sure how that would be possible given the grandfather only had an old school flip phone. Christopher says he and Lisa heavily monitor the kids Internet usage and they do not have phones of their own. But also fueling this theory of Stephanie getting picked up by someone is that after Stephanie walked off towards the woods, family members still at home that day said they heard a vehicle drive by. Shortly after the oldest daughter and the grandfather said that soon after Stephanie left, they heard some sort of vehicle drive past the house on the main road. They weren't sure if it was a car, an atv, a motorcycle or something else. They didn't see it. The driveway is pretty long and winding and their home was set back from the road. There was a path that cut through the woods and landed on the main road. So it's possible that's where Stephanie was headed. It's unclear if the vehicle, if there was one, has ever been tracked down, but if Stephanie was talking to someone on her grandfather's phone, surely the Computer Crimes Unit or the FBI would be able to follow up on that, right? Well, maybe not. At least according to Christopher, the FBI has tried to, quote, unquote, crack the phone, but he was told the FBI's technology was too advanced to retrieve any data from the simple flip phone. I don't know what to make of that. If you're searching online for information about Stephanie's case, you don't have to look too far to find long discussion threads about yet another theory of her disappearance. The history of Child and Family Services involvement with the Dameron family has become the foundation of accusations that Stephanie's own family has something to do with her going missing. To be clear, no members of the family or their associates have been charged with any crimes as it relates to Stephanie's disappearance. Christopher and Lisa maintain that they were at job interviews in Presque Isle on the day Stephanie was last seen. I reached out to both Christopher and Lisa for interviews prior to the release of this episode. I have not heard back from either of them at this time. Several community created awareness campaigns have sprouted from the concern for Stephanie's safety, including a Facebook page called Letters to Stephanie. The group and other local citizens gathered just before Christmas in 2024 for a candlelight vigil in Stephanie's honor. And some attendees shared letters they wrote to Stephanie, hoping someday she might read them and know people care about her. Stephanie's family members, including her mother, Lisa, attended the vigil, but did not want to speak with media at the time. Another group called Team Stephanie maintains a website@teamstephani.org with updates on the case including community generated timelines and frequently asked questions. Team Stephanie is made up of volunteers and supporters who have physically participated in searches and continue awareness efforts online and with local media. That's who reached out to me. Christopher has taken issue with some of the specific community members running the awareness effort for Stephanie's case, saying that they're the reason why some of the negativity and falsities have continued to circulate around his family. Christopher claims that he actually got the job at Ruby Tuesdays he was interviewing for on the day of Stephanie's disappearance, but lost it a few months later. He suspects that the negative attention he and his family have received played a role in his firing. Team Stephanie maintains that they do not condone messaging, commenting or otherwise bothering Stephanie's family and the group exists to reach one common goal to find Stephanie. And all the Damron family wants is for the negativity, accusations and rumors to stop and for all that attention to be redirected to finding Stephanie, wherever she may be now. Stephanie was last seen wearing blue jeans, a long sleeved blue shirt and black Harley Davidson hiking boots. She is a white female, 13 years old at the time she was reported missing with brown shoulder length hair, green eyes, 5ft tall and 130 pounds. If you have information about the disappearance of Stephanie Dameron, please call the Maine State Police Holton Barracks at 207-532-5400 or call the FBI's toll free tip line at 1-800-call-FBI. You can also submit a tip via the FBI form linked in the description of this episode. The FBI is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of Stephanie Dameron and or information leading to the arrest and prosecution of anyone involved in her disappearance. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case@darkdowneast.com Be sure to follow the show on Instagram arkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is Dark Down East. Dark down east is a production of Kylie Media and Audio Check. I think Chuck would approve.
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