PORTLAND, Maine — A Lewiston man who spent years in prison for murder has been indicted by a federal grand jury for threatening to kill an official with the Social Security Administration in Baltimore.

Harold Rowe, 54, made his first appearance Thursday in U.S. District Court.

Rowe did not enter a plea to the charge of mailing threatening communications to the deputy commissioner for Budget, Finance, and Management of the Social Security Administration in September.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Rich continued the hearing for at least a week, according to court documents.

Rowe was convicted of murder in the December 1982 shooting death Michael G. Moore, 24, of Westbrook in what police described as a drug-related killing.

In the rambling letter with multiple misspellings to the victim that was quoted verbatim in the indictment, Rowe said that he had been released in May 2011 after serving 27 years in prison for murder.

“I am a killer,“ he wrote. “I have been envolved with murder since that time it just not have been cought up with me. So to tell you if you Try or do stop my check each month and give it to Somebody that if you dont stop your issue and send my check to anybody diffent than to who I already am recieveing threw the creidit union I will most likely kill somebody else because I will have nothing else to do.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stacey D. Neumann, who is prosecuting the case, has asked that Rowe be held without bail.

If convicted, Rowe faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

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