For box:

Anyone with information on the murder of Raymond “Butch” Weed is urged to call Maine State Police CID II in Augusta at 624-7143 or Wilton police at 645-3876.

5 years later
Police still seeking clues in Weed slaying

WILTON – People here still wonder who killed contractor Butch Weed two days before Christmas 2003.

Weed, 40, was found shot to death in his Main Street home by friends delivering Christmas presents.

Local woman Shannon Smith remembers where she was that night five years ago: at a Mt. Blue High School basketball game in Farmington when police and emergency responders suddenly left the gym.

“When I got home I found out Butch Weed had been murdered,” Smith said. “It was a very big, devastating loss to our community. People still wonder what happened.”

Weed, wearing his work clothes, was shot twice while he sat at his desk in the office-entryway of his home, according to the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children’s Web site. Close friends found him at about 7 p.m. on Dec. 23, slumped over in his chair.

The case remains unsolved but is still under active investigation, Maine Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes said.

Police involved in the initial investigation are no longer in the positions they held at the time. Wilton officers have left the force. State Police detectives have moved on to different jobs within the Department of Public Safety.

Police conducted more than 100 interviews during the prime of the investigation. Nearly a year later they searched Wilson Stream for a gun. They followed up on leads each time they came in and expanded their search for suspects to at least three counties.

Weed’s family has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the death of Butch Weed.

The case is has been transferred from the detective bureau in Gray to the one in Augusta. The switch was the result of a restructuring of cases based on geography, Lt. Brian McDonough said.

New detectives will be brought up to date on the status of the case and all of the people involved, he said. A new state police detective in the Franklin County office, David Pelletier, is taking over the investigation.

It’s really like a re-investigation of the case, allowing new eyes to review information and evidence, McDonough said. DNA evidence collected in the Weed case is not that old and since then, DNA crime technology has improved, he said. Evidence may be resubmitted for further testing in hopes of discovering a suspect or a better clue, he said.

Witnesses interviewed at the time of the slaying who may have been too afraid to mention something may bring new information that could lead to a suspect in the case, McDonough said.

In Wilton and Franklin County the rumors still swirl around Weed’s murder, and some have speculated those first on the scene could have disrupted the collection of evidence that might have led police immediately to a suspect.

But McDonough said part of the obligation first responders to any shooting incident have is to look for signs of life on a victim; those actions alone can be disruptive to a crime scene. Police, firefighters and paramedics must also check a scene to ensure nobody else is hurt and protect themselves and other responders by clearing the scene to make sure the killer isn’t still around.

The first responders who went into Butch Weed’s residence knew he was dead, McDonough said, but they needed to see if the shooter or anyone else was there. After checking out the residence, they backed out and secured the scene and waited for state police to arrive.

As in most cases, when the state’s investigators arrived, they widened the crime scene and moved people back to ensure the scene was fully secure.

A state medical examiner was called and an assessment of the body for the location of wounds was done.

“I don’t know if the Butch Weed case is any different than any other case,” McDonough said. “We’re not perfect, but we have more than a 95 percent success rate in solving murders within the last 10 years and that has been consistent in Maine in previous years.”

In the majority of cases, McDonough said, a viable suspect is quickly identified. Still, to move forward in those cases, investigators need evidence that will prove those cases beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.

Close to 80 or 90 percent of the open homicide cases have viable suspects but the quality of evidence is insufficient to prove those cases beyond a reasonable doubt, McDonough said.

In most of the cases, there is even probable cause but that is not enough, he said.

There are a number of cases in which suspects have not been identified and they, too, remain open investigations.

Weed’s case has already been through three Wilton police chiefs for review. Chief Dennis Brown is the newest one to be involved in the case.

As any new information comes in, it is given a cursory investigation and passed on to state police, he said.

“I think the folks in Wilton would really like closure in the case,” Brown said. “I still think there is someone out there who has some information that would benefit the case. I hope anyone with information will come forward. Every little bit of information helps. The family deserves closure.”