JAY – Dick Moreau withdrew a $5,000 reward Tuesday that he offered last year to find the remains of his daughter Kim Moreau, who disappeared in 1986.
It doesn’t mean the family has given up hope or that the searches are over, Moreau said.
The reward money will be put into the Kim Moreau Memorial Scholarship and be divided between Jay High School, which Kim attended, and neighboring Livermore Falls High School.
Kim Moreau was 17 when she was last seen on May 10, 1986, leaving her Jewell Street home in Jay, with an unknown individual.
The scholarship will go to a child in need of some money to attend school, and hopefully this will help, Moreau said as he stood in his Jewell Street driveway.
The scholarships at each school will be between $100 to $150 each year, and will go on forever, Moreau said.
It’s awfully hard to ask people for money like he did last year for the reward, he said, and he couldn’t see all their donations sitting in a bank.
He had said last year that if no one came forward and the remains were not found in a year, he would turn the reward money into a scholarship.
The scholarship will help keep his daughter’s memory alive, he said, and maybe prevent one child and one family from ever having to go through what his family has gone through.
On Sunday, Moreau will go out for the 15th time this year with searchers looking for his daughter’s remains.
They’ll be going to Meadow View in Canton, where they searched two weeks ago and this spring.
Moreau said he’ll go out Friday to dig some test holes before Sunday’s search with state police Detective Mark Lopez, cadaver dogs and other searchers.
“I hope to God this is the final one,” Moreau said. “We’re still hopeful. We still believe it could happen.”
Information is still coming in, he said.
An anonymous tip left on the back of a picture of Kim posted at the Farmington Irving Big Stop last December led police to the Meadow View area.
“We still believe Kim is there and we’ll bring her home,” Moreau said.
Searchers are looking for large pieces of bone from the forearms or legs.
“We fully realize it has been 18 years, but it doesn’t mean we can’t find them,” Moreau said. “We’re not giving up hope. We know there is definitely one or more people out there who know what happened to Kim.”
He said he’s hoping the person who left the tip in Farmington would call him or Lopez to give them more specific details on the location of his daughter.
Moreau said he’ll take down the reward posters but leave his daughter’s picture up. More than 2,000 posters have been taped to poles around Maine and others have posted the posters around the world.
“Kim won’t be found until God is ready for her to be found,” Moreau said. “And, when he’s ready, we will find her.”
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