Maine State Police investigate the death of 14-year-old Quincy McDonald Dec. 20, 2024, in Sidney. Keith Edwards/Kennebec Journal file

The name of the 14-year-old boy killed in Sidney in December was Quincy McDonald.

For months after the alleged murder, prosecutors in the Office of the Maine Attorney General withheld his name from the public, including in formal charging documents filed in court that typically list a victim’s name. The office said it based that decision — one rarely made in homicide cases in Maine — on privacy concerns for the dead teenager’s family.

Quincy McDonald From the 2023-24 Messalonskee Middle School yearbook

Quincy McDonald’s name was only confirmed after a Kennebec County grand jury handed down an indictment of Megan McDonald, believed to be his mother, earlier this month.

The attorney general’s office said it reversed course and included Quincy McDonald’s name in the indictment after balancing privacy concerns with other factors at play. Some legal experts, however, said they continue to question prosecutors’ reasoning for withholding the name in the first place.

Danna Hayes, a spokesperson for the office of Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, which prosecutes all homicides in the state, said in a written statement this week that, in the past, prosecutors did not withhold the names of child victims in homicide cases.

“In response to an evolving understanding of the best practices of interacting with victims, prosecutors made the decision to withhold the names in a couple of cases, especially when the living family members preferred privacy,” Hayes said.

“While this decision has been appreciated by family members,” the statement continued, “the Office understands that there are competing considerations, including (but not limited to) the progress of the case, the public’s interest in the matter, the practical accessibility of the victim’s information and best practices recommended by victim advocates. The decision to release the name of a minor victim will be a balance of these considerations.”

Asked for examples of similar cases in which a minor victim was not named, Hayes sent one: a September 2024 indictment of Lisa Barney for a charge of manslaughter of a 4-month-old infant in Oakland.

Hayes said this week that the child’s name, for now, will continue to be withheld in that case.

John Alsop, who worked as an assistant attorney general in the office’s homicide unit for five years at the end of his career, beginning in 2014, said it was standard practice for prosecutors to include names of victims in court filings and use them in court, no matter their age. Child witnesses were always identified, too, he said.

“Based on my experience, I don’t recall any such considerations in the past,” said Alsop, who also represented defendants in multiple murder cases during his career as an attorney in Maine.

Alsop said he is not privy to any recent conversations in the office about the issue, as he is now retired. But he said, in general, withholding a murder victim’s name does not make sense.

“I think sooner or later, given the amount of coverage that murder cases get, it’s going to be pretty obvious who the victim is, whether the victim’s name is in the indictment or not,” said Alsop, who was also an elected probate judge for many years and now serves as a Somerset County commissioner. “I’m all for the public’s right to know.”

Megan McDonald’s Dec. 20, 2024, arrest, which came after police were seen at a home at 2005 Summerhaven Road in Sidney, drew significant attention in the community, and left many asking questions about what exactly happened.

The grand jury indicted Megan McDonald, 39, of Sidney, for the intentional or knowing or depraved indifference murder of Quincy McDonald, alleged to have occurred on Dec. 19, 2024, in Sidney. She also was indicted on an additional charge of aggravated cruelty to animals for allegedly killing a dog, two turtles and a lizard, court records show.

State police said at the time of Megan McDonald’s arrest that the Office of Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide by a combination of asphyxiation, manual strangulation and sharp force injury.

A woman had reported the murder to the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office — about 40 miles away in Auburn — according to state police. Sheriff’s Office records obtained under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act indicate that woman was Megan McDonald, but it is not yet clear why or how she got there.

News of the alleged murder came the same day that Carl Gartley, superintendent of Regional School Unit 18, said in an announcement to the community that a Messalonskee High School student had died “due to a violent act” but could not release the student’s name due to an ongoing Maine State Police investigation. Sidney is one of the towns served by the Oakland-based district.

After the arrest, rumors circulated on social media about the case, and some Maine media outlets later reported the dead teenager was Megan McDonald’s son, while authorities remained largely tight-lipped.

Prosecutors had withheld Quincy McDonald’s name from the initial criminal complaint for the murder charge filed in court, only listing his date of birth.

Experts asked about that decision then were split. Some, including First Amendment advocates, defense attorneys and the newspaper’s attorney, saw it as unwarranted secrecy.

Others, including state and federal prosecutors, compared it to how prosecutors now often handle naming victims of other types of crimes, such as child sexual assaults. In those cases, names may be withheld to protect living victims of crimes, advocates say.

Tina H. Nadeau, executive director of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said Thursday in a written statement that the apparent shifting policy of the attorney general’s office for naming homicide victims is “confusing and troubling.”

Nadeau said in the statement she suspects that had legal action been taken by an individual or organization to compel the attorney general’s office to release Quincy McDonald’s name, it “undoubtedly would be decided swiftly against that office — as the public interest in the victim’s name far exceeds any supposed ‘competing considerations’ of that office.”

“Any such litigation would be only further distraction from the ostensible true purpose of the AG’s Office in homicide cases: to investigate deaths and prosecute the accused — not under a shroud of unwarranted secrecy,” Nadeau continued. “Homicide victims are entitled to be known and remembered in their deaths — no matter what their age.”

The recent indictment revealed not only Quincy McDonald’s name, but also confirmed that he was a family member of Megan McDonald.

A child named Quincy, with the same date of birth as listed in the indictment, is listed as a child of McDonald in a divorce judgment filed in Lewiston District Court in 2015.

An indictment is not a determination of guilt, but it indicates prosecutors have enough evidence to move a case toward trial.

McDonald has not yet entered a plea. She was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after a delayed initial appearance in December. The outcome of the evaluation was not clear as of Friday.

A police affidavit supporting probable cause for McDonald’s arrest was previously sealed, at the request of her court-appointed attorneys, Scott F. Hess and Lisa W.D. Whittier. Their request to impound the document, which Superior Court Justice Daniel Mitchell granted, stated it only applied until an indictment was returned.

The court has not made it available for review as of Friday.

Hess and Whittier did not return messages left at their offices Friday morning.