BANGOR, Maine — Police are searching for a 31-year-old man in connection with the slayings of three people whose charred bodies were found in a burned-out car in Bangor in August.

Nicholas J. Sexton, 31, address unknown, is wanted on a fugitive from justice warrant for a triple homicide in Maine, according to a police log issued Thursday by the Brockton (Mass.) Police Department and obtained by the Bangor Daily News. Brockton Police Department dispatcher Robin Bell confirmed the information on the police log Friday afternoon.

“He’s a fugitive wanted on a signal 25, times three,” Bell said during a telephone interview. “Signal 25 is murder. It’s a triple murder.”

The Brockton police log does not say which law enforcement agency requested the fugitive from justice warrant for Sexton, except to say it’s from Maine.

“Maine wanted us to go pick him up,” Bell said. “We didn’t get him.”

Brockton police went looking for Sexton at about 9:50 p.m. Wednesday, the Brockton police log states. The Penobscot County grand jury handed up indictments late Wednesday afternoon. It is possible that Sexton was secretly indicted, leading to the warrant being issued.

Bangor police Sgt. Paul Edwards said Friday night that he could not confirm the issuance of the warrant, but added: “There are certain things, when dealing with the AG’s office and the courts, that we are not allowed to discuss. There are certain rules.”

While the Bangor Police Department continues to be the lead investigative agency in the slayings, the Maine attorney general’s office took over the case shortly after the state medical examiner’s office determined that the deaths were homicides.

Attempts to reach Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson, Assistant Attorney General William Stokes, head of the criminal division in the Maine Attorney General’s Office, and Brenda Kielty, a special assistant in the attorney general’s office, on Friday afternoon and evening were unsuccessful.

The bodies of Daniel T. Borders, 26, of Hermon; Nicolle A. Lugdon, 24, of Eddington; and Lucas A. Tuscano, 28, of Bradford were found burned inside a white Pontiac sedan with Rhode Island plates that was discovered on fire early on Aug. 13 in the back parking lot of Automatic Distributors, located at 22 Target Industrial Circle.

A person was recorded by video surveillance cameras walking away from the burning car, which was discovered ablaze at about 3:30 a.m. by a woman on her way to work.

Within hours of the flames being extinguished, and before the names of the dead were released, friends said they feared that Sexton was one of the victims. He was driving a white Pontiac with Rhode Island plates that night, they said.

Sexton, who friends say knew Lugdon and Borders, reportedly knocked on the front door of a Bangor apartment about 1 a.m. on Aug. 13 and left with the three homicide victims, possibly to go smoke marijuana.

“We don’t know what the hell happened after they left,” the man who hosted the small gathering has said.

Police are not disclosing how the three homicide victims were killed, whether they were dead before the fire was started, whether an accelerant was used to burn the car, or whether investigators have additional video surveillance evidence from outside the crime scene.

Sexton is no stranger to violence or drugs, according to a background check done by the Maine State Bureau of Identification and court listings printed in the Bangor Daily News.

He stabbed a 35-year-old Bangor man in the neck early on July 31, 2005, in the parking lot of the Leadbetters Mini Stop at the corner of Hammond and Ohio streets in Bangor, the BDN archives state.

The victim was treated at Eastern Maine Medical Center and released the next day. Sexton was indicted by the Penobscot County grand jury for elevated aggravated assault in September 2005 and was on the lam until December 2005, when he was picked up for seven outstanding warrants for violating conditions of release.

Sexton was convicted in Penobscot County Superior Court in March 2006 of elevated aggravated assault and sentenced to prison for eight years, with all but two years suspended. He was placed on probation for two years after he left prison and was ordered to pay $3,213 in restitution.

He also was convicted of three counts of violating his conditions of release and ordered to prison for one year for each count, to run concurrently with the assault sentence.

Sexton was arrested again for drug possession in early 2008, apparently shortly after he was discharged from prison. He was sentenced for that offense in April 2008 in Penobscot County Superior Court to 90 days in jail and a $400 fine.

Sexton’s last known address, according to the background check, was Rochester, Mass. The Plymouth County Correctional Facility, which covers the community of Rochester, had no listing of a Sexton picked up this week, a jail official said Friday.

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