In honor of Native American Heritage Month I’m featuring a Native American missing person for every day in the month of November. Today’s missing person is Virginia Sue Pictou-Noyes, a 26-year-old member of the Mi’kmaq Indian Nation who disappeared from Bangor, Maine on April 24, 1993. The Mi’kmaq are live in the maritime provinces and Quebec in Canada, and in northern Maine.
Virginia seems to have had a very sad life. She had her first baby at fourteen, and dropped out of high school in her junior year. Three additional babies later, she married Larry Noyes and had three children by him, making a total of seven. Two of Virginia’s children died in a house fire in 1990.
Virginia was allegedly assaulted by Larry and his brother, Roger, and had to be hospitalized. This article has some details about what happened:
[Virginia’s brother] Robert Pictou said there was a dispute inside the bar and Pictou Noyes started walking toward the door to leave.
“Larry ran up behind her and jump-kicked her out the door,” Robert Pictou testified.
“She fell on the pavement face first and he jumped on her. He pinned her down, he put his knees on her arms and proceeded to beat her. Her brother-in-law came after him, kneeled down next to his brother and proceeded to beat my sister in the face.”
On the day of her disappearance, after a visit from her husband and brother-in-law, she left the hospital without permission and was last seen at a truck stop trying to get a ride home. After Virginia disappeared, the charges against Larry and Roger were dropped, presumably because there was no complaining witnessed.
Foul play is suspected in her case, and Larry and Roger are the prime suspects in her disappearance. Roger is dead, and Larry is drifting around Bangor as a transient when he’s not in jail for some violent offense or other.
The Charley Project Blog 