NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) – An East Haven woman who told the judge she had no idea where all the money went, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for embezzlement.

Renee Martin was sentenced Wednesday and ordered to pay back $600,000 embezzled from Accurate Wire Inc. in Branford.

Martin, who pleaded no contest to first-degree larceny charges in June, claimed no recollection of taking or spending the money.

From September 2000 to June 2004, Martin worked as a part-time bookkeeper at the company.

Prosecutors said that she wrote more than 240 checks in her name before changing the payee’s names in the system.

Prosecutor Stacey Haupt called Martin’s claim to have no recollection ludicrous.

Two brothers busted in raid

THORNTON, N.H. (AP) – Police seized a methamphetamine lab and arrested two brothers on drug charges this week.

Officers raided a house on Anderson Hill Road Tuesday night, arresting Raymond Welch, 32, and Robert Welch, 40. Raymond was charged with making methamphetamine and was being held on $100,000 bail. Robert was charged with drug possession and released.

Bangor institute has a new name

BANGOR (AP) – Bangor Mental Health Institute has a new name.

Gov. John Baldacci and hospital administrators celebrated Wednesday’s transformation into the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, which invokes the name of the Hampden native and social reformer who served as an advocate for the mentally ill in the 1800s.

Dix, who lived from 1802 to 1887, exposed the degrading and inhumane conditions under which the mentally ill were kept in Europe and America.

By reporting her findings to lawmakers and others in power, Dix succeeded in changing the treatment and living conditions of the mentally ill, establishing publicly funded institutions to get them off the streets and out of the prisons.

Local legend has it that she advocated putting the Augusta state mental hospital directly across the Kennebec River from the State House so that lawmakers and bureaucrats could not ignore the plight of those receiving treatment there.