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Today’s top crime stories: man charged with storage area theft, a plea deal in a road rage incident, food stamp fraud, search in a cold case, and fatal stabbing investigation.
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WATERVILLE — A Winslow man is scheduled to appear in court in November in connection with the burglary and theft of items from Waterville Self Storage on Aviation Way.
Police on Monday summoned Adam Baker, 29, of Halifax Street in Winslow, and charged him with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor, and burglary, a felony, according to police Sgt. Dan Goss.
Goss said Wednesday that the door to a small storage unit was pushed in and off its rollers, causing about $450 worth of damage, and about $1,500 worth of items stored in the unit were stolen. The burglary was reported earlier Monday, he said.
Goss would not identify the items stolen. He said Baker claims he didn’t take the items that the owner reported missing, the items have not been recovered and police are still investigating the case.
“The person renting the unit allowed another person to store some items in there,” Goss said, adding that those were the items that were stolen.
He said Baker confessed to police Officer Dan Brown that he had broken into the storage unit. Brown is investigating the case.
Aviation Way is off Airport Road, which leads to Robert LaFleur Municipal Airport.
Baker is scheduled to appear Nov. 9 in Kennebec County Superior Court in Augusta, according to Goss.
He said the burglary was atypical in that usually someone cuts a lock to get into a unit, but in this case, the door was pushed in and off its rollers.
Amy Calder — 861-9247
Twitter: @AmyCalder17
AUGUSTA — A Vermont woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon in connection with a road rage incident nearly five months ago on Interstate 95 in Sidney.
Demitria Buhalis, who was a police officer at the White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Vermont when she was arrested in April after the incident in Maine, entered the plea as part of a deal that could result in a lighter sentence. Buhalis, 42, of Brownsville, Vermont, was accused of pulling a loaded gun on two men in another vehicle on April 22 as the two vehicles were traveling south on I-95 near mile 117.
If Buhalis successfully meets the terms of a 12-month deferred disposition agreement, which she signed Tuesday during a hearing at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta, she can withdraw the plea to the felony charge and instead plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct. Among the conditions is a ban on contact with the two men identified as victims.
A hearing on the deferred disposition is scheduled for Sept. 20, 2016, when her attorney and the state prosecutor will argue over the penalty, which can be a fine of $575 or up to a 10-day jail sentence to be served in the alternative sentencing program.
If she fails to meet the terms of the deferred disposition, she could be sentenced to up to five years in jail, although it’s unlikely she would receive the maximum term.
“This was a compromise to be sure,” said her attorney, Walter McKee. “In the end the felony case will be dismissed, and that was the top priority.”
McKee said Buhalis entered an Alford guilty plea, describing it as “a guilty plea that specifically does not admit the offense, only that if the case went to trial the defendant could — not would — be convicted.”
He also said Buhalis no longer is working as a VA police officer in Vermont. “Demitria lost her job over this, but she is a can-do kind of person and is moving forward,” he said.
District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, whose office prosecuted the case, said Tuesday the case “had nothing to do with her profession. It was the conduct that occurred on the road.”
“It is important that anyone who engaged in this conduct would be charged,” Maloney said.
Maloney said she was pleased that Buhalis accepted responsibility for the incident, adding, “I certainly hope that she will abide by the terms of the agreement.”
At the time of the incident, Maine State Police Trooper Christopher Rogers said the threat was a culmination of a protracted road rage incident, which included passing and tailgating, that began in the Fairfield area about 15 miles to the north.
The incident was reported by one of the men in the other vehicle, and they followed Buhalis’ black Honda Accord at a distance until Rogers spotted the car in the southbound lane near mile 105. Rogers continued to follow the car without his lights activated until other officers arrived to assist with the traffic stop. That stop took place near the Interstate 295 toll plaza in West Gardiner.
On April 24, Buhalis responded via Facebook to a series of questions from a reporter and said she was innocent of the charge. Buhalis wrote that the two men in the other car threatened her and then accused her of pointing a gun at them because she is a police officer, something she said they could conclude from a police decal on her vehicle.
However, McKee said none of that came up at Tuesday’s hearing.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
A former Randolph couple pleaded guilty to welfare fraud charges and were each sentenced to serve jail time and jointly repay $21,673 restitution in a case where one defense attorney says they were affected by a state welfare statute that favors people having separate households.
Harrison Taylor Jr., 47, now of Augusta, pleaded guilty last week to theft by deception that occurred between November 2008 and December 2013. He was sentenced to serve an initial 60 days and the remainder of the two-year sentence was suspended. He was also placed on two years’ probation.
Deborah Taylor, 48, of Randolph, entered an Alford guilty plea to the charge of theft by deception that occurred between October 2008 and April 2014 in Randolph.
“She doesn’t admit she did the things the state said she did, but she does admit that if a jury heard the things the state says it has, they might convict her so she’s going to take a deal,” said her attorney, Stephen Smith.
She was sentenced to serve an initial 30 days and the remainder of the two-year sentence was suspended. She was also placed on two years’ probation. Both Taylors were ordered to contribute to the $21,673 restitution for the state’s food stamp program.
“What actually happened was they got married out of the best intentions,” Smith said on Monday. “They got divorced when this problem came up because their legal problems were only because they were married.”
The couple was married in Augusta June 6, 2006, and divorced in March 21, 2014, according to records at the Capital Judicial Center, where the sentencing hearing was held. They were each indicted on the charges in March 2015.
“There’s a real public policy problem here,” Smith said. “The Legislature might want to consider not imposing a marriage penalty on folks collecting welfare who get married or may wish to consider a sliding scale that takes into account how close most people in these circumstances are to the poverty line.”
He said the couple was eligible to receive less money once they married and combined households.
“Even if it’s the same two people eating the same amount of calories, they get less money,” he said.
Smith said the defense maintained the couple was mostly living apart.
Attorney Stephen Bourget, who represented Harrison Taylor, said Monday that his client fixes up lawn mowers and sells them to make money and that he has lost his Social Security assistance as well.
Assistant Attorney General John Alsop said the Class D misdemeanor charges of unsworn falsification were dismissed against each defendant in exchange for the pleas to the Class B felony theft charges.
“From the state’s point of view, they were pretending they were not living together when they were,” Alsop said on Monday.
One court filing in the case shows Alsop seeking records from child protective proceedings that indicated that a son of Harrison Taylor’s was placed with the couple in March 2010.
Alsop’s motion says Deborah Taylor “was asserting to one branch of DHHS that she was living apart from her spouse, and she was asserting to another branch of DHHS that she was living together with her spouse in a family environment suitable for placement of Harrison Taylor’s son in the home.”
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
Maine State Police on Tuesday said they conducted at least one additional search recently that was not disclosed to the public previously in hopes of uncovering evidence that will explain the disappearance of Kimberly Moreau nearly 30 years ago.
Police last month spent four days searching a property in Canton owned by Brian Enman, a series of searches that authorities publicized and were closely monitored by media. Detective Sgt. Mark Holmquist of the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit said at the time that the search would continue at a later date but that it would not include Enman’s 5-acre lot off Route 108.
Steve McCausland said Tuesday that a subsequent search was conducted late last month in nearby Jay, where Moreau grew up. That search, unlike the search of Enman’s property, was not announced to the public.
“This was in addition to those efforts,” McCausland said. “We went back without announcing it to anyone and did some follow-up work.”
McCausland would not say what authorities were looking for nor what they discovered during the Jay search. He also would not say whether anything uncovered during any of the searches thus far has helped advance the investigation.
“Those are investigative details I don’t want to get into,” McCausland said. “It was for anything that could give us a clue where Kim is.”
Moreau was 17 when she disappeared on May 10, 1986. She had argued with her boyfriend and canceled her plan to attend the Jay High School junior prom with him. Instead, the Jay teenager went out with a female friend and met a pair of 25-year-old acquaintances, one of whom was Enman, police said. She was last seen getting into a white Pontiac Trans Am with at least one of the two men at 11 p.m.
Moreau’s mother, Patricia Moreau, told the Morning Sentinel in a July 1986 interview that her daughter “said she was going out for a ride and would be back within an hour.” The teenager never returned home and was declared legally dead in 1993. Her remains have never been found.
Police have not classified the case as a homicide, but have said they suspect foul play.
Enman told investigators that he dropped Moreau off a half-mile from her home at the girl’s request. Police have never named Enman as a suspect in her disappearance and declined to say what led them to last month’s search of his property.
Enman, now 54, told the Kennebec Journal last month that he had nothing to do with Moreau’s disappearance. Police, during that extensive search, turned up soil on the property to let gases from any potential human remains escape so police dogs could pick up the scent.
McCausland said Tuesday that police anticipate conducting additional searches, but he was unsure when those might occur. The investigation has been active since Moreau’s disappearance in 1986.
“Our searches will continue,” he said.
Craig Crosby — 621-5642
Twitter: @CraigCrosby4
It’s been one month since a Pittston man was stabbed to death after what police described as a confrontation with a tenant of his boarding home, and no charges have been filed in the case.
Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland said Tuesday that there have been no new developments in the investigation into the fatal stabbing of 51-year-old Dale Clifford, who ran the boarding home out of the historic mansion on Route 194 in the East Pittston village.
McCausland said police still are compiling all interviews, the medical examiner’s report and evidence gathered from the home and will review the case with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, but there’s no timetable for when the final review will take place. McCausland wouldn’t comment on what police believe led to the confrontation or the stabbing, which was reported at 6:19 p.m. Aug. 15, and he wouldn’t identify the tenant.
But Lucinda Albano, who was renting a room in the home at the time, told the Kennebec Journal the day after the incident that her boyfriend stabbed Clifford in self-defense after Clifford attacked him.
Albano, who wouldn’t identify her boyfriend, said Clifford had pushed his way into the bathroom the couple was in and cornered and choked her boyfriend. She said her boyfriend then stabbed Clifford with a pocket knife, pushed him out of the way and ran out of the building to call 911.
Albano said Clifford had threatened them earlier that day, leaving the couple scared for their well-being, and illegally tried to evict the couple the day before the encounter. The threatening behavior led her to call police multiple times that day, Albano said, but she said a state trooper who went to the home once that day didn’t listen to her concerns that Clifford was dangerous.
The log on Albano’s cellphone the day after the stabbing showed that she called emergency dispatchers at the state’s regional communications center in Augusta nine times on Aug. 15.
The Kennebec Journal made a public records request on Aug. 17 under Maine’s public access laws for transcripts of those 911 calls but has yet to receive the records. The Maine Department of Public Safety said Tuesday that the Maine attorney general’s office still is reviewing the call transcripts in connection with the newspaper’s records request.
Paul Koenig — 621-5663
Twitter: @pdkoenig
Follow up on these stories and more on Twitter using the #MEcrime hashtag for @OnlineSentinel and @KJ_Online.
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