Lawmakers fast-track bill to create cold-case squad

By Christopher Cousins, BDN Staff

Apr 30, 2015

AUGUSTA, Maine — The prospect of creating a cold-case squad to reopen investigations of unsolved murders in Maine has never had trouble winning votes in the Legislature. Finding the money to pay for it has posed a far bigger problem.

Now a group of Republicans and Democrats again has taken up the cause, and this time, the group includes key leaders of key legislative committees.

Democratic Sen. Linda Valentino of Saco, the primary sponsor of LD 1121, is a member of the Appropriations Committee. She said she intends to ensure that funding for the bill, which amounts to about $511,000 in the first year, is amended into the state’s biennial budget as opposed to passing the bill on its own and hoping there is money left at the end of the session to fund it.

“I intend to do everything in my power to get this funded,” she said during a news conference on the State House lawn Thursday, and again at a public hearing with the Judiciary Committee on Thursday afternoon. The funding would create two new state police investigators and a forensic chemist, as well as cover associated expenses. A bill to create the squad passed in 2014 but lawmakers could not find the funding and neither could members of the congressional delegation.

Only about two-thirds of the funding, however, would come from the state’s General Fund; the rest would come from the Highway Fund. Enter Republican Sen. Ron Collins of Wells, co-chairman of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, who said he’ll also advocate for the money.

“Quite often we get criticized as legislators for being partisan,” Collins said. “This is not the case with this bill. We will get it funded.”

Another supporter is Republican Sen. David Burns of Whiting, a retired law enforcement officer who chairs the Judiciary Committee.

“We can make a difference,” he said. That committee broke from normal procedures Thursday afternoon and voted immediately after the bill was introduced to recommend it to the full Legislature. The vote was unanimous.

The bill now goes to the Senate and House for votes. Even if it passes and becomes law, the funding issue remains to be resolved. But legislators from both parties expressed determination that they would find the money this year.

The committee’s vote followed about two hours of brutally sad testimony from dozens of people whose loved ones have been murdered or disappeared, but for whom there has not been justice. There are more than 120 unsolved homicide or missing person cases in Maine.

“I hope everyone thinks of their children when they vote for this,” said Lise Ouellette, whose 15-year-old daughter Ashley was found dead on the side of a road in Scarborough 15 years ago. “We are entitled to our day in court.”

Trista Reynolds, the mother of toddler Ayla Reynolds, who went missing in December 2011, participated in the news conference. “I don’t want to be one of those moms 30 years from now not knowing what happened to my daughter,” Reynolds said. “Maybe at the end of the day all of us will have our answers.”