WORCESTER—On Sept. 14, 1982, Charles H. McArthur, Jr. picked up a telephone message, telling him to meet some associates at the Italian Kitchen on Shrewsbury Street. McArthur, 39, immediately left his Tarrytown Lane home to keep the appointment.
He was never seen again.
McArthur was a white man, last seen wearing Dockers pants, a light-colored short-sleeve shirt, and dark shoes. He had brown hair, green eyes, and a full beard and mustache. He had two tattoos on his left arm: A colored eagle on the bottom half, and a ribbon with his nickname, “Bill,” on his upper half. He wore dentures and had had a mastoidectomy, which is the removal of bony partitions in his ear.
Even with all this identifying information to aid a search, McArthur appeared to have vanished without a trace. Two weeks later, his maroon Thunderbird was found near Boston’s Combat Zone, then an adult entertainment district near Boston Common. More than a dozen parking tickets were on the windshield, and McArthur’s leather jacket and cigarettes were inside.
According to published reports, Worcester police learned that three men had escorted McArthur out of the Italian Kitchen. Detective Stanley R. Carpenter was assigned to the case and told reporters in 2007 that he thought McArthur had been shot and his body dumped in the water. Several local lakes and ponds were searched, including Lake Quinsigamond, where police recovered several cars, but no further clues.
As the search continued, McArthur’s wife, Karen, said he had seemed worried in the months before disappearing. McArthur had suffered a mild heart attack, and Karen thought that might have impacted him. She told a reporter in 2007 that she tried to persuade him to tell her what was wrong, but instead, he began to cry and insisted he couldn’t tell her.
The reason for McArthur’s distress became clear during the investigation.
In early 1982, McArthur had somehow become involved in the drug trade. Though he wasn’t himself a user, he made a trip to Florida to pick up cocaine for someone in the Worcester area. McArthur also had a girlfriend, a woman he knew from his job at the Harrington & Richardson firearms company in Gardner.
He had asked his girlfriend to hold the drugs, but she refused, so McArthur stashed them with a friend. That friend never gave the drugs back.
According to published reports, McArthur was on the hook for $30,000 worth of cocaine.
The day before he went missing, McArthur came home with a wad of cash. Reports indicate he was expecting the rest of the money the following evening, but evidently, the person who promised the payment had lied.
In 2007, Carpenter described McArthur as “somebody who had gotten in over his head.”
Although the city’s website lists McArthur as a “missing endangered person,” both police and family members have told reporters they believe he was killed. In 1990, a district court judge declared him dead, and the family was able to publish an obituary and have a funeral service.
But the grave is empty, and Karen told reporters in 2012 she is less concerned with punishment than with closure.
“I would like to have closure before I go,” she said then. “Closure, we need closure.”
Karen died in August 2020, and her husband’s remains have never been located.
The case remains open and under investigation. Anyone with information regarding Charles Mcarthur should send an anonymous text to 274637 (TIPWPD) or an anonymous web-based message at worcesterma.gov/police. Calls can also be made to the Worcester Police Detective Bureau at 508-799-8651. Information from the Unsolved Worcester podcast with Dan Yeager, Telegram & Gazette archives, and The Charley Project, were used in this story.
This is the latest in The Worcester Guardian’s series about cold cases – unsolved incidents still under investigation by the Worcester Police Department. According to the WPD’s public information officer, Lt. Sean Murtha, the department has 75 unresolved homicides and 10 missing or endangered persons. The Worcester Guardian’s “Unsolved Chronicles” delves into these cold cases and mysteries that happened in Worcester, Massachusetts. Stay tuned for more in this series.
Christine M. Quirk is the former editor of MotherTown and has written for the Telegram & Gazette, Bay State Parent, and Times & Courier. She is a novelist and educator and lives with her family in West Boylston. She can be reached at cmqwriter@gmail.com
