Brandon Thongsavanh says he is innocent of stabbing a Bates College senior to death in 2002.
AUBURN – Brandon Thongsavanh was so sure he was going home on Feb. 13 that he promised the guys on his cell block he would visit soon with cigarettes for everyone.
Before leaving the jail, he told his favorite guard that he would find her and give her a hug goodbye when he came back to pack up his T-shirts and boxers, remove the photographs of his children from his cell wall and sign his discharge papers.
On the way to the courthouse, the 20-year-old daydreamed about walking out of the big brick building for good with his 2-year-old son, Isaiah, in one arm and his 1-year-old daughter, Tatyanna, in the other.
Hours later, Thongsavanh took off the turtleneck, sweater and khaki pants that he wore nearly every day during the two weeks of his trial and he got back into his blue drawstring pants and matching shirt.
Even though he hadn’t eaten all day, he passed up an offer of a meal.
‘I still can’t understand it’
He was a convicted murderer. And flashes of reality – 40, 50, maybe even 60 years behind bars – came and went, making him too nauseous to think about food, to think about anything but the image of himself as an old man.
“I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t understand it. I still can’t understand it,” the young father said, sitting in a small room in Androscoggin County Jail more than two and a half months later.
As he spoke, Thongsavanh leaned back in the chair with his feet extended under the table and his arms crossed on his chest.
His muscles have grown bigger over the past 14 months from his daily workouts in the jail’s weight room. His cheeks are pudgier, his neck thicker.
He had grown his hair out for the trial to cover the two ram horns tattooed on his scalp. But he has since shaven, leaving his usual thin layer of black fuzz. Aside from the cold that he caught from his daughter during a recent visit, he feels good.
“As good as can be expected,” he said.
The sentencing
It took the jury less than three hours on Feb. 13 to find Thongsavanh guilty of murdering Bates College senior Morgan McDuffee during an early-morning fight on March 3, 2002.
Prosecutors say Thongsavanh stabbed McDuffee five times – twice in the back and three times in the chest. The 5-inch folding knife passed through McDuffee’s heart and into his liver, leaving the popular athlete and captain of the college’s lacrosse team no chance of survival.
Thongsavanh will return to Androscoggin County Superior Court this morning to find out the consequence of his conviction. His lawyer, William Maselli, has told him to expect a prison sentence of 40 to 60 years.
“I just don’t see how that could be possible,” Thongsavanh said, days before his sentencing hearing. “I try not to think about it.”
An Auburn native who used to go to church with his parents and sister, he prays every night when the lights go out.
Recently, he has been asking for help in getting over his runny nose and annoying cough. He also asks God to help him understand.
Thongsavanh says he is innocent.
Witnesses
Barred by his lawyer from discussing any details about the drunken fight that led to McDuffee’s death, Thongsavanh described himself as the chosen scapegoat among a group of people who presented themselves as his friends to give their testimony more weight.
During his trial, three local men involved in the fight against the Bates students testified that they saw Thongsavanh holding and punching McDuffee seconds before he fell to the ground.
One of the men said he saw a knife in Thongsavanh’s hand. This same man testified that he waited months to tell police because he didn’t want to rat out his buddy.
Thongsavanh wanted desperately to tell the jury that the witnesses were not his good friends, that they were lying to protect themselves, that they had conspired against him.
But, faced with the possibility that the state prosecutor would ask him about his crimes as a juvenile and his time at the Maine Youth Center, he chose not to take the stand.
He plans to pass up a similar opportunity Thursday when Justice Ellen Gorman asks him if he wants to say anything – to her, to McDuffee’s family or to anyone else in the courtroom – before she announces his sentence.
“A lot of people say I have no remorse for Morgan’s family. It’s nothing like that,” Thongsavanh said, firmly, confidently. “I’m sorry that they lost somebody, but I’m not going to say sorry for something I didn’t do.
“Plus,” he continued, “people have already judged me.”
Tattoo bias
Thongsavanh believes the jury assigned to his case assumed he was guilty when he walked into the courtroom on the first day of his trial.
Even though his hair covered the horns on his head and his turtleneck hid the ring of thorns etched around his neck, older photographs of him were all over the news when he was arrested.
Thongsavanh could tell by the way the jurors were looking at him – and at the large, ash-colored birthmark on the right side of his face – that they had probably made up their minds.
“People only see the tattoos and the birthmark,” he said. “The birthmark looks like a black eye, and they think I’m a satanic worshipper because of the tattoos.”
Still, Thongsavanh is proud of his tattoos. Each one has a special meaning, he said.
His son’s name is written in Old English letters across his chest. He got the tattoo the day after Isaiah was born. The symbols that run down his forearms spell Thongsavanh’s name in Laotian, his father’s native language.
The ram horns are a symbol of his independence and free spirit; his girlfriend and best friend begged him not to get them. And the woman eating a man’s heart on the inside of his right arm is his way of saying, “Love hurts.”
“When I got it, I had never been in a long relationship,” he said.
A surprise
These days, Thongsavanh considers himself married.
He was planning to be in the delivery room with his girlfriend, Dori St. Germain, when she gave birth to their daughter in April 2002. He had already chosen Tatyanna for a name, after seeing it written on the wall of a local store.
At 11 a.m. on April 29, 2002, a guard opened Thongsavanh’s cell and told him he had a surprise for him. The guard led Thongsavanh down the hall and handed him a phone. St. Germain was on the other end, crying so hard that she could hardly speak.
Thongsavanh could hear a baby in the background.
“I felt good and pissed off at the same time,” he said.
Thongsavanh planned to marry St. Germain last Halloween. He started calling her his wife after he was convicted.
St. Germain has promised Thongsavanh that she will wait for him. He tells her – in poems and in person – that he wants her to move on.
Deep down, he isn’t sure if he means it.
Looking ahead
When Thongsavanh was a young boy, he dreamed of becoming a professional football player. During the summer, he went to sports camp at Bates College, where his father has worked as a cook for 19 years.
He was a good athlete. But he hated school.
By the ninth-grade, he asked his parents if he could transfer to Merrill Hill School for kids at risk of dropping out. A year later, after completing his sophomore year, he left school altogether.
He stocked shelves at Wal-Mart for a short time, then loaded trucks for Federal Express. He was looking for work at the time of his arrest.
“I didn’t really have a plan,” he said. “I just wanted to be a good father.”
Now, his biggest fear is that his children will never be able to get a good job because people will simply think of them as the kids of that guy who killed the Bates student.
Thongsavanh’s lawyer is fighting to clear his name.
This morning, before the sentencing, Maselli will attempt to convince Justice Gorman that Thongsavanh deserves a new trial on several grounds, including a statement recently obtained from a local girl who claims she overheard someone else confess to the killing.
If Maselli’s request is denied and Gorman goes ahead with the sentencing, Maselli plans to appeal the case to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
Thongsavanh isn’t holding out.
“I’ve already been disappointed enough,” he said. “I’m not giving up. But I can’t think about it.”
In some ways, he is looking forward to state prison where he will not be surrounded by guys complaining about week-long sentences and where he can find a good tattoo artist to etch his daughter’s name.
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