Maine police arrest suspect in 1987 Alice Hawkes murder cold case

Alice Hawkes was found dead inside a Westbrook apartment on October 4, 1987, and for almost four decades the killing sat in the cold-case file. Now Maine State Police say a renewed look at the old homicide led to the arrest of her live-in boyfriend, Stephen Bouchard, in a case that has suddenly jumped from archival history back into active prosecution.

State police said a Cumberland County grand jury returned an indictment on Thursday, May 7, charging Bouchard with murder. Detectives from the Major Crimes Unit-Unsolved and Major Crimes Unit-South arrested the 63-year-old Winslow man the next day, at about 2:17 p.m., in Winslow. He was taken to Cumberland County Jail and was being held without bail.

The case has the kind of long-tail profile that true-crime readers know by heart: a homicide that was quickly recognized as suspicious, a wide investigation that still failed to produce an arrest, and then a quiet stretch of years before investigators came back to the file with fresh eyes. Hawkes’ death was ruled a homicide in 1987, and Westbrook Police and Maine State Police carried out a comprehensive investigation at the time. No arrest followed until the Major Crimes Unit-Unsolved reopened the case in 2025.

According to state police, that reinvestigation ultimately led the Maine Attorney General’s Office to seek a murder charge against Bouchard. Hawkes’ body was found in the Westbrook apartment she shared with him, and local reporting identified the address as a second-floor apartment on Spring Street. After decades in which the case remained unresolved, the arrest put Bouchard, Hawkes and the old apartment back at the center of the record.

The hard part now is the part cold-case prosecutors always face: proving a 1987 homicide with evidence and witness accounts that have aged alongside the file. Bouchard was reported to have entered a not-guilty plea after the arrest, and the case remained open as detectives continued to ask anyone with information about Alice Hawkes’ death to come forward. Hawkes’ family, meanwhile, said they hoped the arrest would finally bring justice. For a case that sat dormant for years, the new charge marked a rare and consequential turn, one that could finally force a courtroom reckoning with what happened in that Westbrook apartment nearly 40 years ago.