WINTHROP — A Massachusetts man who was jailed after allegedly beating and strangling a Winthrop woman at a campsite near Mt. Pisgah has been indicted by a grand jury on five assault charges.
He is accused of leaving the woman at the campsite for at least a day with broken ribs, a lacerated spleen, two black eyes and internal bleeding.
William J. Heil IV, 46, of Quincy, Massachusetts, was indicted recently by a Kennebec County grand jury on three counts of aggravated assault, class A felony charges which, if he’s found guilty, come with a maximum prison term of up to 30 years. He also faces two counts of class C domestic violence assault, also a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Heil is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Aug. 17 at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta.
All five of the charges allege Heil assaulted a woman in Winthrop whose home he had been living in. Three stem from an incident that allegedly took place while the pair were at a campsite in the woods off a hiking trail to Mt. Pisgah in late April.
A friend of the victim reported the woman had gone camping in the woods with Heil. The friend said Heil had returned but the woman had not, and the friend was unable to reach her, according to an affidavit filed in court by Savannah Brennan, an investigator for Winthrop Police Department.
The newspaper is not naming the woman because it does not identify alleged victims of domestic violence without their consent.
Police found Heil at the couple’s residence April 29 and he agreed to help them locate the woman, whom he acknowledged he had a fight with while they were camping the night of April 27. He told police he left the next morning, without her.
After Heil led police to a campsite, officers found the woman. A Kennebec County Sheriff’s deputy said he could see she had two black eyes.
The woman told police, according to Brennan’s affidavit, that Heil became angry at her after she mentioned him being on the Maine Sex Offender Registry, which lists him as a lifetime registrant and cites convictions he had in Massachusetts in 1996 on charges of indecent assault and battery on a person aged 14 or older and rape of a child with force.
The victim told police Heil punched her repeatedly and knocked her to the ground, and she tried to crawl away but he came after her. She said she screamed for help because she thought he was going to kill her. She also told police he strangled her, causing her to see stars and have a hard time breathing. She told police she didn’t initially run for help because she had warrants and was afraid she would be arrested if she reported the incident. She said they had both been drinking.
After the woman was taken to the hospital, a nurse told police the woman has suffered a broken rib, lacerations to her spleen and a contusion on her lung.
The woman also told police Heil had assaulted her at the home they shared, sometime on or between March 20 and April 25, which prompted the other two charges against Heil, aggravated assault and domestic violence assault, according to the indictment. She said he pushed her to the ground and she then lost consciousness. She said she climbed out onto a roof and shimmied down a tree to escape.
Brennan’s affidavit said Heil, at the time of the alleged acts, was on probation for a prior aggravated assault conviction. He is being held at the Kennebec County jail.
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