Brandon Thongsavanh’s lawyer is seeking a new trial based on statements that implicate another man as the killer.
By Lisa Chmelecki
Staff writer

AUBURN – A 20-year-old woman who has been in jail for theft, forgery and various other crimes claims to know for certain that the wrong man went to prison for killing Bates College senior Morgan McDuffee.

Krystal Paradis testified in court Friday that she knows that Brandon Thongsavanh did not kill McDuffee because another man told her that he did it.

The man, Chad Aube, was involved in the March 2002 drunken brawl that led to McDuffee’s death, and he was one of the state’s key witnesses in its case against Thongsavanh.

Aube and Paradis dated for a few years several years ago.

“I didn’t want to get involved because I know how Chad Aube is,” Paradis said. “But I didn’t want Brandon to go down for something that he didn’t do.”

Paradis is one of four witnesses that Thongsavanh’s lawyer, William Maselli, called to the stand Friday in his attempt to convince a judge that Thongsavanh deserves a new trial based on new evidence.

Whether the information is enough to set Thongsavanh free remains unknown.

Maselli and Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese have until October to present their written arguments based on the new testimony.

Justice Ellen Gorman will make a decision after that.

Too late?

Thongsavanh was convicted of murder last February and is serving 58 years at the Maine Correctional Center.

Maselli acknowledged after the hearing that the witnesses may have come forward too late. But, if Gorman rejects his request for a new trial, he plans to use the new testimony as his foundation for an appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

“I feel good about the state of the evidence,” Maselli said. “It puts things together. There was a lot of reasonable doubt before. Now it’s overwhelmingly certain that Aube was involved with the stabbing.”

All four witnesses spoke about Aube, although Paradis was the only one who testified that she specifically heard Aube take blame for McDuffee’s murder.

She claims that she was at a party last fall at which Aube told her that he stabbed McDuffee during the brawl on Main Street because McDuffee had gotten “mouthy” with him.

Paradis testified that Aube told her that he was too drunk to remember how many times he stabbed McDuffee.

When asked why she didn’t come forward sooner, Paradis said she was afraid that Aube would come after her or her family.

She insisted that her decision to share the information had nothing to do with the fact that she dated Aube. She also acknowledged that she was high on cocaine and ecstasy when Aube allegedly confessed to her.

Other witnesses

Krista Hoy, 18, testified that she was at the same party in September when she overheard Aube say, “My boy is going to go down for me.”

But Hoy acknowledged that she didn’t specifically hear him say anything about Thongsavanh, McDuffee or a stabbing.

Patricia Ouellette, a Lewiston woman who worked with Aube and Thongsavanh at Federal Express, testified that Aube pulled a knife from his sock and showed it to her while he was visiting her apartment.

The incident was two months before the stabbing. Ouellette said she didn’t think about telling anyone until after Aube testified at Thongsavanh’s trial that he fought with his fists, not with knives.

“That just didn’t sit right with me,” Ouellette said. “I want justice served. I just want the right thing to happen.”

The final witness, James Ferguson, testified that he was lying in bed in his apartment on Summer Street in Lewiston a few days after McDuffee was killed, when he heard Aube talking outside with a group of people.

Ferguson said he heard Aube refer to a fight and a knife, but he didn’t remember hearing anything more specific than that.

Girl’s scream

Aube testified during Thongsavanh’s trial in February that he was fighting with McDuffee in the early morning hours of March 3, 2002, when Thongsavanh came out of nowhere, grabbed McDuffee and started jabbing his fist in his stomach.

Aube said he thought Thongsavanh was simply punching McDuffee until he heard a girl scream, “He’s been stabbed. He’s bleeding.”

A 21-year-old construction worker from Auburn, Aube is serving nine months in prison for assaulting two police officers and for refusing to submit to arrest during a separate incident.

lchmelecki@sunjournal.com