By Christopher Williams,Staff Writer

AUBURN – One suspect’s confession in a double homicide can’t be used against his co-defendant at trial.

That’s the ruling a judge at Androscoggin County Superior Court made Friday. The Jan. 11 statement Thomas Dyer made to police about the respective roles he and his alleged accomplice played in the fatal beatings of two local men won’t be allowed to be presented to a jury.

Dyer and Gary Gauthier Jr. are charged with murdering John Graffam and James Vining in September. Gauthier was seeking his own trial.

The brief hearing – just seven minutes – Friday afternoon followed a meeting in judge’s chambers where the two defendants’ lawyers discussed Gauthier’s motion to sever the two cases before trial, scheduled for Oct. 23.

The two defendants appeared in court in jail clothing; Gauthier in orange, Dyer in dark blue. They sat at separate tables, Gauthier in front.

Justice Thomas Delahanty II said the two men would be tried together. Dyer’s statements to police, alleging that Gauthier played a lead role in beating the men with a baseball bat, would not be allowed in the state’s chief case against Gauthier, Delahanty said.

Other statements may be used at trial, but only after they have been edited by prosecutors and OK’d by the defense. Prosecutors are expected to reveal by September which statements they plan to use at trial.

Gauthier had argued that, had Dyer’s confession been allowed at trial, Gauthier’s identity couldn’t be shielded from the jury even if prosecutors had blacked out his name.

“Dyer, as indicated in his statements, has and will continue to shift the blame to Gauthier,” reads the motion written by his lawyer, Robert Ruffner. “Not surprisingly, Gauthier will not be supporting Dyer’s efforts to do so.”

A motion Gauthier wrote himself about his treatment in jail was not scheduled for a hearing Friday. In that motion he wrote that, over a four-month period:

• his privacy was invaded;

• he was illegally and unjustly transported;

• his mail was tampered with; and

• he was the subject of discrimination.

The bodies of Graffam, 30, and Vining, 43, both of Auburn, were discovered partially buried in October near railroad tracks along Foss Road in Lewiston. Police said the two defendants beat the two men with a baseball bat after one of them accidentally spilled beer in a car. Police said DNA links the two men to the murders.

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