By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

AUBURN – The killers of an 81-year-old Lewiston man will spend the next half-century in prison.

Superior Court Justice Thomas E. Delahanty II sentenced Shaun Tuttle to 47 years and David Lakin to 52 years Friday for the March 2004 murder of James McManus.

The two men, ages 23 and 24, were convicted in March of taking the elderly man from his Lewiston home, driving over him and leaving his body in the trunk of his own car.

Delahanty called the crime “one of the most serious I have seen.”

Lakin and Tuttle had plenty of chances to avoid killing the helpless old man, the judge said. Instead, “They had to deliver the fatal blow by driving over his head.”

Delahanty also sentenced the killers to 20 years each for kidnapping McManus.

Those sentences followed a morning of pleas, both for harsh punishments and mercy.

McManus’ grandson, Peter Vanderweil, asked for the maximum penalty: life in prison.

Reading from a prepared statement, he addressed his grandfather’s killers by their first names. He called on them to change in prison, perhaps by finding a way of helping others. And he asked them to ease a small portion of his family’s pain by describing what happened that night.

Throughout their trial, neither of the men admitted to killing McManus.

“You, David and Shaun, committed the crime,” Vanderweil said. “Now, he’s nothing but ashes in the ground.”

Both men watched impassively as Vanderweil spoke. Lakin’s family followed, standing one by one at a microphone just a few feet from Lakin.

“Please, sir,” his mother, Karen Fowler, asked the judge. “Don’t send him away for many, many years.”

The family portrayed Lakin, who quietly listened and sobbed, as a caring uncle and father of two.

“Be brave,” his sister, Linda McKinney, told him. “Be strong. Know we love you.”

Tuttle did not have as much family support in court. His mother attended but was unable to speak.

Instead, he spoke for himself, something Lakin declined to do.

Tuttle maintained his innocence.

“I will never admit to a crime I did not commit,” he said. However, he will always feel some guilt, he said. “I did nothing and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

While in jail, Tuttle earned a high school diploma. He said he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and plans to go to college.

He’ll have to take classes in prison.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, who prosecuted the case, requested a 50-year sentence for Tuttle and 52 years for Lakin. The difference between them, she said, was that Tuttle reported McManus’ death to police.

However, it didn’t excuse the barbarity of the crime, she said.

The pair pulled the old man from his home with a belt around his neck and drove him to a secluded spot in Turner, she said.

“He would have known he was going to die as he lay on the frozen ground in his pajama bottoms,” Marchese said. “This is a brutal and horrific crime against a helpless old gentleman.”

Delahanty took about an hour to decide their fate before emerging at the Androscoggin County Superior Court.

“Mr. Lakin was the obvious catalyst,” he said. “Tuttle was willing to be his assistant.”

Part of the severity of the sentences was based on McManus’ helplessness, he said. He called it a “crime of ultimate violence.”

The judge appreciated the family pleas, but wondered if they should have been more involved in Lakin’s life before the crime, he said. He was unmoved by descriptions of the 24-year-old man’s kindness.

On the night of the murder, Lakin spent $100 on drugs, Delahanty said.

“I didn’t hear anything about feeding the children,” he said.

As he handed down the sentences, neither man showed any emotion, while family members of both men wept.

Once Delehanty left and Lakin and Tuttle were handcuffed and taken away, Lakin’s mother met in the back of the courtroom with McManus’ grandson.

They talked quietly for a moment and embraced, both sobbing.