Dark Downeast - The Murder of Richard S. Bellittieri (Maine)

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

MAINE MURDER, 2012: When anyone asked where Richard Bellittieri was, the carpenter he hired on Craigslist said that Richard had a death in the family and went back to New York. A year later, Richard still hadn't returned to his beloved home in the Downeast region of Maine. When police pulled that carpenter over under suspicion of drunk driving, they uncovered a lot more than an OUI. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/richardbellittieriFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-caseDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

It was clear that the man stumbling out the front door of the bar wasn't fit to operate a motor vehicle. It was also clear to the bar's owners that they had to do something about it before the man hurt himself or anyone else. So they called the Bar Harbor Police. When officers caught up to the man after a speedy pursuit, he identified himself as Bill Toole. Police searched the sporty blue Audi A6, but Bill Toole wasn't the name on the registration. The name on that document, as well as the name on a social security card, license, and bank cards found inside the car, they all belonged to another person entirely. Police arrested the man for operating under the influence,

but what they didn't know at the time was that the arrest of an intoxicated driver would lead to a bizarre case of greed-fueled murder. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Richard Bellateri on Dark Down East. This show is made possible by support from local woman-owned businesses. Elena Marie creates handbags and accessories inspired by the ocean that surrounds us. To support this show and Elena Marie, loved nothing more than spending time outside. Bar Harbor, Maine was the perfect place to enjoy his favorite activities of hiking, swimming, running, and fishing. He was always exploring, and Rick seemed to always be seeking new knowledge, too. Though he was originally from North Babylon, New York, Rick went to the University of Maine to earn a Master of Social Work degree.

And then he went on to earn a bachelor's degree in accounting in New Hampshire. He started out as a school counselor at Connors Emerson Elementary School in Bar Harbor, but ultimately pursued a career in accounting and financial planning. But beyond his formal education, he also learned wooden boat building in Bath, Maine, the city of ships. Rick was a carpenter and a handyman known to renovate his own properties and lend a skilled hand when friends and neighbors needed it too. Some who knew Rick thought him to be maybe a little eccentric, a minimalist. He ate raw food. He listened to esoteric jazz. Rick often volunteered his accounting help to students preparing their college loan applications

and when his friends needed help filing taxes. Rick Bellateri was kind and generous, intelligent and curious. He didn't have any family in the area, but the quiet, intuitive, nature-loving Richard Bellateri established his life in the Downeast region, perhaps captured by the beauty and stillness of the landscape during his college years. Once you've experienced Maine, truly experienced Maine, it's not something easy to give up. Rick owned several properties in and around MDI, Mount Desert Island, including a house in the Hall Quarry area of Mount Desert. He rented out rooms in his Hall Quarry house, and perhaps it was an unintentional nod to the long history of boarding houses in the area

back when Scottish, Italian, and Swedish immigrants flocked to the high-quality granite quarries for mining jobs. Those workers, at the time, lived in cramped quarters in the Hull Quarry village. Streets where the boarding houses stood earned nicknames like Peanut Row and Headbug Boulevard. Don't worry, those names and their origin were from the late 1800s, not today. Though many of the rooms in his house were rented, Rick himself often stayed in Hall Quarry when he wasn't working on his home on Goose Cove Road in Trenton. He kept a camper van on the lot as he labored away on the duplex he was building himself. It probably would have made for a lovely home for Rick and whoever became his tenant.

But before anyone called Goose Cove Road home, Rick needed help finishing up the project. He posted his help wanted ad on Craigslist, seeking a skilled and reliable carpenter. Not long after, Rick got a response. He introduced himself as Bill Toole, though his real name was William Morse. He was a tall and stocky man, a bit of a wanderer who found himself in the Downeast area. He picked up odd jobs where he could get them. And it's hard to tell really what Rick saw in this Bill Toole character when they met up to talk details of the job he posted on Craigslist. Maybe Bill gave a convincing elevator pitch as to why he was perfect for the job. Maybe Rick simply didn't have any other options. Whatever it was, in the late spring of 2012, Bill Toole started working for Rick Bellateri.

According to folks around town, they were quite the odd pairing. The local boat builder, accountant, esoteric jazz listener, alongside the rough-around-the-edges Craigslist carpenter. They didn't always see eye to eye. A tenant at Rick's boarding house overheard the two squabbling on occasion, but it was nothing too alarming for two very different people figuring out how to work together every day. As the project progressed and the duplex went from construction site to a slightly more livable structure, Rick rented the camper on the property to a woman named Leah Elliott in the summer of 2012. It seemed like a little community was forming on Goose Cove Road. Rick may have been William's boss and Leah's landlord, but they were all friends.

One day, in July of 2012, Leah noticed that her friend Rick wasn't there. He'd gone back to New York, William told her. William explained that Rick had a death in the family and he left abruptly to tend to matters back in his home state. But he'd left William in charge of his properties while he was gone. Leah shrugged it off. A death in the family is not an unusual reason to leave unexpectedly, though it didn't seem completely normal either. Rick never spoke about much family. She wasn't even sure if he was close with any of them. But Leah, William, Bill Toole if you want to call him that, and Rick, they were all friends, so she took William at his word.

According to reporting by Bill Trotter for the Bangor Daily News, sometime after Rick left, Leah and William grabbed lunch together. When it was time to pay the tab, William insisted. It was his treat. But when he tossed down the credit card, Lee had noticed that the name on the front was Richard Bellateri. Why would William be paying with Rick's card? He told her, quote, that dude owes me money, unquote. In the months after Rick left town for New York, William Morse, Bill Toole, he seemed to really establish a new reputation for himself. Once hard up for money and taking any odd job he could get, he'd somehow fallen into a pile of cash, and he loved showing it off. According to reporting by the Ellsworth American, Bill bought cars, a motorcycle, a hot tub, and a boat.

He left massive tips for bartenders who kept his glass tall and full. His alias, Bill Toole, evolved into a new name, Hundred Dollar Bill. Somehow, it had been nearly a year since Rick Bellateri left down East Main to return to New York. A tenant at Rick's Hall Quarry House, John Siegel, asked William Morse why Rick still wasn't back. He had all this property, all these unfinished projects at the Trenton Duplex. You wouldn't expect someone to leave everything behind and not come back for a year. Well, William told John, Rick was actually out in California now. He got some woman pregnant, William said. On July 9, 2013, Bar Harbor police responded to a call that a drunk driver had just left a local watering hole.

They were looking for a blue Audi, and it wasn't hard to spot the sports car ripping through the downy streets. Police caught up to the speeding vehicle, and finally, the driver obeyed their flashing blues and pulled to the side of the road. With some effort to get the information out of him, he gave police the name Bill Tool. But as they searched the vehicle, nothing in the car, not the registration, not the license, not the credit cards, not even the social security card had the name Bill Toole printed on it. Either this guy wasn't Bill Toole, or Bill Toole was driving a car that wasn't his, with an ID in his pocket that belonged to someone else.

With the driver under arrest for suspicion of operating under the influence, the officers made note of the name on those documents. Who was Richard Bellatieri? Bill Toole, aka William Morse, made bail the next day. He got into a cab, gave the driver his Goose Cove Road address in Trenton, and got dropped off at the duplex where he'd been working and living for over a year. Just as police began their research into the identity of the man whose name was on those documents when they pulled Bill Toole over, the very man they were searching for left a voicemail for the Bar Harbor Police Department dispatcher. Apparently, Richard Bellatieri had heard about the arrest of his carpenter the night before, and he just wanted to let the officer on the other end of the line know

that he was in New York and they should tow his car back to his place in Trenton off Goose Cove Road. As they listened to the voicemail, something sounded familiar about the man's voice. Mobile device forensics is a relatively new field. You might see shady characters in TV shows with their burner flip phones making an all-important but incriminating call and then immediately snapping the prepaid device in two before tossing it into a random trash can. But escaping the digital trail of cell phone data in the real world with your own cell phone isn't quite that easy. Now, a 2018 Supreme Court ruling protects cell signal location information and requires that police obtain a warrant supported by probable cause to obtain cell phone data and cell tower pings. But in 2013, law enforcement had avenues to request

historical cell phone location data without a warrant in most scenarios. As the Bar Harbor police force began asking more questions about the man they arrested for OUI and his connection to the man whose name was on the ID he was carrying at the time, they looped in the Maine State Police to examine the voicemail call that came in the same day William Morse made bail. Detective Sergeant Kyle Ouellette was an expert on cell phone tracking data and mobile device forensics for the Maine State Police at the time. The first order of business for Ouellette was a simple one. Establish that the phone number making the call belonged to the man who claimed to be on it. And it was, in fact, Richard Bellateri's number. Now, the next step

was to determine if Richard Bellateri was actually in New York as he said he was when he made the call. If Rick was in New York, his cell phone should have pinged off a tower in New York State. While it's not always a perfect science, this type of forensic evidence can help when trying to prove or disprove someone's general location. What police learned from cell tower pings was that Rick Bellateri certainly wasn't in New York when he left that voicemail. The biggest question, though, was it even Rick Bellateri at all? Detectives learned through their investigation that Rick owned several properties in the Downeast region, and so when they couldn't locate him, they started knocking on doors,

seeking out tenants who might be able to speak to their landlord's whereabouts. Two of those tenants, Brianna Alley and Peter Neblett, responded to a rental listing for Rick's Hall Quarry house in October of 2012. The couple was looking for a new home to move into with their kids, and they needed to move quickly, so when they met the man they knew as Rick Bellateri and learned he was just as eager to get a tenant into his property after previous renters fell through, they said it seemed to be almost too good to be true. This was Mount Desert Island. It's not like landlords struggle to fill their units at a premium price in such a

highly desirable location. But Brianna told the Bangor Daily News that Rick didn't even ask them for references. All he wanted was $500 cash at the beginning of the month. In early July 2013, detectives spoke with Brianna and Peter at the Hall Quarry house, listening intently as they described the rental arrangement and the man they knew as their landlord. What police told them next left the couple completely stunned. The man who placed the Craigslist ad, the one who collected their rent in cash on the first of the month, it couldn't have been Rick Bellatieri, because Rick Bellatieri hadn't been seen in over a year. According to reporting by Bill Trotter for the Bangor Daily News, police were keeping a very close eye on William Morse

in the weeks following his OUI arrest, as well as maintaining nearly constant surveillance on the unfinished duplex property on Goose Cove Road. The more they looked into Rick Bellateri, the more police had the feeling that Rick never really went to New York. William Morris felt the watchful eye of detectives. With their suspicions thickening like fog on Acadia's Echo Lake, William decided he wasn't going to stay at the duplex anymore, and he started spending the night at a friend's house in Dedham. Meanwhile, on Sunday, July 28, 2013, police stepped on to the

Goose Cove Road property with cadaver dogs. As the trained canine unit sniffed the wooded land surrounding the still-unfinished home owned by Richard Bellatieri, it didn't take long before they discovered what they'd feared all along. Beneath a fallen tree, roughly buried and concealed by potting soil, were human skeleton remains. Two days later, dental records confirmed that the remains belonged to Richard Bellateri. On the morning of August 1st, 2013, Bar Harbor officers were on their way to have a chat with William Morse about Rick Bellateri when they spotted Bill zipping through Holden on a motorcycle. That was in violation of his bail conditions that stipulated he couldn't operate a motor vehicle, so police pursued him. But he pulled into the driveway of his friend's house on Peaks Hill Road in Dedham and quickly made his way inside the home.

Police tried calling William's cell phone numerous times. They knocked on the door to get his attention, but after every call went unanswered, officers obtained a search warrant for the house. Bill Trotter reported for the Bangor Daily News that dozens of Maine State Police vehicles lined the road and members of the State Police tactical team were on site as officers executed the search warrant. Somehow, William Morse managed to slip away from the house undetected. It wasn't until 1.30 that afternoon when he was finally spotted by a main DEA agent at the GNM Variety Market on Route 1A in Holden. He got into a car with a friend and took off. The officer followed behind and stopped the vehicle. And that's when William Morse was placed

under arrest for his suspected connection to the death of Richard Bellatieri. William Morse, a.k.a. Bill Tool, the man once known as Hundred Dollar Bill, he couldn't make bail. He sat in jail as investigators built their case against him. He penned a letter to Leah, the woman who once lived in Rick's camper van on the Goose Cove property. William's words were pleading, quote, you know me and my heart. I am not a person who can hurt another person, unquote. He said he'd give anything to know what happened to Rick. Leah turned over the letter to police without responding. According to a police affidavit, Richard Bellatieri was shot several times, once in his right foot, once in his right thigh, with a fatal shot in his right eyebrow and another

on the right side of his cranium. If the Attorney General's office was going to convict William Morse for murder, they were going to need to prove that he was the person who fired the shots that killed Rick. That wasn't going to be easy to do. The case, as they were finding, was largely circumstantial. Still, prosecutors believed all signs pointed to William Morse. And they aimed to prove it to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. But it would be two years before William Morse finally faced trial. In April of 2015, William Morse finally stepped into the Hancock County Unified Criminal Court on trial for murder. $175,000. That's how much of Rick Bellateri's money William Morse managed to blow through

in the year he was claiming to be in charge of Rick's properties and assuming his identity. State prosecutors revealed details of a year-long scam that began with a greed-fueled murder. Assistant Attorney General Donald Maycomber said greed was the primary motive for William Morse when he shot the man he met via Craigslist ad. He referenced the song Money by Pink Floyd and quoted a character from the movie Wall Street. He addressed the 13 men and two women of the jury, saying, quote, William Morse has 175,000 reasons to kill Rick Bellateri, unquote. Although confident in their motive for the murder, the defense team knew that the state prosecutors had a heavily circumstantial case against their

client. One of Williams' attorneys, Jeffrey Toothaker, told the jury that they'd be asked to guess at the answers to some of the most critical questions in the case. When was Rick shot? Where was he shot? And who was there when it happened? Toothacre stated, quote, knowing that someone is dead does not mean that you killed him, unquote. Among the state's witnesses was Edward Bellateri, Rick's brother. They'd had a falling out in 2009. He didn't elaborate on what caused it, but he was sure that his brother wouldn't have had any reason to return to New York in the summer of 2012. There was no death in the family, as far as Edward was aware. According to reporting of the trial proceedings by the Bangor Daily News,

prosecutors played that first voicemail left for the Bar Harbor Police Dispatch, the one supposedly left by Rick the morning after William was arrested for OUI. Edward sat in the courtroom shaking his head, completely stunned by what he was hearing. He knew it wasn't his brother's voice. The motive wasn't difficult to demonstrate. William spent piles of Rick's money in the year he disappeared. Clearly, money was the motivator. An opportunity was pretty clear too. William worked closely with Rick. He lived at Rick's home, and it wouldn't have been difficult to find a moment when they were alone together to carry out the murder. But the method, proving that William was the one to fire the gun and no one

else? That was the difficult part. Nancy Elliott, no relation to Rick's tenant Leah Elliott, took the stand as a key witness for the prosecution, and she told the jury that the gun used to kill Rick Bellateri was hers. It was a.40 caliber Springfield Armory XD handgun, and she kept it in a locked hiding spot in her camper during the summer of 2012. William had spent plenty of time at her place, they were dating after all, and she testified that it was possible William knew where to find the key to the gun's locked cabinet. It wasn't as damning as it could have been. No one testified that they saw William with the gun or that they heard gun shots on the property or that there were any signs at all that Rick was shot and killed one day in

July of 2012 and that William was the one to do it. Cell phone data, though, would be critical to the state solidifying their theory and eliminating any doubt in the minds of the jury. Detective Sergeant Kyle Ouellette explained that cell tower pings revealed William's movements on July 17, 2012, the presumed date of Rick's death. First, William's cell phone pinged off a tower near his girlfriend's house, the location of the handgun that police determined to be the murder weapon. The next location was Rick's duplex property in Trenton, the same place his body was found nearly a year later. After that date, all activity from Rick's cell phone dropped dramatically, except for a few key pings.

One, when they assume William, impersonating Rick, called the Bar Harbor Police Department. When the defense took center stage to challenge the state's theory that their client was the man who killed Richard Bellateri, they had a different M-word to describe the motive for Rick's murder. Marijuana. While they were there searching on his Trenton property, they also found over 260 marijuana plants, ranging from 4 inches to 3 feet tall. A former drug agent testified that the amount of plants would fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars. And according to reporting on the trial by Mark Good for the Ellsworth American, Rick's murder could have been the result of dealings with a criminal, perhaps a deal gone bad. It would have been a convincing argument, definitely enough to stir up some doubt in the minds of the jury, that is, if it were accurate. The prosecution poked holes in the theory, calling Pauline Buey,

a friend of Rick's, to the stand who said she'd never seen Rick smoke or grow marijuana. Then, they called a man named Daniel Tite, who William had hired to work on Rick's duplex with him. According to Daniel, the pot plants were very clearly William's. He told the jury, quote, he said they were his babies, unquote. They challenged the cell phone data. They did what they could to dispute the prosecution's case, but his defense team seemed to stop there. What they didn't do was try to dispute the fact that William stole Rick's money and used it to live an outrageous and lavish lifestyle. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Marquis closed the state's case saying, quote, these are the brazen acts of a man who knew the victim was not coming back, unquote.

But the defense asked the jury to understand that the state hadn't proven anything. Morse's attorney, Jeffrey Toothaker, said in his closing remarks, quote, has the state proven when he died, where he died, or who pulled the trigger? How do they know this was intentional? How do they know there wasn't a struggle over the gun? Unquote. Just 90 minutes into their deliberations, members of the jury returned with a verdict. William Morse, guilty of the willful and intentional murder of 61-year-old Richard Bellateri. William Morse never testified in his own defense during his trial,

but at his sentencing hearing against the advice of his own attorneys, William Morse decided to do what no defendant had ever done in Assistant Attorney General Donald Maycomber's entire 26 years as a prosecutor. William Morse confessed. And his confession revealed that he wasn't just a killer as the court had found him to be, he didn't have a single ounce of remorse for what he'd done. The Ellsworth American was there in the courtroom as William read from a pre-written statement, detailing the cold-blooded details of the night he shot Rick Bellateri.

He described waking up in what he believed to be a puddle of urine. He accused Rick of peeing on him in the middle of the night. In retaliation, he shot Rick. Williams' attorney told the Ellsworth American that his client seemed to have struck out on his own. This confession, the victim blaming, the clear lack of remorse, William could forget any chance of an appeal. Justice William Anderson handed down a 60-year sentence. The killer's attorney, Jeffrey Toothaker, remarked that with his client's age and health issues, William Morse was likely to die in prison. What you might not guess about Richard Bellateri

was that he loved to ballroom dance, and he was good at it. That's how he met Pauline Buey, and she was there in the courtroom to testify and support the friend she once used to share a dance floor with. On the day the jury found William Morse guilty of murder, Pauline said to the cameras outside the courthouse, This is a relief. This is an answer to prayer.

She kissed her hand and raised it to the sky, looking upwards as she said, Rick, we did it. We did it. I'm just so happy about it. I can exhale. Unquote. Rick loved Maine. He made himself a life here, and he appreciated every natural beauty of his home down east. Soam Sound was one of his favorite places to pause and soak in the vista, unlike anywhere else on earth. The five-mile-deep cove divides Mount Desert Island in half, and its naturally protected deep waters have long offered a safe harbor for vessels in stormy weather. It spills out into the Atlantic, where a famous Maine lighthouse, Bear Island Lighthouse, heralds the entrance,

beckoning captains and sailors through the narrow entrance to calmer seas beyond. On September 7, 2013, those who knew and loved Rick boarded a ship called the Sea Princess for an afternoon on the waters of the Sound, soaking in the beauty of his favorite place and celebrating the life of a man stolen far too soon. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Source material for this episode, including reporting by Bill Trotter for the Bangor Daily News, News Center Maine, and pieces by the Ellsworth American are all listed and linked in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can take a look at the case yourself. If you're new here, I'm so thrilled that you're tuning in to hear these important true crime stories in the history of Maine and New England. If you love the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Facebook and hit follow to turn on automatic downloads while you're there so you never miss an episode. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do.

I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases. I'm not about to let those names, their stories, or their legacies get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.