Missing Maine Teen Featured On Popular National Crime-Story TV Broadcast
By Ted Cohen
Former prosecutor and well-known TV crime fighter Nancy Grace is spotlighting a suspiciously-missing Maine girl.
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On her Christmas-eve show, “Crime Stories on Fox Nation,” Grace featured the disappearance of Stefanie Damron of New Sweden, a town of 577 people in Aroostook County.
Damron, 13, allegedly walked into the woods near her family's off-the-grid tarpaper shack in September 2024, never to be seen again.
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She'd allegedly had an argument with her sister.
“This little girl just ‘walked into the woods’ and, poof, disappeared? No way,” a skeptical Grace insists.
Grace, known for her no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase style, features missing persons on her telecast.
“Not everyone has the luxury of being able to be together during the holidays,” she said. “Let's bring them home.”
Lt. Darrin Crane of Maine State Police was quoted from a news conference as saying, “Everything is still on the table for us, from her simply being missing to a runaway. We don't have any concrete leads or tips.”
But Grace said, “I find that very hard to believe, that there are no concrete leads.”
“Mom and dad and some of their kids go up the street to live in a camper and leave Stephanie and some other kids with no heat or running water?” Grace asked.
The Damron family says that on Sept. 23, 2024, when the parents weren’t home, Stefanie got into an argument with her older sister and stormed off into the woods, according to News Nation.
“She just looked at her grandfather and told her grandfather, ‘I’ll be back,’ and she never came back,” Stefanie’s father, Christopher “Dale” Damron, told a local podcast, according to News Nation.
The “grandfather,” Richard Turgeon, 80, is actually not a blood relative but a “family friend,” according to Grace.
The Damrons moved to the remote area of New Sweden in 2021. They chose a spot far from neighbors to live off the grid, with only a generator for power.
Stefanie “was our handful,” her father was quoted by News Nation. “Always into things, always into mischief. But she was a happy kid. Always happy.”
The FBI has posted a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to Stefanie's safe return or the arrest and prosecution of anyone involved in her disappearance.
The bureau put Damron on its Most Wanted Kidnappings and Missing Persons list.
FBI Boston Special Agent Jose Rodriguez Aguilar, who’s part of the team investigating Stefanie’s disappearance, said in an FBI bulletin that she occasionally walked away from home but always returned within a few hours.
If you have information about the disappearance of Stefanie Damron, please contact the Maine State Police Houlton Barracks at (207) 532-5400 or call the FBI’s Toll-Free tipline at 1 (800)-CALL-FBI.
