Arson spree in Lewiston

The terror began April 29 when a Blake Street tenement went up in flames, spreading to nearby buildings and covering the downtown with smoke. At the time, it seemed like just another house fire, tragic and frightening. But over the course of the following week, a series of similar blazes across the downtown made it apparent that this was no coincidence.

Someone was setting fires in Lewiston.

A week after the Blake Street fire, four more buildings were destroyed by flames at Pierce and Bartlett streets. Investigators quickly announced the fires had been set.

Days later, three more buildings went up, two of them vacant apartment houses on Bartlett Street, one an occupied tenement on Horton.

There was fear and uncertainty in Lewiston, but it didn’t last for long. While investigators from a slew of agencies tracked down leads, they began making arrests, but these would not be the usual suspects.

In connection with the first fire, police arrested 13-year-old Brody Covey, who lived in the Blake Street building that burned. Covey would become the unofficial poster boy for the spring arson spree, but he wasn’t alone.

Less than one week after the Blake Street fire, three others were charged with setting two fires that burned more downtown apartment buildings.

A then-12-year-old local boy, Abdi Ibrahim, was arrested and charged with four counts of arson for setting the fire that burned four buildings on Pierce and Bartlett streets. Ibrahim is awaiting trial.

Two men were charged with arson in the fire that burned buildings on Bartlett and Horton streets. One of the men, Bryan Wood, was found not competent to stand trial and released. The other, Brian Morin, has been evaluated at the Riverview Psychiatric Center and has been placed on a trial list.

Covey’s confession to police was thrown out by the courts, which also ruled that he would not be tried as an adult. In the wake of the blaze that started the springtime spree, it was revealed that Covey had lived with his mother and stepfather in a Blake Street apartment where he was surrounded by filth, crime and chaos.

He turned 13 at a juvenile correctional center. Covey has since been moved to a foster home.

Snowmobilers die on Rangeley Lake

On Rangeley Lake in late December, New Year’s Eve celebrations turned quickly to tragedy when four snowmobilers riding in whiteout conditions struck open water and perished.

The horror of the fateful ride for three of them would continue deep into spring as the search for the bodies either turned up empty or were hampered by harsh winter weather.

According to the Maine Warden Service, Dawn Newell, 45, of Yarmouth and her 16-year-old son were riding on separate snowmobiles in the early evening on Dec. 30 when her machine crashed through the ice.

Officials said her son, who was following behind, started to break through the ice but was able to jump to solid ice and get to shore, where he called 911. Wardens recovered Newell’s body the following day.

Kenneth Henderson, 40, of China, Glenn Henderson, 43, of Sabattus and John Spencer, 41, of Litchfield were last seen leaving for a ride across the lake at about 6 p.m. New Year’s Eve in Carrabassett Valley.

Almost immediately, searchers believed the men perished in the lake based on finding two of the men’s helmets in the same area where Newell had gone through the ice.

For the rest of the winter and into the spring, the agony of surviving family members lingered.

In January, searchers found helmets and gloves at the bottom of the lake. A month later, a pair of snowmobiles turned up, but it wasn’t until May when the bodies of all three missing men were recovered from Rangeley Lake.

Maine CDC under fire

The most alarming news to come out of the Maine Centers for Disease Control in 2013 had nothing to do with germs or infection.

In April, allegations against the CDC arose when Sharon Leahy-Lind, director of the CDC’s Division of Local Public Health, sent a complaint of discrimination to the Maine Human Rights Commission alleging, among other things, that her bosses ordered her to destroy documents.

Those documents showed the scoring results for the 27 Healthy Maine Partnerships at the center of last summer’s controversy over state funding. She said the scoring was manipulated to favor certain organizations over others and that the records were ordered destroyed so they could not be turned over to the Sun Journal through a Freedom of Access Act request.

What followed was an uproar, as citizens reacted with disgust and a host of Maine legislators demanded an investigation into the practices of the CDC leadership.

The Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, or OPEGA, completed its review of the CDC this fall and presented its report to the Government Oversight in mid-December.

OPEGA found a host of problems with the way the CDC distributed millions of dollars to Healthy Maine Partnerships programs last year, including supervisors who ordered the destruction of public documents, funding criteria that was changed during the selection process, scores that were changed just before the final selection, a $500,000 tribal contract that seemed to appear out of nowhere and a critical scoring sheet that had vanished.

The public will have an opportunity to comment on the situation at a hearing on Jan. 10.

Unemployment favoritism?

Also in April, a Sun Journal investigation revealed allegations that Gov. Paul LePage had pressured his unemployment hearing officers to decide more cases for employers instead of for workers.

According to newspaper sources, LePage had called the hearing officers to a mandatory meeting at the governor’s mansion in March, where he scolded them for finding too many unemployment-benefit appeals cases in favor of workers. They were told they were doing their jobs poorly, according to the report. Those officers told the Sun Journal they felt abused, harassed and bullied by the governor.

What followed was a series of hot denials from LePage, during which he accused David Webbert, president of the Maine Employment Lawyers Association, of outright lying after Webbert called for a federal investigation into the matter.

“Attorney Webbert, he’s pulling the wool over Maine people’s eyes,” LePage said in April, two weeks after the allegations surfaced. “I think Webbert made it up.”

In December, members of a LePage-created blue ribbon commission tasked with studying problems with the Maine unemployment claims process wrapped up their internal investigation and made a series of recommendations to address problems at the Department of Labor.

The federal investigation may be concluded in January.

Murder

The year was blackened by slayings in the spring and the autumn, and as is often the case, both killings involved young people.

In early April, police began to hear rumblings that harm may have come to a 20-year-old Lewiston man named Romeo Parent. For days, they searched, following up leads and questioning potential witnesses.

On April 12, a Maine State Police diver descended into the frigid waters of Jug Stream in Monmouth, where the body of Parent was found. He had been stripped down to his boxer shorts. His hands and feet had been bound with fabric.

Police would later say that Parent had been stabbed with a screwdriver and strangled with wire after he was lured by a friend into the woods. When Parent didn’t die quickly enough, police said, 23-year-old Michael McNaughton of Lewiston went back six times to strangle him.

The motive? Police said McNaughton and the others believed that Parent was an informant who had “ratted them out” on earlier crimes. One suspect told a friend that Parent had been causing problems in the community by snitching on people.

McNaughton was one of four local men charged in the killing. One by one, police picked up their suspects, tracking one of them to a Massachusetts carnival where he had taken work.

Charged with murder were McNaughton and 24-year-old Nathan Morton of Greene. Police said those two men knew from the get-go that Parent would be killed as they lured him into the wilderness.

Charged with helping to cover up the crime were William True, 19, and Sebastian Moody, 22, both of Lewiston. Moody has since entered a plea arrangement, admitting to the charge of falsifying evidence. Police say he is cooperating with the investigation. Moody will be sentenced in May.

The others are awaiting trials in 2014.

In mid-November, the body of an Edward Little High School graduate was found dead in a Bangor apartment after police showed up to investigate a report of a domestic disturbance. A day later, police identified Brooke Locke, 21, as the victim. Arrested was 21-year-old Zackery Mailloux, with whom Locke had shared the apartment. He was charged with murder.

Mailloux was a continuing education student at Husson, school officials said. Brooke was a third-year occupational therapy student and a member of Epsilon Tau Epsilon, ETE, a sorority on campus.

Locke was memorialized at services in both Bangor and Auburn. Meanwhile, Mailloux was indicted on the murder charge Nov. 27 and remains in prison awaiting trial.

State pays hospital debt. Finally.

At the start of the year, Maine’s 39 hospitals were owed $484 million for services they had provided since 2009. The ongoing hospital debt was the direct result of a behemoth Medicaid program, called MaineCare, originally created as a health care safety net for the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Central Maine Medical Center was owed $51 million, according to a breakdown of the debt. Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor was owed $72 million. Because that money had not been paid, hospital officials said there had been layoffs, delayed salary increases, deferrals of new construction and postponements of equipment updates.

Gov. Paul LePage, said to be embarrassed by the massive debt, vowed to make it right. The governor came up with a plan to pay off the hospitals. The plan called for issuing a $186 million revenue bond that would be funded through future liquor sales, which would then trigger $298 million in federal matching funds.

In September, the plan went forward and LePage began handing over checks — mostly real ones but a few novelty checks to act as symbols, too — to hospitals that were owed money. By the end of it, checks totalling $490 million were delivered via electronic transfer. That figure represented $183.5 million in state funds and a matching $306.7 in federal money.

“Today is a good day,” the governor said at the time. “It’s a day of celebration, of paying back debt that started a decade ago.”

Hockey towns once more

What a year for hockey.

On a cool night in early October, roughly 2,000 locals (and more than a few from Portland) swarmed the Androscoggin Bank Colisee to watch the Portland Pirates play the Manchester Monarchs.

The Pirates? In Lewiston?

In September, after months of on-and-off negotiations with trustees of Portland’s Cumberland County Civic Center, the Pirates announced that they would skate off to Lewiston, where they would play at least through the 2013-14 season.

The move meant a long drive for Portland-based fans of the team. For hockey nuts in Lewiston, it was an early Christmas gift. Two years after the beloved Maineiacs ceased to be, there was pro hockey again at the Colisee.

It may be only temporary, yes, but for this season at least, Lewiston feels like a hockey town again.

And it’s not just Lewiston, but Auburn, too.

In November, hockey fans young and old celebrated the closing of the old Ingersoll Arena at Pettingill Park. There was some sadness, yes — people had been skating and watching hockey at Ingersoll for decades. But there was celebration, too, because in another part of the city, a new and improved two-sheet arena was almost complete.

The Norway Savings Bank Arena officially opened one rink in late November. Located in the once-vacant lot at King’s Row and Turner Street, it’s a sprawling and modern facility.

The second surface should be finished in January, and the second-floor mezzanine — with warm areas for spectators, offices and concessions — is to open soon after. A grand opening ceremony is tentatively set for early February.

Found and lost

In early March, a 17-year-old missing on Sugarloaf Mountain for nearly two days was found by an out-of-state snowmobiler. Nicholas Joy of Medford, Mass., was found on a Tuesday morning after getting lost on Sugarloaf Mountain the previous Sunday afternoon.

As the story evolved, the matter of the teenager’s wits and skills became apparent. Rescuers said Joy had built a snow cave to stay warm in what the Warden Service said were 20-degree overnight temperatures on the mountain.

The teen, an experienced skier who skied out of bounds off the Binder trail, built a snow cave late the first day when he realized he was lost. He hunkered down in the cave to stay warm and drank fresh water from the nearby Carrabassett Stream to remain hydrated.

When he was found, Joy was a little hypothermic and very tired, having survived two nights in subfreezing temperatures. Otherwise, he was well, well enough to leave a hospital one day after his ordeal had ended.

Meanwhile, the case of missing hiker Geraldine Largay has not yet seen a happy ending. Missing since mid-July, it appears the search for the 66-year-old Tennessee woman will continue into 2014.

Largay started her hike on the Appalachian Trail on April 23 at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., according to Maine wardens involved in the search. An experienced hiker, her destination was Baxter State Park.

On the morning of July 21, Largay left her husband at the Route 4 AT crossing in Sandy River Plantation near the town of Rangeley. Later that day, she texted him to report she was on top of Saddleback Mountain, according to the Warden Service. Her plan was to stay at the Poplar Ridge lean-to in Redington Township that evening.

Investigators confirmed, through hiker interviews, that Largay did stay there as intended. The following morning, she texted her husband and indicated she was again headed north, according to investigators. Her next stop would have been the Spaulding Mountain lean-to.

Largay’s plan had been to meet her husband on July 23 in Wyman Township at the Route 27 intersection with the AT, but she never arrived.

The search, which has included more than 100 people, tracking dogs, ground-search teams, a helicopter, a fixed-wing aircraft, all-terrain vehicles, horses and even a self-described Bigfoot hunter was scaled back Aug. 4. Since then, wardens have conducted at least a half-dozen more ground searches but have not found any clothing or backpacking equipment that belonged to Largay.

In October, Largay’s family offered a $15,000 reward for information on her whereabouts. Those with any information are asked to call the Maine Warden Service dispatch center at 207-624-7076 or post information at www.maine.gov/ifw/aboutus/auto_forms/contact_us.htm

Bigger, better gambling in Oxford

An expansion at Oxford Casino that adds 58 new slot machines and four table games, including two for high-stakes players, is due for completion any day now.

The $3.2 million expansion was announced in August, shortly after Kentucky-based Churchill Downs Inc. finalized its purchase of the Route 26 gambling business from a group of local owners. The new slot machines will bring the total number to more than 800.

A second bar in the casino’s restaurant, Oxford Grill, was added earlier in the year to compliment a 12-seat bar inlaid with gaming screens in the central room.

Churchill Downs completed its acquisition of the casino in July in a deal reportedly worth $160 million. As of November, the casino has generated almost $67.4 million in net revenues, according to figures from the Maine Gambling Control Board.

Meanwhile, Casalinova Development Group, the company planning a hotel and restaurant across from the casino, applied for a credit-enhancement agreement to develop a 550-acre property along the highway.

The June 28 application, signed by CDG President Joseph Casalinova, refers to a proposed $125 million project that includes at least one hotel, restaurants, retail development, vehicle-related services, a recreational vehicle area and housing.

According to the application, the first phase would include the design and construction of a hotel, a restaurant, a day care facility, a water park and an ice cream stand, in addition to more mundane improvements.

Budget woes

Budget angst and unrest over taxes stayed heated all summer as Rumford voters rejected multiple spending plans and demanded more fiscal responsibility. In late August, voters rejected all municipal budget articles in a third referendum on the spending plan. It was the second time in two months that they turned down all money articles presented by selectmen.

“It’s the sentiment of the voters that they want smaller government, fewer employees and benefits, and smaller services,” Rumford Town Manager Carlo Puiia opined in August.

Puiia has since resigned from that job.

As it turned out, that same budget-cutting sentiment could be found among voters in cities and towns all over Maine.

In Auburn, voters rejected not one but two budgets offered up by the city’s School Committee. “It’s clear citizens are not interested in elaborate increases in spending,” one former city councilor observed.

Auburn finally passed a trimmed down $37 million budget in August.

In RSU 73, the district encompassing Jay and Livermore, voters approved an $18.5 million budget in April, but only after nearly $10,000 was hacked from the current operating budget. And even then, the vote was dubious — Jay passed it by a vote of 199-88, but the majority in Livermore Falls rejected it, 47-74, as did the majority in Livermore by a vote of 60-88.

All across the region, budget workshops were almost weekly events. Town and city officials would argue for their proposed budgets while voters scolded them for excess spending.

With trims and cuts remaining on just about everybody’s wish lists, municipal leaders can look forward to doing it all over again as the new year begins.