IAPE Evidence Blog

DigitalJournal.com, digitaljournal.com
BYLINE: Kevin Fitzger­ald
Link to Article

Maine

kjetil_r

DNA left on a dis­carded cig­a­rette butt was the smok­ing gun that finally led author­i­ties in Maine to make an arrest in a mur­der case dat­ing back to 1980.

Court doc­u­ments just released show that author­i­ties used DNA left on a cig­a­rette butt to arrest Jay Mercier back in Sep­tem­ber, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­ated Press (via Boston.com). He has now been charged with the bru­tal slay­ing of 20-year-old Rita St. Peter.

St. Peter had been killed after she left a bar to walk home on the night of July 4, 1980. It is also believe that she may have hitched a ride. The young victim’s body was found par­tially nude along the side of a road the next day. She had been blud­geoned and run over by a vehi­cle. She had also been sex­u­ally assaulted.

Mercier was orig­i­nally a per­son of inter­est in the crime when wit­nesses had reported see­ing him sit­ting alone in a truck around the time St. Peter left the bar, although author­i­ties could not find suf­fi­cient evi­dence at the time to arrest him after an investigation.

Detec­tives still had inter­est in the case sev­eral years later. Accord­ing to Reuters, they inter­viewed Mercier out­side his house in Jan. 2010, where Mercier was smok­ing a cig­a­rette. After dis­card­ing the cig­a­rette butt, author­i­ties col­lected it to be sub­mit­ted into evi­dence. Author­i­ties were later able to obtain an oral swab from Mercier when a search war­rant was served.

After sev­eral months, results finally showed a DNA match between Mercier’s saliva and semen sam­ples col­lected from St. Peter’s body.

Mercier, now 56, entered a plea of not guilty while in court on Mon­day. He has con­sis­tently denied guilt through­out the years. A judge has denied him bail.

His trial is set to begin some­time in the mid­dle of next year.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

CBSNEWS, cbsnews.com

Port­land, ME

(AP) PORTLAND, Maine — A 55-year-old Maine man was arrested Wednes­day and charged with mur­der­ing a woman 31 years ago some­time after she left a bar in a neigh­bor­ing town.

Jay Mercier was arrested at his home in the small west­ern Maine town of Indus­try and charged with mur­der in the death of Rita St. Peter, who was 20 when she was found dead along the side of a road in Anson on July 5, 1980.

Offi­cials are not releas­ing details sur­round­ing St. Peter’s death or what specif­i­cally led them to Mercier. Offi­cials wouldn’t release the cause of death in 1980 either, but a 1990 Ban­gor Daily News story on the case said she had a frac­tured skull, was severely beaten and was run over by a vehicle.

The pre­vi­ous old­est cold case in Maine that resulted in an arrest occurred in 1983, when Judith Flagg was mur­dered in Fayette. Thomas Mitchell Jr., of South Port­land, was arrested 23 years after her death and later con­victed and sen­tenced to life in prison.

“The length of time of this case illus­trates that unsolved homi­cides never close,” said Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland.

Mercier has been employed as a laborer for most of his life, was divorced and was liv­ing with his girl­friend when he was arrested, police said. He has sev­eral crim­i­nal con­vic­tions on his record, includ­ing some for dri­ving under the influ­ence, said Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Andrew Ben­son, who is pros­e­cut­ing the case.

Mercier will likely make his ini­tial court appear­ance in Som­er­set County Supe­rior Court next week. A pub­lic defender will be appointed to rep­re­sent him, Ben­son said. Pros­e­cu­tors will ask that Mercier be held with­out bail.

St. Peter had been drink­ing in a bar in Madi­son on July 4, 1980, and was last seen some­time after mid­night cross­ing a bridge over the Ken­nebec River from Madi­son to Anson, a town of about 2,500 95 miles north of Port­land, accord­ing to a Maine State Police state­ment. At the time, she was stay­ing with friends in Anson and work­ing at Ken’s Fam­ily Drive-In, a restau­rant in Skowhegan.

She was found the next morn­ing on the side of a nearby coun­try road.

St. Peter is sur­vived by a daugh­ter, who was 3 at the time of her death, and a half-sister, police said.

A grand jury indicted Mercier ear­lier this month, but McCaus­land declined to spec­ify what sort of evi­dence pointed toward Mercier or whether he was iden­ti­fied through DNA.

“We aren’t get­ting into specifics other than we used tech­nol­ogy at the crime lab,” he said.

At the Anson town offices, Town Clerk Carol Ryan said peo­ple in town were shocked when St. Peter was killed. Her fam­ily was well-known in town, and Ryan’s own daugh­ter was just a cou­ple of years behind St. Peter in school.

Towns­peo­ple were talk­ing fol­low­ing Mercier’s arrest, she said.

“It’s got every­body curi­ous on how do they solve some­thing that was that long ago,” Ryan said.

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org