Fifteen months after 13-year-old Stefanie Damron vanished from her family's makeshift home in the snowy backwoods of Maine, the mystery surrounding her disappearance has only deepened, the Daily Mail can reveal. 

Police have remained tight-lipped about the case, her father has given conflicting accounts on podcast appearances, and concerned neighbors who had sounded the alarm about the family's living conditions now fear the worst. 

The young teenager had been living in her family's wood-framed yurt on a remote plot of land in New Sweden, a rural town of less than 600 people just 25 miles from the Canadian border, after they relocated from Texas in 2021. 

At the time of her disappearance, Stefanie and her sister Star, 18, were living in the yurt with Richard Turgeon, an 80-year-old family friend known to the girls as 'Grandpa', while their parents Christopher 'Dale' Damron, 48,  and Lisa Marie Damron, 47, lived a mile down the road in a trailer with their four younger children. 

The Damrons told police Stefanie was last seen on the afternoon of September 23, 2024 after she walked into the woods to 'clear her head' following an argument with her sister. She never returned. 

A large-scale search and rescue operation ensued, but no trace of her was found. 

Though police have released few updates, the Daily Mail has since uncovered serious inconsistencies in the parents' story, as well as their history of troubling behavior and red flags that neighbors say should have set off alarms long before she vanished.

Two neighbors told the Daily Mail they heard a loud argument in the woods near the yurt on the day Stefanie disappeared. 

Residents in the area also disputed the father's account that he had alerted neighbors immediately – claiming they didn't learn Stefanie was missing until two days later – on September 25. 

Neighbors also told the Daily Mail that their concerns for the children began almost as soon as the family arrived four years ago and put up a tent on the land. 

'People who think this all started with Stefanie's disappearance have it all wrong,'  neighbor Doug Tinsley, 74, said. 

'It was actually like watching a train wreck in slow motion from the time they got here.'

Police had described the family as living a 'very off the grid' lifestyle in a wooden yurt on a 20-acre plot with no running water or indoor plumbing, and only a generator for power.

All the children had been homeschooled from a young age and have had little interaction with other family or friends outside their home. 

But neighbors said there were no signs the kids were getting any schooling, nor did there seem to be efforts to improve conditions on the property. 

The kids were also typically seen wearing the same filthy clothes, they said. Three of the young children were finally enrolled in public school this fall.

Several neighbors told the Daily Mail they had previously alerted Maine's Child Protective Services as well as the New Sweden town clerk, a mandated reporter, but as far as they know, nothing was ever done.

The Daily Mail can also reveal that the Damrons had previously lost custody of their other children for six months in 2015 after the parents were arrested for public intoxication at a McDonalds in Texas.

They reportedly had another issue with CPS in the Lone Star State just before they moved to Maine. 

The FBI confirmed 'many' CPS reports had been filed for Stefanie as well as her other siblings, and described her upbringing as 'very untenable at times', revealing she had run away in the past. 

Three neighbors believe they witnessed one such attempt about a month before she disappeared.

They said they rarely saw any of the kids, but recalled seeing Stefanie hiding behind some trees across from a neighbor's house. Two of them described her as looking distraught and traumatized, and begging for a ride to nearby highway. 

Shelley and Chris Carson, who live in the area, also recalled hearing Dale Damron screaming at his wife and children for more than 30 minutes on several occasions in the lead up to Stefanie's disappearance – as well as the day of. 

Damron has spoken publicly about his missing daughter, offering bizarre theories for what may have happened to her. 

Appearing on a local Maine podcast called 'Locating the Lost' in March, Damron suggested Stefanie may have been secretly meeting older men she met online using her 'grandpa's' flip phone and had gotten picked up by an alleged suitor at the end of the driveway on the main road. 

He even nonchalantly speculated that Stefanie might have been pregnant when she vanished. 

However, there seems to be no evidence of this and neighbors say the theory doesn't make sense. 

'Stefanie seemed like a little kid to me, she was very immature for her age,' Shelley Carson told the Daily Mail. 'I can't imagine her hooking up with anyone.' 

Shelley's husband, Chris, 53, described Stefanie as a quiet child but also the one sibling they saw who seemed different from the rest.

'She wasn't like the rest of the kids who really bowed down to Dale. She didn't go along with the program, and I think she paid the price,' he said. 

Damron's attitude toward his missing daughter, in the few interviews he's given and in his social media posts, is bizarre.

In August, he shared a Facebook photo saying he missed 'the village idiot', referring to Stephanie, adding, 'god I wish she'd come home'. 

Neighbors said they were also puzzled by the photo the Damrons gave police after she was reported missing. The image, which showed Stefanie with a flower in her hair, is nothing like the Stefanie they remember.

They were also confused by the official description of Stefanie being 5 feet tall as they all said she was much taller, about 5'5'.

Concerns had mounted during the winter of 2023, when Stefanie and Star began living with Turgeon in the yurt at the end of a winding, impassable trail covered in deep snow in temperatures that sometimes reached more than 30 degrees below.

Meanwhile the parents and their three youngest children – Lisa Marie is a mother of eight – had decamped from that yurt after two years and moved a mile up the road into a heated camper on land owned by family friend Andrew Losiewicz, 60. 

Neighbors claimed Stefanie's parents would come by once or twice a week to drop off supplies at the end of the long driveway but did not venture in to see the girls. 

The two sisters would also make frequent visits to the Carsons' home nearby to ask for water that they carried back in jugs on a toboggan.

Arthur Brumaghim, 72, another neighbor, told the Daily Mail he once walked into the property during an especially freezing spell in 2022 to check on the kids.

'It was a dangerous situation back there in the cold,' he said. 

'You can't stay outside very long unless you're very well-dressed or you're doing to freeze to death. The other thing was the driveway down to their land. 

'They never plowed it so they couldn't get a vehicle in or out of there. They had a camper stove in the yurt when I was there but that was it. What if something happened so it broke down during the night?'

Losiewicz, known as 'Uncle Andrew,' said he met the family when their van broke down in front of his property when they were moving to New Sweden in 2021 and has 'tried to help' the Damrons ever since.

Losiewicz, a military veteran, is seemingly the only person in New Sweden who defends the Damrons. 

He said he felt they needed help 'homesteading' when they first arrived because they weren't familiar with living in the wilderness.

He became very friendly with the whole family, especially Stefanie's younger half-sister, Natty, 12. 

But Losiewicz claimed the children's father had a dark side: 'Dale is his own worst enemy.'

He said he allowed the couple and the three youngest kids to live in his camper after they had stayed in the yurt for two winters – but acknowledged it was odd to leave the two oldest girls, Stefanie and Star, alone in the yurt with the 'grandpa,.

'I told Dale numerous times, dude, you're abandoning your kids. That's not cool, I told him. But Dale is all about Dale,' he said. 

Losiewicz has his own – unfounded – theory about what happened to Stefanie. 

He told the Daily Mail, he said he thinks Stefanie and Star would drug Turgeon with sleeping pills and then run off somewhere and meet men. 

It's unclear where that would be, as the town of New Sweden is very rural with few stores and no restaurants or anywhere people of any age might socialize.

He claimed the police have uncovered a digital footprint of Stefanie online, but a private investigator working on the case who has been in touch with police denies this. 

Stefanie's father and Losiewicz also claim that the search dogs deployed to find Stefanie after her disappearance lost her scent at the end of the driveway – as if to prove their theory Stefanie was picked up.

But a law enforcement source close to the investigation say police don't think Stefanie ever left New Sweden.

Neighbors say Damron has recently been getting into confrontations with locals.  

In one disturbing alleged incident, he was captured on a Ring camera threatening to 'flatten' Shelley just two months ago, according to her husband who posted the video online.

Brumaghim also told the Daily Mail that Damron got disproportionately angry with him after Brumaghim told him his pig had gotten on to Brumaghim's land.

'He came over and showed me his AR-12, which is a semi-automatic gun,' Brumaghim claimed. 'It didn't fit the legal definition of brandishing but I got the message.'

The Tinsleys say they also woke up one day to find two dead rats tied to their mailbox but they have no proof that Damron put them there.

In October, Damron appeared to threatened Tinsley, the Carsons and Brumaghim in a lengthy public Facebook post in which he accused them of harassing him and his family, writing 'Doug, Chris, Art – if I see you, we will have a one-sided conversation about manners and you'll be on the receiving end of the lesson.' 

A much-older daughter, now 32 and living in Texas, told the Daily Mail that she cut ties with Damron, her stepfather, and Lisa Marie, her biological mother, when she was 17.

Damron and his wife declined an interview with the Daily Mail but a reporter came across Star and ner nalf-sister Natty standing at the end of the snowy driveway leading to the yurt waiting for supplies with a toboggan.

The girls, who looked disheveled, said they were not 'allowed' to speak to anyone but told the Daily Mail that their 'Uncle Andrew' was expected any minute with supplies.

Neither the state police nor Maine Child Protective Services would comment on the case to the Daily Mail.

But Lisa Marie's first husband, Billy Harsanyi, 55, of Fairmont, West Virginia, was not surprised to hear about Stefanie's disappearance and the family's notoriety in Maine.

'They've been running all over the country dragging those kids around,' Harsanyi said.

He and Lisa Marie were married for 18 years and had four children when she met Damron on an online chat forum sometime in 2008.

Not long before Harsanyi and Lisa Marie were due in family court over custody of their three children, she and Dale took off for Texas, he said.

'I've never seen my kids since then as I had no idea where they were,' Harsanyi said.