LEWISTON — Police were holding a 20-year-old man in connection with the suspicious death of a woman whose body was removed Tuesday by the Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner from a first-floor apartment at 417 Main St.
Bob Ryder
Lewiston police officer Eric Syphers, right, and Richard Stanton secure a perimeter around 417 Main St. in Lewiston on Tuesday morning after a person walked into the police station around 10 p.m. Monday to report a body in the first-floor apartment. Bob Ryder, 20, is being held as a suspect, according to Maine State Police.
People from the Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and Maine State Police leave the first-floor apartment where a body was found at 417 Main St. in Lewiston.
Police were investigating a suspicious death at 417 Main St. in Lewiston on Tuesday morning. They arrested and were holding Bob Ryder, 20, formerly of Litchfield, as a suspect in the case.
Police investigate the suspicious death of a woman in Lewiston on Tuesday.
Bob W. Ryder, formerly of Litchfield, was arrested at about 3 a.m. Tuesday and held on a probation violation at Androscoggin County Jail. No bail was allowed.
According to Tuesday's Lewiston Police Department call log, someone came into the lobby of the station just before 10 p.m. Monday and reported a woman was dead in the Main Street apartment. The age of that woman was not known.
The State Police criminal investigation division truck was at the address to process the scene, as was the Lewiston critical incident response unit.
The apartment is in the back of the building that housed the former Community Wireless Plus office across the street from Central Maine Medical Center. According to city assessing records, the property is owned by Double Eagle Properties LLC.
Police were seeking to gain entry to the basement through a door that had been fortified.
According to the building manager, the apartment had been leased to a man for the past three or four months. The tenant’s girlfriend has been missing for about three weeks, the manager said.
According to the owner-manager, the tenant told a friend he had killed his girlfriend and stuffed her in a hole somewhere in the building, but the tenant felt bad about it and told a friend.
It was that friend, according to the owner, who reported the death to police Monday night.
According to a Facebook page that gives the same date of birth, Ryder served in the U.S. Marines after attending Oak Hill High School in Wales.
Court records show Ryder had been charged with burglary, theft by unauthorized taking or transfer and criminal trespass on Aug. 21, 2010, and with criminal trespass on Aug. 20, 2010. He was found guilty, sentenced to two years, six months, with all but 102 days suspended, and two years of probation on the first charge; was sentenced to 20 days on the second charge; and to 30 days on the third and fourth charges.
State and local police cordoned off the building with tape and several patrolmen were stationed outside the apartment. Local police had secured the scene since Monday night, awaiting arrival of state investigators.
Although the incident was reported as a homicide, police on Tuesday considered it to be a suspicious death.
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I know the tenant. He is NOT
I know the tenant. He is NOT connected with the murder as of thus far. Therefor, lets not go saying hes a murderer. I understand the probability to this, and yes, i feel very sorry for the woman who passed. Nobody knows all the facts, or of the evadence that has or has not been recovered from the apartment. I will say that last week, bobby was at my house for 3 days visiting. I was in his apartment thursday, smelt nothing, but the smell topic has already been covered, so now i know why i could not smell anything. Im having a very hard time with this because of the fact i've known Bobby for 7 years, and he is/was by far the most kind, gentle, understanding young man i've ever known. I've never known him to be violent at all. Only time will tell in this case. We must wait for the evadence, dna testing, and what have you to figure out exactly what went on in that apartment. i do know that Bobby was NOT the only tenant that was living in that apartment. There was another male living there with him.
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That is seriously messed up. My thoughts are with the young woman's family.
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If he actually spent 2 1/2 years in jail instead of having most of suspended this woman would still be alive and he would not be facing a murder charges.
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This is what happens when you have judges appinted by democrats and DA's who are elected simply because of the "D" next to their name....
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You'll have to explain the connection for me there, Bob.
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You're worse than your cousin/friend/whatever lately.
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You're worse than your cousin/friend/whatever lately.
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Wow..didn't anyone smell anything..the stench of a dead body, especially in this heat, would have been something that would have smelled for quite awhile..glad someone reported it, although this story is a bit confusing...who's the tenant,who's the owner, who reported the body, who's the friend...????
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tenant = bob the murderer
owner = double eagle properties llc
reporter of body = the friend the murderer told
the friend= friend of the murderer whom reported to the police
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I used to live in this apartment(approx 2 yrs ago). The apt itself is a basement, below ground on 3 sides, few windows, damp & musty. Below the basement apt is a cellar/sub-basement with no windows or doors to access it (there was once a door and stairs to the left of the entry door to the apartment, but long ago it was sealed over with bricks). It's even darker and damper down there, with huge white spiders and strange mildew that chokes the air. The only access to that cellar is via a square hole in the floor in a closet. The hole, approx 2ft square, was virtually undetectable. You had to pull up the carpet in the closet and remove a piece of plywood. There was no stairs, just a drop probably 4-5 ft down. I never went down there, but I did peek. Each time we opened up that hole the air from it would have us coughing for days. It would be almost impossible to smell any decay unless you pulled up the carpet and opened the hole. The apt was chilly even in the summer, and the cellar was even colder, thus helping preserve the stench. The minute I heard this story, I knew exactly where the body was. We use to joke all the time that you could stuff bodies down there and noone would ever know... can't believe someone actually did it :[
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Linda...exactly what I wondered. The stench would have been awful.
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so sad :(
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