During the winter of 1941, the death of the man found in a downtown Portland

Maine alleyway left investigators divided by two very different theories.

Was it an accident or was it murder?

Every once in a while, I like to go way, way back

and unearth cases that might otherwise be lost with time.

Given its age and the circumstances you're about to hear,

it's unlikely that any investigative resources will be devoted to this case ever again.

But that's exactly the kind of story that deserves to be told.

I'm Kylie Lowe and this is the case of Philip Wendell Boys on Dark Down East. Around 2 a.m. on Sunday, February 16th, 1941, a tenant of the Metropolitan Apartments at 439 Congress Street in downtown Portland, Maine,

stepped outside into the harsh winter air with his dog, who was in need of a middle of the night

potty break.

As they rounded the corner to walk down an alley behind the building that led to Elm Street,

they stopped short at the sight of a man laying in their path. It looked like he might have been sleeping or passed out.

The man walking his dog would later say he suspected that the guy on the ground was

intoxicated and had fallen down on the icy path, so he called

Portland Police. Portland Police Captain Harold McGuire arrived at the scene within 15

minutes, but no sooner did he give the man on the ground a once over, did he realize that this guy was not passed out. He was in fact deceased.

When the medical examiner, Dr. Wilbur Leighton, arrived, his first assessment was that the man

couldn't have been dead long, maybe an hour at most.

He was laying on his back about two feet from a brick structural column in the covered alleyway behind the Metropolitan apartment building.

He was about a foot from a fence that separated the alley where he was laying from another lower path along the back

perimeter of Portland High School. I'll include a map at darkdowneast.com so you can visualize the scene.

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