Maine couple seek fate of missing son by Brian MacQuarrie, Boston Globe, 24 Apr 2016

PHOTOS BY YOON S. BYUN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Narciso Torres sat in his living room in Denmark, Maine. "We're not going to give up," he says. "There's always hope." Maine couple seek fate of missing son MISSING Continued from Page Bl and disappearance was doubled to $10,000. "I think of Tony every day," said Ramona, his 63-year-old mother, wiping away tears as she sat at her kitchen table. "It's really hard to get up every morning." The Torres family does not dispute that Tony is dead, although no remains have been found. The Maine death certificate from 2004, issued after he had been missing for five years, is official confirmation. And the state's newly formed unsolved homicides unit has added the Torres case to its workload. The family also does not dispute that drug dealing may have played a role in the young man's disappearance. The State Police are more expansive on the connection. Lieutenant Walter Grzyb, who investigated the case as a detective, said Torres had traveled to Maine that weekend in May 1999 to sell drugs and that the trip had not been the first to his home state for that purpose. "It wasn't big by any means," Grzyb said of the drug deals. "He was the typical guy who gets enough to make a little money." The last confirmed sighting of Torres put him on South Street in Biddeford, said Grzyb, who now commands State Police Troop B. Other reports had him climbing into a red pickup truck, but authorities would not verify that tip. "We followed up on ever-thing. Nothing materialized," Grzyb said. "We can put him in the area and try to trace some of his steps. But in some of the stories we heard, it was difficult to determine fact from fiction." Grzyb, who lives in nearby Lovell, said he sees the Torres family regularly. They belong to the same school district. Narciso, Torres's stepfather, umpired in games that Grzyb's children played. Grzyb calls the family "the salt of the earth" and said that Tony's drug connections do not diminish the remarkable perse- Mementos crowd a makeshift memorial to Angel "Tony" Torres outside his parents' home. verance of his parents. "The Torres family tirelessly advocated for their son the entire time, and you hope people would think of them and think they deserve the answers," Grzyb said. "Tony was a great guy who got caught up in doing some things." Torres's friends now adults nearing 40 use the same words when they recall Tony. Good basketball and soccer player. Upbeat personality. Social and smart. After graduating from nearby Fryeburg Academy, Torres pursued psychology, business, and Spanish at Framingham State. He maintained close connections with his family, traveling home an average of twice a month to visit. On his final trip home Mother's Day, May 9, 1999 he posed for a photograph that still occupies a place of honor in the kitchen. There he is, arm around his mother in the living room, both of them smiling broadly. Within two weeks, the 21-year-old Torres would disappear, a few days after leaving a phone message for his parents, natives of Puerto Rico who had grown up in New York City and moved here to what they con sider a safe, close-knit, wooded idyll. In his message, Torres said he had found an apartment where he would be moving with his girlfriend. But the tone sounded unsettled, his mother said. "Something didn't feel right," she said. "When I heard his voice, I felt like something was going to happen to him." Thoughts of Tony are ever-present in the Torres household, where he grew up with two brothers. And they resurface for his friends sometimes at sporting events, at New Year's Eve parties, and school reunions. "My first reaction was I didn't think he was gone for good," said John Beane, a 38-year-old Windham man who had been Torres's best friend. "I still had dreams of him popping up. Years later, I guess we've moved past that." Memories of Tony also surface in faraway places such as Fort Myers, Fla., where Jason Kohn, a childhood friend of Torres's, owns a pizza shop. He recently matched the family's $5,000 reward. "It's the right thing to do," Kohn said. "I think I always felt bad that I never called up and said how sorry I was." The family still feels sorrow, of course, but they also are determined to replace the unknown with facts and, ultimately, to find Tony's remains. "We're not going to give up," said Narciso, a special-education teacher. "There's always hope. We have to take advantage of every possibility." Grzyb, the State Police lieutenant, said one possible advantage after so many years is that someone with information might not be as fearful to speak out now. The killer might be dead, or perhaps the pressure of silence has become unbearable. "Some cases just stay part of you, and this is one of them," Grzyb said. "You sit back, and you think about it, and then you try to think about things you hadn't thought about before." For Ramona and Narciso Torres, the heartache is never far away. "Every day is different. I do what I need to do," Ramona said. "Parents will always be parents." Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macqua.rrie globe.com.

The Boston Globe

Maine couple seek fate of missing son by Brian MacQuarrie, Boston Globe, 24 Apr 2016

Maine couple seek fate of missing son by Brian MacQuarrie, Boston Globe, 24 Apr 2016

The Boston Globe