AUGUSTA (AP) – A theft of bank checks and an angry confrontation led up to the strangulation death of a 72-year-old Augusta woman, police said Wednesday as a neighbor of the victim appeared in court on a murder charge.

During a brief hearing in Superior Court, Raymond Leslie Clark was ordered back to Kennebec County jail pending a bail hearing.

Clark, 35, was arrested the previous night at his apartment after talking to investigators about the death of Audrey Lou Benn.

Benn’s body was found inside her basement apartment Friday evening. Clark rented an apartment on the first floor of the same building, located along a busy street lined mostly with apartment buildings in the capital.

A state police affidavit filed in court outlined in gruesome detail what happened before and after the death of Benn.

Benn’s roommate, Robert Harvey, told Augusta police he discovered Benn’s body when he returned home.

Police found a waist tie from a bathrobe tied around Benn’s neck and bits of paper towel or tissue in her nostrils, according to the affidavit. There was no sign the apartment had been broken into.

During their investigation, detectives learned that Clark was a frequent visitor to Benn’s apartment, where he would come to use the phone or borrow money or cigarettes, according to the affidavit by Jason Richards said.

Police also learned from Benn’s bank that checks in her name had been written by someone whose handwriting did not match hers. Police said the handwriting matched Clark’s, and he signed a consent form allowing police to search his apartment.

Clark later admitted stealing Benn’s checks from her mailbox. He also told police he had killed Benn “because, according to him, she had confronted him about being a sex offender and came at him with a knife,” the affidavit said.

Police later recovered a knife from the snowbank behind the building where Clark said he had thrown it in a panic. DNA taken from the tie on Benn’s neck matched that of the victim as well as Clark, police said.

Clark appears on Maine’s Sex Offender Registry. The Kennebec Sheriff’s Department said Clark was arrested in 1999 for sexual abuse of a minor and robbery, for which he received a 10-year sentence, all but 4 years suspended and six years of probation.

While neighbors described Benn as gentle and harmless, police records show she had been arrested at least twice. In 1999 she was charged with assaulting an Augusta police officer, the Kennebec Journal of Augusta reported.