AUGUSTA – A state prosecutor expects there will never be a detention or bail hearing for Patrick Armstrong, a 14-year-old Fayette boy, accused of killing Marlee Johnston, 14, of Fayette in November, Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson said.
“I would say that the earliest that there’s any likelihood of there being a bindover hearing, if there even is one, and we don’t know if there is going to be one yet because we don’t have a report from the state forensic service, would probably be sometime in June,” Benson said Monday.
The state had requested the diagnostic evaluation to help them determine whether to seek a bindover hearing to try Armstrong as an adult.
Things are certainly not going to be moving any sooner than May, Benson said.
Armstrong’s attorney, Walter McKee, said Tuesday there wasn’t anything scheduled in the near future on the case, and he doesn’t expect anything to happen for a month or two.
A police affidavit that would reveal details of Johnston’s murder was sealed Dec. 2 by Judge Charles Laverdiere and will remain sealed until the court makes it public.
Armstrong has remained in state custody since his arrest Nov. 29 when he was charged with murder of the popular Winthrop Middle School eighth-grader on Nov. 26.
The two were neighbors living about one-third of a mile away from each other in the Lovejoy Shores Road neighborhood on Lovejoy Pond.
Johnston had taken the family’s dogs for a walk and never returned. Family members found her body in the pond a short time later.
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