A Half-Century Later, Police Identify a Homicide Suspect and His Victim

The last time Anita Louise Piteau’s family heard from her was in February 1968, when she sent a letter and a postcard home to Maine saying she had visited Hollywood and taken a tour of stars’ homes. Ms. Piteau had gone to California just a few months earlier, eager to see a new part of the country. In her letter, she said she planned to return to the East Coast in May.

“‘I’ll see you then,’” she wrote, according to her niece, Laurie Quirion. “‘Love you. Talk to you soon.’ And that was it. Nothing ever again.”

Ms. Piteau’s disappearance haunted her family. She was one of seven siblings from Augusta, Maine, and her relatives spent the next 52 years searching for her.

“My mother and grandmother talked about her all the time and wondered every day: ‘Where is she? Why haven’t we heard from her?’” said Ms. Quirion, 60, who was nearly 8 when her aunt disappeared and who later made efforts to find her. “My grandmother said every time the phone rang, she was hoping it was her. And it was never her.”