January 1996: Sarena Hiltz, 21, was shot by her boyfriend, Ricky Enman, in the house trailer they shared on Route 133. Enman is serving a seven-year sentence for manslaughter.

January 1998: Steven Dale Holloway shot his friend Albert “Sonny” Parker, 68, with Parker’s hunting rifle at Parker’s Village View home. Holloway is serving a 20-year jail sentence for manslaughter.

July 1999: Clarence Bayliss, 81, shot his wife, Evelyn, 74, then called police to tell them what he had done. He also let them know that he was planning to shoot himself by the time they got there. Police found both Baylisses dead at their Munson Road home.

The investigation

Dec. 23, at about 5 p.m.: Raymond “Butch” Weed stops at Mario’s in Wilton for a cup of coffee.

Dec. 23, at about 7 p.m.: Friends dropping off Christmas gifts find Weed’s body in the entrance to his home office.

Dec. 24: A team of Maine State Police detectives begin searching Weed’s restored cape for clues.

Dec. 26: Investigators begin interviewing Weed’s friends, family and employees.

Dec. 29: Police set up a roadblock in front of Weed’s home and question about 100 passing motorists.

Jan. 5: A Maine State Police dive team searches local waterways for clues.

Jan. 6: Police confirm that Weed was shot to death.

(No new information has been released.)

Murder in a small town
As Butch Weed’s shooter continues to stump detectives, the people of Wilton come up with their own theories, and his family tries to ignore the gossip.
By Lisa Chmelecki
Staff Writer

WILTON – Butch Weed called his sister on the morning of Dec. 23 to tell her about the gifts he bought for her kids and his other nieces and nephews.

A strawberry-scented doll in a baby stroller for Rachel’s 3-year-old. A car safety kit with jumper cables, a flashlight and flares for Donna’s 16-year-old. And a miniature pool table for Bill’s oldest.

Butch, who was called Butchy by his family, wasn’t checking to make sure he picked out the right gifts. He knew they were perfect and he was too excited to keep it to himself.

Donna Trabucchi knew it was her brother’s way of letting her know that Christmas would be special even though it would be the first without their father.

Raymond Weed Jr., the man after whom Butch was named, died of lung cancer in April. He was 63, an age that seemed young to his family at the time.

After Butch ran through the list of gifts, Donna reminded him to bring doughnuts to their mom’s house on Christmas morning.

He promised to be there by 9 a.m., then he started to lose his cell phone connection.

A small town

Later that evening, sometime between 5 and 7 p.m., someone walked into Butch’s restored cape on Main Street in Wilton and shot him to death as he worked in his home office.

The owner of New Horizon Builders, Butch had just mailed Christmas bonuses to his six employees. The presents for his nieces and nephews were all wrapped.

More than a month later, the killer continues to stump detectives.

As his family waits for answers, they try not to obsessively search for explanations in the

rumors they overhear at the market, the stories their friends hear at work and the theories their kids bring home from school.

But it is not easy.

“Being a small town, people are going to talk,” said Elaine Weed, Butch’s mother. “I’m trying to ignore what they say. But it’s hard. It’s just such a senseless thing.”

Until Butch’s death, the biggest talk in the rural town of 4,200 people was the fact that the new Chinese restaurant on Main Street had managed to stay open beyond the six months that most locals had given it.

It is not as if Wilton is unfamiliar with murder. Over the past eight years, three other people have been shot to death.

But, unlike Weed’s case, the killers were identified within days: a man who killed his live-in girlfriend in the middle of an argument, an abusive husband who killed his wife and shot himself, a man who shot and robbed his friend and then confessed to police.

“I’ve been here 23 years. There have been three other murders. But they always catch the person. The hubbub dies down a lot quicker,” said Steve Jones, the owner of Steve’s Market.

Butch’s younger brother, Bill Weed, lives in Maryland. But he has spent enough time in Wilton to know how it must be affecting people.

“I think it has kinda freaked the town out a bit,” he said. “Whoever did it could be their neighbor. It could be someone who comes into their store, someone who they see every day.”

Rumors

Detectives have not said whether the murderer was a stranger or someone who knew the 40-year-old contractor.

But most townspeople have dismissed the theory that it was a random act – a burglar who didn’t expect anyone to be home or a crazed serial killer on his first stop.

“People just think that he made somebody mad, real mad,” said Steve Smith, an employee at Mario’s of Wilton, where Butch stopped every morning for a cup of black coffee and a chocolate-glazed doughnut.

Smith has overheard customers exchange theories about everything from the person who did it to what Butch was doing when the shots were fired.

One rumor has him sitting at his computer with his hand on the keyboard. Another has the killer hiding in the closet, waiting for Butch to walk into the room.

Some people talk about jealousy as the motive, the act of an angry husband or boyfriend. Others have mentioned a business deal gone awry.

“I’ve even heard it was a professional hit,” Smith said.

In a town where the ice-fishing shacks on the local pond far outnumber the businesses on Main Street, one thing remains certain: The theories being tossed around at the grocery store, the post office and the local coffee shop are pure speculation.

“We need ‘CSI’ to come here,” said Pat Allen, an older woman who has lived in Wilton her entire life.

“It’s probably going to be a big surprise when they find out,” added Mike Stickney, also a Wilton native. “There are a lot of opinions, but nobody really knows.”

Plow guy

Both Allen and Stickney knew Butch from Mario’s. Most days, they were in the restaurant at the same time Butch went in for his second cup of coffee and a chocolate-chip cookie.

Others knew Butch as the man who built their house or the guy who plowed their driveway.

The last time Bill Weed spoke to his brother, Butch was in his plow truck. After nearly 10 hours on the road, he had almost finished the more than 40 driveways that he cleared after every storm.

It was 10 p.m., and Butch sounded tired.

“To make him feel better, I said, ‘Just think of all of the money you’ll be taking to the bank,'” Bill Weed recalled.

Butch laughed and said, “If I can even remember what driveways I did. It’s not like I bill ’em.”

These days, Butch’s pickup truck is parked in his driveway next to the Ford van that he used to lug plywood, shingles and other supplies from one work site to the next.

A wicker chair is knocked on its side on the porch. A broken piece of yellow tape, warning “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS,” sticks out from a snowbank by his mailbox.

A month after the murder, people still slow down when driving by, as if looking for clues that detectives may have missed.

‘The Brady Bunch’

When Bill Weed’s phone rang in the early morning hours of Dec. 24, and his sister told him that Butchy was dead, Bill immediately assumed it was a car crash. With 86,000 miles on his two-year-old truck, that seemed the most obvious.

Even after his sister explained that somebody had killed him, Bill Weed didn’t believe it. He hung up and called the Wilton Police Department, convinced that someone had made a mistake.

“The whole idea of it being a murder, of someone walking into this home and shooting him dead, was so incomprehensible,” Bill Weed said. “Until this past year, until my dad died, nothing bad had ever happened to my family.”

Every summer, the entire family piled into their Volkswagen Beetle and drove from their home in Chester, Conn., to their grandparents’ camp in Maine. They usually lugged their boat, and there was never enough seat belts to go around.

“Nobody ever crashed. We grew up in the ’70s. Nobody ever overdosed. Everybody was fine for 46 years,” Bill Weed said.

Butch’s youngest sister, Rachel Fretz, said her friends used to refer to her family as The Brady Bunch.

Even though Butch was in the middle of the five kids, all of his siblings thought of him as their big, tough older brother.

At home, the two boys, Bill and Butch, competed over everything, from who was better at Monopoly to who could do more push-ups.

Their longest-lasting argument was over who was taller. During every family photo, including one taken last summer, the two men got on their tiptoes to prove the other was shorter.

A fisherman and hunter

Despite their brotherly rivalries, Bill Weed always liked knowing that Butch was there.

“I always felt secure having him around,” he said.

Since Butch had trouble in regular classes, he was sent to a technical school every afternoon to learn carpentry. One of his classmates in the program was the ex-boyfriend of a girl who was dating Bill.

One afternoon, Butch told his brother, “Listen, this guy really, really hates you. But you don’t have to worry about him.”

Bill Weed doesn’t know what his brother said to the guy. He never asked. He only knows that the guy never bothered him again.

Unlike his brother, Butch was never into team sports. He would much rather fish and hunt.

His favorite time of year was the family’s annual trip to their grandparents’ camp outside Baxter State Park. He spent hours walking in the woods and riding his dirt bike up and down the half-mile driveway.

First job

As soon as he turned 14, Butch applied for his work permit. He walked to the local restaurant in Chester, Conn., every afternoon and bugged the owner until he gave him a job sweeping the parking lot.

It wasn’t long before Butch was promoted to dishwasher, then bus boy, then waiter, then head maintenance worker.

Aside from paying his sister Donna to clean his room, Butch saved his paychecks so he could buy a car as soon as he turned 16.

He bought and refinished his GMC Jimmy before he even got his license. Soon after he graduated from high school in 1982, he and his cousin took off in it for a trip across the country.

At about the same time, Butch’s father was getting ready to retire to Maine after 20 years as an electrician for Connecticut Power & Light.

Elaine and the elder Butch settled in a small house in Weld. All of their kids, with the exception of Bill, eventually moved to the area.

‘At his prime’

Butch and his former wife moved to Wilton after brief stops in Montana and Alaska.

It was here, in a town that greets visitors with a sign that says, “Wilton: A great place to live, work and play,” that Butch Weed decided to settle.

He worked for a couple of construction companies for a few years before starting his business. He joined the Wilton Lions Club and became an active member of the Farmington Baptist Church.

Butch never had children of his own, but he helped his ex-wife raise her son. He taught Sunday school, and coached the boy’s youth football team.

Life got hard for Butch about two years ago, when he and his wife divorced, Bill Weed said. But, according to his brother, Butch relied on his faith and his family to get through it.

This past spring, Butch started dating a woman. His family said he hadn’t given up the idea of having his own children.

“He died at his prime,” Bill Weed said. “He did have a very good year. Business was good. He had a new girlfriend. But he didn’t do everything he wanted to do.”

Secrets

Bill Weed remembered the first time he spent a week with Butch in Wilton.

“He walked around town, and every single person said hello to him,” Bill Weed said. “He knew everybody. I was amazed by that.”

Bill Weed acknowledged that everybody keeps secrets. But his brother never talked about any enemies, never alluded to any problems.

Over the past month, detectives have interviewed more than 100 people, in some cases more than once. Their lack of progress has kept people talking.

“You hear something new every day,” said Alycia Stevens, a clerk at Steve’s Market.

A week ago, a customer called the owner of the local market and told him to read the newspaper in the morning. He said police figured out who did it, and there would be a story about it.

Around the same time, someone called Smith at Mario’s to ask if it was true that someone had been arrested.

Neither rumor was true.

And, with each day that passes, the Weeds worry that Butch’s killer will never be caught, and they will be left with nothing but unfounded theories and small-town gossip.

lchmelecki@sunjournal.com

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