By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer
An Auburn woman has fond memories of her times with James Vining.

AUBURN – James Vining would rise early to whip up an omelet, then serve breakfast in bed to his girlfriend, Alice Keene.

John Graffam spent much of his time in the recent past helping to care for his wheelchair-bound brother, Robert.

Graffam and Vining were friends. They were found dead in a wooded area off Foss Road in Lewiston on Saturday. Police are investigating their deaths as homicides but aren’t saying how they were killed.

The two men shared much in common, more than the shallow graves where they were found.

Each struggled with significant obstacles.

Graffam, 30, was learning-disabled, had epilepsy and suffered from seizures, said his mother, Lianne Micks of Pittston.

Vining, 43, was “slow,” Keene said. He had suffered severe injuries in an auto crash when he was about 9 years old. “He had to learn to walk and talk all over,” Keene said. The experience left him with a sort of innocence about him that was childlike at times.

Micks and Keene said the two men shared another thing: a fondness for booze. Sometimes it got them into trouble.

Micks remembers the night Graffam called her, hoping that she’d bail him out of jail after he was picked up after an evening of drinking and carousing.

Tuesday evening she said she was feeling guilty that she hadn’t helped that night. Perhaps it was there that her son met his eventual killer.

If the night he spent in jail was a low point, Micks also recalled a high moment in her son’s short life.

“The night his son was born,” she said, “he was so very happy.”

As Micks pondered her son’s death, Keene wondered about Vining’s slaying.

“How could someone go and kill him?” she asked. “There was a good side to Jim.”

She recalled with fondness their outings, especially last winter as they shopped for Christmas gifts for her two sons and Vining’s daughter, Jamie. They held hands while walking through the aisles at Kmart. Sometimes he’d sneak in a quick tickle, she remembered, even thwarting her attempt to stymie his playfulness by filling his hands with stuff.

And she remembered Vining’s gentleness, the way he’d brush her hair before they’d slide under the sheets for the night.

Like Micks, though, she also recalled the drinking and the trouble it sometimes brought.

“Jim had three rules,” said Keene. “He couldn’t come over unless he was sober, shaved and showered.”

Like many alcoholics, Keene said Vining could be a sweetheart when he was sober, but cruel and hateful when he was drinking.

His friends, she said, would all toss him out if he were hitting the bottle, but welcomed him back with open arms when he wasn’t.

Vining had gotten in trouble with the law back in the 1980s, convicted twice of burglary charges, once with theft added in. He spent 90 days in the county jail on one burglary charge, and a year in prison on the burglary and theft conviction.

Later, living in Portland, he was indicted on an arson charge resulting from a fire at his then-girlfriend’s apartment. In 1992, he was convicted of manslaughter, but the verdict was overturned on appeal.

Graffam’s mother recalled some trouble with the law from time to time, but he had no serious felony convictions, according to Androscoggin County Superior Court records.

Lewiston Deputy Police Chief Michael Bussiere said Tuesday that police were making progress in their investigation into the slayings of Graffam and Vining.

The bodies of the men were found by hunters and police Saturday, the opening day of Maine’s deer season.

Police are working to piece together the men’s final days. Micks had reported Graffam as missing about a month ago. She said she became alarmed after visiting his Auburn apartment several times but never finding him around.

Keene said she last heard from Vining on Sept. 23. He had called four times that day, the last to say he was going to finish watching a movie before coming to visit.

He never showed up.

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