Graham Lacher disappeared around 4:40 p.m. on June 6, 2022, after he ran into the woods while on a supervised walk with a staff member at the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor, Maine.
“What I would really want people to know is that even though it’s been two years, there is still reason to hope that he is out there,” Graham’s mother, Tammy Scully, told Dateline. “He was in excellent physical health when he disappeared. He’s a person who’s extremely concerned, you know — even obsessed, really — with his own well-being.”
The 37-year-old, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and autism, had checked into the facility in April of 2022. Tammy told Dateline her son had been hospitalized at psychiatric centers at least six times in his life, and said that the treatment at Dorothea Dix was “the best care he [ever] received.”
According to Tammy, the facility called her shortly after Graham ran into the woods. “We got up there as soon as we could and we started searching,” she said.
The facility also contacted the Bangor Police Department. “We went out with as many people as we could muster and sent our canines out to track,” Bangor Police Department PIO Sergeant Jason McAmbley told Dateline. “And didn’t find him.”
The Bangor Police Department issued a Silver Alert for Graham later that night.
According to Tammy, a detective wasn’t assigned to Graham’s case until four days after he disappeared. Sergeant McAmbley could not confirm how long the case took to assign to a detective, but conceded Tammy was “probably right” about the timeline of those events.
Tammy told Dateline that she is extremely frustrated with the system that is currently in place to alert the community when a vulnerable adult disappears. “The biggest reason that he hasn’t been found is that people don’t know he’s missing,” she told Dateline. “And why do they not know he’s missing? Because there’s no system to alert them.”
Sergeant McAmbley addressed Tammy’s concerns to Dateline. “Of course, we have policies and protocols that we follow,” he said. “I can certainly understand her frustration — I think I’d be frustrated, too, if my child walked away from a mental health facility where I took him to get help and, years later, he’s still missing.”
Tammy also told Dateline that the Bangor Police Department did not do a grid search of a 75-acre wooded area across the street from the back of the facility where Graham disappeared.
“To do a grid search, you need, I don’t know, more people than we can put together,” Sgt. McAmbley explained.
A few hours after his disappearance, Graham was seen on security footage from a nearby business. That footage was obtained days after his disappearance and is the only confirmed sighting of Graham in the two-year-long search. McAmbley said that more than 80 sightings have been reported to the department over the past two years, but none has been confirmed.
Tammy told Dateline that, in August 2022, Graham’s orange hat was found in the woods where he disappeared. McAmbley confirmed that the hat was found, though he was not able to say when.
According to Tammy, Graham had been nonverbal for six months leading up to his disappearance. But, about two weeks before he disappeared, “he started speaking aloud to his psychiatrist, to me, and possibly one or two other staff people at the hospital that he respected,” Tammy said.
According to Tammy, her son chooses not to interact with people most of the time. “The combination of diagnoses made him a person who is not only not social — due to the autism — but also afraid of people, because of the paranoia associated with schizophrenia,” she said.
Tammy originally asked that people just call the police — and not interact with Graham — if they saw him. She told Dateline, however, that her approach has now changed. “At this point, if, you know, if anybody sees him, we just want confirmation. So, approaching him, taking a picture, video — anything like that,” she said would be helpful before calling police.
People can also reach out to Tammy through the “Missing Graham Lacher” Facebook page. The Bangor Police Department asks that people call their local police department if they see Graham outside of Bangor.
Graham wanted to live in a group home, a place where he had chosen to live before, when he got discharged. Unsure of whether that was going to be possible, however, he and his family came up with another plan. “He had decided that, if the state couldn’t find a smaller group home placement for him, he would come back and live with my husband and I in the apartment that is attached to our house that he lived in before,” Tammy said.
That discussion was the last time Tammy spoke with her son. She described it as a “pretty lucid conversation.” She said they spoke about other things, too — things that Graham loved and was excited about. “We had a conversation about his artwork,” she said. “[Graham] had come up with some ideas for how to print — make prints of things. Postcards, notecards — things like that.”
Tammy described her son as imaginative, an avid reader, and a very creative person. “He’s, you know, very loved by many, many people,” she said.
“We continue to hope that he’s still out there,” she said, but his case needs exposure to get solved. “We won’t find him unless people recognize him.”
“The case is open and active,” Sgt. McAmbley told Dateline. “And we still follow up on any leads.”
Graham is 5’11” and weighed 190 lbs. at the time of his disappearance. He has brown hair and blue eyes and would be 39 years old today.
The family is offering a $10,000 reward for the first tip that leads directly to the safe return of Graham Lacher.
Anyone with information about Graham’s disappearance is asked to contact their local police department or the Bangor Police Department at (207) 947-7384.