PARIS – A man accused of killing four people over Labor Day weekend has changed his plea, signaling an insanity defense.
Christian Nielsen’s attorney filed a motion Monday to change Nielsen’s prior plea of not guilty to four counts of murder “to include an alternative plea of ‘not criminally responsible by reason of insanity or mental disease or defect.'”
That motion must now be reviewed during a hearing before Justice Robert Crowley. That hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Nielsen, 32, was committed to Riverview Psychiatric Center for assessment and treatment.
That transfer was delayed to allow him to regain his strength but he was moved to the Augusta facility on May 10, a Cumberland County jailer said Wednesday.
He lost 55 pounds – dropping from 158 pounds to 103 pounds – before the Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion obtained a court-order to insert a feeding tube. He chose to begin eating again, so the sheriff didn’t have follow through on the court order.
Nielsen, who’s being held without bail while awaiting trial on four counts of murder, was transferred to the Cumberland County Jail days after his arrest after he allegedly attacked a fellow inmate at the Oxford County Jail in Paris.

He was placed on a suicide watch in December after using a disposable razor to make cuts on his scalp that resembled the letter “X.”
Authorities say Nielsen confessed to the slayings, which took place while he was staying at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast, a 130-year-old converted farmhouse near the Sunday River ski resort in Newry. He was working as a cook at another inn nearby.
Nielsen’s attorney, Ron Hoffman of Rumford, has also filed a motion to suppress evidence seized and statements made to law enforcement officers. In his request to the judge, Hoffman states that the items were seized illegally and Nielsen was deprived of his Miranda rights.
On Sept. 1, authorities said, he killed James Whitehurst, 50, of Batesville, Ark., a handyman who had been staying at the B&B and helping out the owner. Authorities said Nielsen burned and disposed of Whitehurst’s body in the woods in Upton.
On Sept. 3, he allegedly killed the Black Bear’s owner, Julie Bullard, 65. The following day, Labor Day, he allegedly killed Bullard’s daughter, Selby, 30, and her friend, Cindy Beatson, 43, when they arrived at the inn unexpectedly. All three women were dismembered.

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