Justice sacrificed?
Investigator's book revisits 1988 murder case
BRUNSWICK — A new book claims the 1989 conviction of a
Bowdoinham man in the murder of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry was based on little
evidence and ignored the possibility of other suspects.
"Human Sacrifice," written by James Moore of Brunswick, recreates the murder case using court documents and interviews. The retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent wrote that testimony regarding the time of Cherry's death in July 1988, given during Dennis Dechaine's murder trial, shows he could not have been the killer.
Dechaine received a life sentence after his conviction for Cherry's murder and is being held at the state prison in Warren. Dechaine has maintained he is innocent.
Since the initial verdict, he has made five unsuccessful appeals of his conviction, said Thomas Connolly, a lawyer from Portland who defended Dechaine in 1989. The last appeal was filed two years ago, Connolly said.
A group called Trial & Error, composed of people who believe Dechaine is innocent, for more than a decade has asserted that the man who earned the high school nickname of "Mouse" could not have strangled and tortured Cherry.
After attending a Trial & Error meeting, Moore volunteered as an investigator in Dechaine's appeals around 1994. His interest in the case steadily grew into a personal crusade to discover the truth behind one of the most highly publicized murder trials of the last two decades.
In his book, Moore cites numerous reasons to explain why he has concluded that Dechaine was wrongly convicted. They include:
The time of death
Based on testimony about the time of Cherry's death by strangulation, which was said by a medical examiner to be 30 to 36 hours before her body was found, Dechaine could not have been the killer. Dechaine was in police custody at the estimated time of death, Moore said, and was released around 4 a.m. the day after Cherry's disappearance.
She was baby-sitting in Bowdoin when she was last seen alive.
The lack of any hair or fiber evidence in Dechaine's truck
"The evidence they (the prosecution) presented didn't amount to much," Moore said.
Although a notebook and a repair estimate for Dechaine's vehicle were found in the driveway of the home where Cherry was baby-sitting, Moore believes the real killer placed them there.
Misunderstood comments by Dechaine
Moore said Dechaine's "confessions," heard by Mark Westrum, the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Department detective who investigated the case, and Lincoln County jail guards, were wrongly characterized as such during the trial and afterward.
"They weren't confessions," he said. "Technically, under the law, they're admissions, not confessions. And I'm assuming police quote him correctly."
A statement such as "How could I have done such a thing?" can be said in different ways, according to Moore. His book suggests that such statements by Dechaine were misunderstood and were, in fact, an innocent man's expression of disbelief that he had committed the crime of murder.
A failure on the part of investigators to look at other suspects.
"Human Sacrifice" suggested four alternative suspects, one of whom had been charged with sexually abusing a 12-year-old. Moore, who used fictitious names in the book for the men he considered suspects, did not interview them.
"My job is not to solve the crime," he said.
Westrum, who now serves as Sagadahoc County sheriff, disputed Moore's conclusions, saying the author discounted or ignored critical information from court evidence and testimony.
Before Dechaine was first met by police, he had already cleaned himself off, Westrum said. As a result, no physical evidence, such as hair or blood, could have been found on him.
"Why didn't Mr. Moore mention that? He was washed clean by a garden hose," Westrum said. He explained that the local couple who gave Dechaine a ride had seen him emerge from the woods, talked with him and then watched Dechaine wash himself off with a garden hose at their house.
As for the question of time of death, Westrum said the "estimated time of Cherry's death" was, as the phrase implies, a calculated guess as to when a person died.
Westrum said investigators studied all possible suspects in the case, and disagreed with Moore's theory that evidence could have been placed in a driveway to implicate Dechaine. As soon as Cherry was reported missing, law enforcement officials covered the area.
"Nobody would have had the time to plant it," Westrum said. "Cops were all over the place. It's preposterous."
After he was taken into custody, Dechaine talked to Westrum while washing his hands following fingerprinting. The detective listened to Dechaine talk about what had happened and said he did not misunderstand Dechaine's statements.
Neither did the jail guards, according to Westrum. He said they heard Dechaine ask to be put in isolation from other prisoners because he said he had killed a little girl.
Despite Westrum's reservations, "Human Sacrifice" contained enough new insights to get the attention of Gary Lawless, the publisher of Blackberry Press of Nobleboro and co-owner of Gulf of Maine Bookstore in Brunswick. Lawless knew Moore from an adult education writing class he teaches at Mt. Ararat High School; after reading Moore's manuscript, Lawless said it caused him to doubt whether Dechaine's murder conviction was the right verdict.
Moore said any concerns that "Human Sacrifice," by reviving the details of the murder, will upset members of Cherry's family are, for him, balanced by his belief that justice has not been fairly served.
"Is their comfort worth more than an innocent man doing life in prison?" he said.
In Houlton, former Attorney General Michael Carpenter recalled the appeals Dechaine's supporters filed in the early 1990s. Despite the information presented during those legal efforts, he believes Dechaine killed Sarah Cherry.
"It never seemed to go away, and Dechaine was very good at manipulating the media," Carpenter said.
At first glance, Dechaine does not seem capable of committing a murder, Carpenter said. Moore, himself, uses that argument to make one of his points. When the author first interviewed Dechaine at the state prison in Thomaston, he said Dechaine struck him as a "wimp."
But based on his experience as state attorney general and as a defense attorney, Carpenter said he looked beyond Dechaine being a college graduate and the positive descriptions of the farmer given by family and friends. "The old saying, 'You can't judge a book by its cover' certainly applies to the criminal realm," he said.
Brian Hobart of Bowdoinham lived near Dechaine and knew him for about five or six years. When he first heard of the charges against Dechaine in 1988, he did not believe them.
"It couldn't be Dennis," Hobart remembered saying.
When he heard Dechaine's explanation for why he was in the area where Cherry's body was found, though, Hobart said he had difficulty accepting it. Dechaine said he was high on amphetamines.
"Then that wasn't the Dennis I knew either," Hobart said.
Combined with evidence, such as the papers connected to Dechaine in a driveway, he came to believe Dechaine was guilty.
Once in a while, Dechaine's name comes up among people in Bowdoinham. Hobart said most people in the town think Dechaine killed Sarah Cherry.
Connolly still often hears from people who are curious about the Dechaine case. The lawyer, who ran for governor as a Democrat in 1998, and has defended a number of high-profile defendants, said the public's ongoing interest in the Dechaine case is unique.
"It's the only one people really remember," he said.
Connolly said he would not read "Human Sacrifice" because the Dechaine verdict remains painful for him. Defense attorneys, including himself, made many errors during the trial, he said.
Although unfamiliar with Moore's book, Connolly echoed many of Moore's reasons for believing that Dechaine is innocent. The state's case against Dechaine came together quickly since the abduction and murder of Cherry shocked many, Connolly said. In his view, Dechaine was simply an innocent person who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He dismissed Westrum's statement that Dechaine washed himself off with a garden hose. No physical evidence was ever found on Dechaine to connect him to the murder, Connolly argued.
Former Deputy Attorney General Eric Wright, who prosecuted Dechaine, declined to be interviewed.
Times Record
11/19/2002Additional Articles:
