Dark Downeast - The Murder of Rita St. Peter (Maine)

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

On the night of July 4, 1980, an evening of celebrations in the rural town of Anson, Maine ended in the murder investigation of a young local mother. Tire tracks at the scene raised suspicion and rumor, but despite the evidence and apparent confidence of investigators, years passed without any movement in the case. By the time it went to trial, Rita St. Peter’s case would be the longest standing unsolved homicide in the state of Maine. Yet the person believed to be responsible for her violent death had been at the top of the suspect list from the very first day of the investigation. This story is proof that even decades later, cold cases can be solved.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/ritastpeter Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case

On the night of July 4th, 1980, an evening of celebrations in the rural town of Anson, Maine, ended in the murder investigation of a young local mother. Tire tracks at the scene raised suspicion and rumor, but despite the evidence and apparent confidence of investigators, years passed without any movement in the case. By the time it went to trial, Rita St. Peter's case would be the longest-standing unsolved homicide in the state of Maine. Yet, the person believed to be responsible for her violent death had been at the top of the suspect list from the very first day of the investigation. This story is proof that even decades later,

cold cases can be solved. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Rita St. Peter was born in Dexter, Maine on March 16, 1960. She was adopted as a baby by Eva and Eugene St. Peter, and they raised Rita alongside their other children in Anson, Maine. As a teenager and young 20-something, Rita was a dynamic personality. David Robinson and Aaron Roda write for the Morning Sentinel that she was a member of the drama and photography clubs at Karabek High School and was also a two-season athlete playing basketball and softball. Rita was in the pep club, the business league, and a vocational training program while also participating in the Future Homemakers of America organization. She found something to love about everything she tried.

In October of 1977, when Rita was 17 years old, she became a mother to a little girl, and she was, quote, the greatest joy of Rita's life, end quote. The Morning Sentinel reports that in 1979, Rita may have been preparing to enter the military as she granted guardianship of her daughter to her mother. However, in July of 1980, 20-year-old Rita was working at Ken's Drive-In Restaurant, a favorite Central Maine spot that's still around today, and she

was living at home with her parents and daughter in Anson. The small town of Anson and its friendly neighbor Madison were built up around the once-flourishing Great Northern Paper Company Mill. And like many of Maine and New England's mill towns, the scaling back of operations, the layoffs, the change in demand, and the eventual closure of the mill over several decades put the residents of the area, many of whom moved to town for jobs at the mill, in a tight spot. But there's more to these small towns than the mill, of course. There's the historic Lakewood Theater in Madison, one of the oldest running summer theatres in the country, the main wilderness to enjoy along the Kennebec River

that runs between the two towns, and the unique character of a rural downtown. The facades of the buildings along Main Street in Madison, which runs across the bridge over the river into Anson, are largely unchanged, except for the signage of new businesses and maybe a paint job or two. But if Rita St. Peter could see it today, she'd likely recognize everything as the same small Maine town where she once spent her life. On the night of July 4th,

1980, Rita had been out celebrating Independence Day the way many people from small Maine towns do, at a party at someone's camp. I've learned that the term camp is kind of a Maine thing. If you're from away, you might call it a vacation home, a lake house, or the family cabin. But in Maine, if you have a place to go primarily in the summer, usually on a body of water, then it's a camp. So, according to reporting by Thomas Lezotte for the Morning Sentinel, Rita and some friends had a few drinks at a camp in Emden, and then decided to venture the 20 minutes back into Madison to check out a new bar and dance hall that had recently opened,

called the Main Street Depot. Rita walked in around 10 p.m. About two and a half hours later, Rita decided to call it a night and stepped out the door of the depot around 12.30 a.m. She was alone, and witnesses say Rita was visibly intoxicated as she made her way down Main Street. From my understanding, the bridge that connects Madison to Anson has since been reconstructed, but still today and back in 1980, there was a set of train tracks that ran perpendicular to the bridge. As she tried to step over them, Rita's toe caught the protruding steel. She tumbled to the ground but righted herself and continued on her way.

She clutched the side rails as she walked towards Anson, the waters of the Kennebec River flowing steadily beneath her. Reports vary a bit on where Rita was heading that night. From what I can discern, she was supposed to be staying the night at a friend's house, but Rita never made it there. Walking across the bridge, a friend's house, but Rita never made it there. Walking across the bridge, alone in the darkness, was the last time anyone saw Rita St. Peter alive. Around 10.30 the next morning, Saturday, July 5th, 18-year-old Tim Dyke was suiting up his team of draft horses at his family's farm off Campground Road in Anson. His father was the Shorty Dyke,

kind of a legend on the horse-pulling scene at Ming's many fairs, and so with the season underway and a family legacy to uphold, Tim wanted to get his team in top shape. With a heavy sled affixed to their collars and leather reins in hand, they made for the fields about a quarter mile away from the barn for a little exercise. As they trotted down the well-worn trails alongside the fields, the horses stopped suddenly. Tim hadn't signaled for them to pause, not even so much as a gentle tug on their bits, but their hooves seemed rooted on the spot. He asked the horses to go, but still they disobeyed. As they shifted on their feet, Tim peered between the horses' legs to the ground below.

He could see something in the way, but at first he thought it was just a tree limb. With a second glimpse, the obstacle in their path became clear. It was a human body. Tim didn't need or want to look any closer. He later said he was scared to death of what he saw, and so he steered his team around the body towards the path back home and signaled the horses to run. Anson didn't have 911 that rang into a local PD at the time, but Tim's family contacted law enforcement to report the discovery. A Maine State Police trooper and a game warden arrived sometime after 12 p.m. It was common for them to ride together to save gas money at the time. According to court records, trooper Barry DeLong and game warden James Ross parked off Campground Road and followed Tim Dyke

down the dirt path. As the three men approached the body, game warden James Ross identified the victim as a young woman. She was laying on her back, with her legs across the path and her head at the edge of it. The woman's clothing and undergarments were in disarray and torn in places, exposing much of her body. Her head was severely bloodied, and it didn't look like anyone had tried to cover her up or conceal the scene in any way. Whatever happened to the woman, it was obvious that her death was extremely violent. One of the first things Warden Ross and Trooper DeLong noticed as they approached the scene were fresh, uncut tire tracks on Campground Road and on the path leading up to the body. The treadmarks were pristine and looked to Ross like snow tires or aggressive mud tires. As they followed the tracks closer, it appeared they went right up to and maybe even over the body, and then they reversed direction, backed up and turned away from the body, heading off the path and across the field back to the main road.

Around 1.30 p.m., Maine State Police Detective A.J. Carter of the Criminal Investigation Division arrived at the scene off Campground Road. As he stepped out of his car and made his way towards where the other law enforcement officers were clustered together, he also noticed the tire impressions in the mud. His trained eye and detective's mind was already turning. He had a sense those tire marks would be part of the investigation to come. Now, troopers didn't carry department-issued cameras with them at the time, but Detective Carter had his personal Polaroid camera in the back of his car from a family outing a few days earlier. So he decided to snap a couple shots of the undisturbed tire impressions. The first one didn't develop very well.

Polaroids can be finicky like that, so he threw it away. But the second one was pretty good, so he stuck it in his pocket and waited for the evidence technicians to arrive. Meanwhile, Warden Ross remained on the scene to assist where needed. Even though game wardens didn't have jurisdiction over homicide investigations, it was typical for wardens to assist in crime scene searches, particularly those that extended into Maine's wilderness. As additional investigators arrived at the scene, Warden Ross instructed everyone to park at the end of the path like he and DeLong

and Carter had done, to preserve the perfect tire tracks. But around 2 p.m. that afternoon, Somerset County Sheriff Bill Wright arrived, and though Warden Ross had asked him to park at the end of the road to protect the scene, Sheriff Wright apparently had no interest in that request. He turned his car onto the dirt path and cut through and over a mud puddle, which contained the deepest and cleanest of the suspect tire tracks. Thankfully, before any more destruction could be done, CID evidence technicians showed up to collect and photograph everything. Among the other evidence was some sort of white paper products, possibly napkins or paper towels or something, as well as a beer bottle. Meanwhile, the woman laying there in the dirt path

remained nameless for hours as law enforcement processed the scene around her. The first tentative identification came from Sheriff Wright. He instructed Detective Carter to go find the family of Rita St. Peter. The state medical examiner performed a full autopsy the following day, which included oral, vaginal, and rectal swabs. But the detailed results of the autopsy and specifics of Rita's cause of death were not released at the time because, as investigators

said, only they and the killer knew exactly how her life ended, and they wanted to keep it that way as the investigation pushed forward. Police hit the ground running, talking to family, friends, anyone who could help establish Rita's movements in the hours before her body was found. They asked the public to come forward with any information or sightings of Rita between the time she left the bar at half past midnight and 10.30 a.m. the next morning. With those interviews ongoing, the small-town rumor mill filled in the blanks with their own theories. Rita's friends speculated that she may have been picked up by a passing driver. Lizotte writes for the Morning Sentinel that it was actually pretty typical of

Rita to hitchhike. She didn't have her license, and so when her parents couldn't give her a ride where she needed or wanted to go, she thumbed for a ride. It was a possibility, at least to those who knew her, that she got a ride from someone after leaving the depot that night. There was also talk about a man Rita was seeing at the time, a guy named Mark, and speculation about the father of her daughter being involved, but investigators wouldn't confirm or deny anything. They did say, though, that they expected to make an arrest, and soon. Attorney General Pat Perino commented in the Bangor Daily News on July 10th that a number of tips they'd received in the previous days were extremely helpful to furthering the case. The investigation had

identified several suspects already. The reassuring words were a comfort to the small town left reeling from a murder of one of their own, but soon takes on a different meaning in a homicide investigation. By the end of August, the AG's office had yet to release any new information in Rita's case. And though investigators were still saying that they had several suspects, they weren't to the point of bringing the case to a grand jury. It seemed like the case was losing momentum. And then the progress just stopped altogether. An entire year went by without updates. Around the one-year anniversary of Rita's murder, her parents spoke with Jerry Boyle of the

Morning Sentinel and revealed that they hadn't even heard from investigators since a few weeks after it all happened. Much of what they knew about the case and the circumstances of Rita's death came from newspaper articles. And yet, investigators said at the knew about the case and the circumstances of Rita's death came from newspaper articles. And yet, investigators said at the time that the case was definitely still active, and Detective A.J. Carter had plans to return to Anson in the near future to continue working on it. Meanwhile, the loss of Rita had a ripple effect on her surviving family members. Rita's parents were left to raise her young daughter alone, but they were older and in poor health and simply not equipped to parent a toddler.

They made arrangements for Rita's daughter to be adopted by another family in town, trying to do the best for the little girl in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. Eva St. Peter told Jerry Boyle that the little girl was very aware of what happened to her mother, or at least what people in town were saying happened to her mother. She'd point to a passing car and ask them, is that the one that ran over Mama? It was a rumor that had surfaced early on in the investigation, that whoever killed Rita ran her over with their vehicle, something the AG's office never confirmed during the early stages of the case. But finally, after withholding her cause of death for a year, investigators disclosed that Rita

had been beaten, suffering a fractured skull, and it was possible she was run over by a car or truck. Even with that update, though, the case didn't move forward. Two years, over 200 interviews, and supposedly several suspects later, Rita's murder hadn't yet been closed. By the second anniversary of Rita St. Peter's death, her name landed on the cold case list. And there it sat for more than two decades. In 2005, a new detective opened the dusty case file and combed through the work of the original investigators with a fresh eye. The evidence proved, all those years later, that what investigators had been saying all along wasn't lip service. They really did have a few suspects on their radar, and one man in particular had caught the attention of

police from the very first day. The evidence had remained under lock and key at the Maine State Crime Lab, just waiting for the day it could reveal the truth about what happened on that 4th of July night in 1980. With the help of new forensic tools, the long stagnant investigation into Rita St. Peter's murder was soon reignited in a very big way. Buried within Rita St. Peter's case file were investigative field reports, witness interview notes, photos of the scene, and evidence collected on the very first day of the investigation, July 5th, 1980, when her body was found on that path in a field off Campground Road. Maine State Police Detective Bryant Jakes was first assigned to Rita St. Peter's unsolved case in the fall of 2005.

According to court records, he and several other investigators met for a briefing on the case in October of that year. They reviewed photographs and witness statements and discussed the evidence and the known suspects. That's when Detective Jakes and the other present-day investigators learned about the man who had been on the case radar from the beginning. Now, there were a number of witnesses who gave statements to police throughout the years, including friends, family acquaintances, and other bar patrons who were hanging at or

around the depot in Madison on the evening of July 4th. A woman named Kathy had been in and out of the depot and at a nearby gas station that night, and she told police that she saw Rita leave the depot sometime after 12 a.m. Kathy watched as Rita stumbled over the train tracks, and she saw Rita walk towards the Madison-Anson Bridge. She kept watching as a pickup truck that had been heading in the opposite direction pulled a-turn, and drove back down the street towards Rita. It was a 1980 GMC three-quarter-ton pickup, pretty much fresh off the lot, with notably large tires. The witness told police no one else in town had a truck like it. It could only belong to one guy. His name was Jay Mercier.

As the case file showed, the day after Rita was discovered on July 6th, Trooper DeLong and Warden Ross tracked down Jay Mercier. When they pulled up to his house on Nichols Street in Madison, there he was, washing his 1980 GMC three-quarter-ton pickup truck with notably large tires. The two officers approached the man, and Jay turned off the hose and ceased his scrubbing. DeLong and Ross told Jay that they were looking at a number of trucks as part of a murder investigation and asked if he'd mind if they took a quick look at his truck. Jay agreed to let them take it down to a local garage for a thorough examination.

As they made arrangements to transport the truck down the street, DeLong and Ross kept Jay chatting, asking him questions about Rita St. Peter and if he knew her or if he had any idea what might have happened to her on the night of July 4th. Jay didn't have anything significant

to say during that conversation until he asked an unusual question, something to the effect of, I'm not saying I did it, but if I did do it, what would happen to me? But before that thought could go any further, another detective walked in, interrupting the undoubtedly tense moment with a man who had at that second become a suspect in Rita St. Peter's death. And suspicion surrounding Jay would only deepen when investigators got his truck down to the garage for examination. Detective A.J. Carter arrived to assist, and the Polaroid he took of the tire tracks at the scene with his own personal camera was still in his pocket. As he raised the photo to the tires on Jay Mercier's truck, his eyes darting between the photographed tracks and the tires in front of him, they looked like a match. He wasn't an expert in that field, but as far as he could tell,

there were enough similarities to say it was possible that the tires on Jay Mercier's truck made the tracks at the scene of Rita St. Peter's death. Detective Carter took inked impressions of all four tires, and he dated, timestamped, and wrote his initials on each one. They were added to the case file as evidence, and Carter never saw them again until decades later, when Detective Bryant Jakes called him up to say he was getting Rita's case going again. So investigators had zeroed in on Jay Mercier as a suspect in the first critical 48 hours. But a witness seeing his truck drive in Rita's direction the same night she was killed and his tire tracks at the scene did not a murderer make. His comment to Warden Ross about

not saying he did it, but if he did do it, was a curious thing to hear, but it wasn't an outright confession. So Jay stayed on the list of suspects, damn near the top, but there wasn't enough there to bring any charges against him. Not in 1980. But there was other evidence. Evidence that wasn't much help in the 80s prior to advancements in forensic DNA analysis. The swabs collected during Rita's autopsy were still among the items preserved in a locker at the crime lab. Detective Jakes thought that getting those biological samples tested and other evidence analyzed would be a solid first step in the renewed investigation.

He met with forensic scientist Alicia Wilcox to review which pieces of evidence might yield some answers all these years later. Together, they decided to have the oral, vaginal, and rectal smear swabs analyzed for the presence of sperm cells. It would be a four-plus-year wait to hear if the slides held any answers. But when the forensic chemist returned with results, the news was potentially earth-shattering. There was, in fact, sperm present on one of the slides. That slide was then sent for DNA analysis in hopes of developing a profile, and that too was successful. The analysis had developed a mixed profile, that is, two contributors to the DNA on the slide.

So, the next step was to compare Rita St. Peter's DNA profile to the sample, and as expected, it was confirmed that she was one of the two contributors. The other was an unknown male. It was 2010 at this point, nearly three full decades since that 4th of July night in 1980. And Jay Mercier's name happened to be first on the list for Detective Jakes to catch up with after the DNA profile came back. Jay was still living in the area, about 20 minutes away from Madison in the town of Industry. So, Detective Jakes hopped in his unmarked cruiser and headed out for a chat with Mr. Mercier. It wasn't the first time law enforcement had come knocking on the door for Jay Mercier in the previous 30 years. But every time someone asked him about Rita St. Peter,

his story was the same. He didn't know Rita. He never met her. She wasn't in his truck on the night of July 4th, 1980, and he never had sex with her. I obtained redacted audio of the interviews that Detective Jakes conducted with Jay Mercier in January of 2010 from the Maine Attorney General's office via FOAA request. The first voice you'll hear is Detective Jake's, and Jay Mercier responds. I mean, how well did you know this girl Rita St. Peter, Jay? You didn't know her? Didn't know her at all.

Had you ever met her? Nope. Not that I can recall. Hmm. The funny thing is, I guess she lived right beside us. Hmm. At one point. Interesting. The conversation continued like that for a few minutes.

Detective Jakes asked Jay about a few other details regarding the case, and then they veered off topic to talk about some personal things, like the health of Jay's mother, before the conversation turned back to Rita St. Peter and the original investigation. You know, I read you're pretty upset about how things are going, and sometimes, you know, I'm not sure what happened. Sometimes you can feel that you're being treated unfairly

by police officers. Well, they kind of screwed up years ago, if you ask me. Yeah, I'd like to ask you. I've heard that. Tell me about that. What do you think? What's your thought on that? I don't know why they looked at me to begin with other than I had a four-wheel drive three-quarters of the time. And it sounds like you had been seen around town that night, right?

You were drinking some Budweiser beers. Probably. Yeah, around town. It usually was back at that time. Yeah, yeah. Do you know, Jay, if you recall, back at that time, if you had picked know, Jay, if you recall back at that time If you had anybody, you had picked up anybody that night at all in your truck? Don't know

Don't know Or if you had anybody else in the truck with you You know, like another friend I don't recall anybody And how certain are you, Jay, that you never had Rita in your truck? 100% on that How sure are you that you, you know, ever went on a date with her? 100% on that one. I never met her.

I mean, you ever have sex with her? No. I mean, gonna have to meet somebody first. The detective and the suspect were standing off to the side of the roadway as they spoke. Jay was smoking cigarettes and had burned through four over the course of the roadway as they spoke. Jay was smoking cigarettes and had burned through four over the course of the interview, tossing the butts to the ground not far from where Detective Jakes had parked his car. When the interview ended and the two parted ways, Detective Jakes got back into his cruiser and pulled into the driveway a bit. Out of view from Jay, he slipped on a pair of gloves and picked up one of the cigarette butts.

He placed it carefully into a paper bag, sealed it up, and left. It wasn't his plan when he went to visit Jay Mercier that day, but it certainly was a golden opportunity. Detective Jakes delivered the cigarette butt to the crime lab to see if a profile could be pulled from it. Six months later, they had it. They had Jay Mercier's DNA profile. And not only that, they'd submitted the profile for comparison to samples in Rita's case. And Jay Mercier's DNA profile came back as a match to the sperm cells contained on the smear slides collected during the autopsy all the way back in 1980. Rita St. Peter's case had become Maine's longest-standing unsolved homicide at the time. But with that match, 30 years later, the investigative team was on the verge of a major breakthrough. Knowing his sperm was found on Rita's body,

Jay Mercier's statements that he didn't know her and didn't have sex with her were very obviously untrue. Detective Jakes returned once again to Jay's house in industry for another interview. Again, Jay stuck to his story. The case against Jay Mercier was getting stronger, but the DNA match from the cigarette butt was only a preliminary result. They needed a primary sample to conclusively match Jay Mercier's DNA to the biological evidence on Rita's body. So, on orders from the state crime lab, Detective Jakes again made the trip to industry equipped with a cheek swab kit and personally collected a sample from Jay Mercier. As the team of investigators again waited for results on the cheek swab samples to come back, Alicia Wilcox of the Maine State Crime Lab,

who was trained in fingerprint, tire track, and shoe print analysis, took a closer look at the other evidence in the case file. She pulled out the inked tire impressions from Jay's pickup, taken by Detective Carter, another piece of 30-year-old evidence, and compared them to the photographs of the tire marks at the scene. Unfortunately, Alicia Wilcox didn't have access to the Polaroids taken of the pristine, uncut tire marks by Detective Carter with his personal camera before the sheriff had driven through them. According to court documents, Carter never put them in the case file, and he burned those photographs, along with a briefcase full of other materials from his time with state police when he retired. But she did have the photos taken by CID, as well as a photo of a napkin found at the scene with a tire mark on it.

Alicia noticed that there were two different sets of tread patterns from a single vehicle at the scene, and they were distinctive, just as the investigators who came before her had noted. With a trained eye, she examined the photos and the ink prints of Jay Mercier's tires, noting each groove and line, inspecting the width and length of the patterns. They matched. It was undeniable. She was confident that Jay Mercier's tires left the tracks at the scene of Rita St. Peter's death. When the results of the primary DNA sample from Jay Mercier's cheek swab came back, it sealed the deal.

The preliminary match from the cigarette butt was confirmed, and there was no doubt Jay Mercier's DNA was found on Rita St. Peter's body. He'd been the primary suspect since day one, and now, law enforcement finally had what they needed to arrest Jay Mercier finally began in September of 2012. It wasn't going to be an easy one. Trying a cold case with 30-plus-year-old evidence, fading memories, and a number of witnesses and original investigators who had since passed away never is.

And yet, attorneys Andrew Benson and Laura Nomani prepared the state's case with the same vigor they would for a more recent case. The jury heard about Rita St. Peter's injuries and the conclusion that she'd been beaten, perhaps with a tire iron, though one had never been found. They heard that Rita had also been run over by a truck with tires that matched the ones on Jay Mercier's pickup. They heard about the smear slides that sat in evidence lockers for decades, just waiting for science to catch up. They heard about the renewed investigation under Detective Jakes,

the findings by forensic scientists, and testimony about the cigarette butt and cheek swab DNA profile from Jay Mercier matching the semen on Rita's body. Though it had been over 30 years, the state was also able to call several original witnesses. Tim Dyke testified to the scene he discovered that July morning while out exercising his horses. Kathy, the woman who told police she saw Rita walking alone in the dark that night and Jay Mercier's truck driving towards her, also testified. Several of the original investigators were there to share what remained of their memories of the case too. But of course, the defense aimed to raise some reasonable doubt over everything the state attempted to present as the truth. Jay Mercier's

attorney, John Martin, asked for the people of the jury to proceed with caution because as he said in his opening statement, the evidence was quote-unquote ancient and memories of witnesses decades later were fallible. He also argued that just because the state had evidence Jay Mercier's sperm was found on Rita's body doesn't mean he killed her. The defense pointed out that there was another piece of evidence found at the scene, a beer bottle, and that beer bottle had a fingerprint on it that didn't belong to Jay Mercier. They also argued that there were issues with the tire tracks.

They'd been disturbed by another driver, the sheriff, and the original Polaroids had been destroyed. The defense attorney also introduced evidence of other possible contributors of sperm cells found in Rita's underwear. What about those people? Did the state ever consider them as suspects? In closing statements, the defense suggested that it was possible Rita St. Peter was hit by a car while trying to hitch a ride home and then somehow ended up on Campground Road, or that she got in a

car and met her death somewhere before reaching Campground Road. But the questions about who was responsible, how her death was caused, and where it actually happened remained. When the case was finally turned over to the jury for deliberation, they returned after a few hours with a note to the judge asking for clarification on the charges, particularly about the difference

between murder and manslaughter. Judge John Nivison explained to the jury that a charge of murder requires the state to demonstrate that Jay Mercier either intended to cause Rita's death, or caused her death by conduct that he was almost certain would result in death, or by conduct that manifested a depraved indifference to the value of human life. As for the lesser charge of manslaughter, the jury had to find that the defendant caused Rita's death through reckless conduct or criminal negligence. With clarity on the charges, the jury continued their deliberations for another 45 minutes before returning with a verdict. Maine's oldest cold case homicide was finally coming to a close,

and the surviving family members of Rita St. Peter were in the courtroom as the jury foreperson announced they found Jay Mercier guilty of murder. In December of 2012, Jay Mercier received a 70-year sentence for Rita St. Peter's murder. A life sentence was not an option because the crime did not meet Maine State's threshold of extreme cruelty,

torture, or premeditation. But as Rita's sister, Christine Belangia, told Doug Harlow of the Portland Press-Herald following the sentencing, quote, It's going to be life for him either way, because he's 50-something years old now. He'll never make it out. It's good. We're happy. End quote. Rita's other sister, Maxine Cross,

said there was a caveat to that happiness, though. Jay Mercier never apologized, or so much as acknowledged that his actions ended the life of her sister. Quote, that's what I don't understand. Why doesn't he have an apology? No remorse, nothing. There was closure, but there will always be pain. It's been 32 years, and he's had his life free, and she never got to live hers. End quote. On the topic of remorse and apologies, there's the related question of motive.

Why did Jay Mercier do it? The state didn't have to introduce a motive, but the question persists to this day. Jay Mercier had other violent offenses to his name, so was murder an escalation? Jay also mentioned in interviews with the early investigators that he tended to drink a lot, so were his actions related to his consumption that night? As far as I can tell, Jay Mercier has never given an explanation. Of course, there would never be one that justifies ending the life of a young mother, a beloved daughter, and a woman with so much life ahead of her. According to Maine Department of Corrections records, Jay Mercier remains in prison.

His earliest release date is March 22, 2053. Rita's parents passed away before ever learning the truth about what happened to their daughter. But Rita always had the support of her surviving siblings, including Christine Belangia. She sat through the painful court proceedings and carried Rita's photograph with her so no one would forget the sister she loved and lost. She told Erin Roda of the Morning Sentinel, quote, we never gave up hope. God is good. Just don't give up hope because one day you never know, end quote. Rita's daughter, only a toddler when her mother was killed, was surrounded by the love of her adoptive family. Christine said that Rita's daughter grew up and had children of her own, and is a wonderful mother.

Rita's legacy lives on through her family, and she is a symbol of why we should not and cannot give up on long-standing cold cases. The dedication to these cases and examining them through the lens of the latest forensic tech is not just about solving crimes. It's about finally reaching a semblance of closure and justice for the families and the community. Imagine waiting for answers in your loved one's unsolved case for years, and then suddenly there's a breakthrough. There's a new detective, a fresh set of eyes, an updated approach to analyzing what's been sitting in a case file for decades. The possibilities give me chills. This is why I do what I do, and why I share the stories of solved cases amidst the unsolved too. I want to prove to the families still waiting that there's hope. I want investigators bogged down by their everyday workload

to hear that there's value in dedicating time and resources to still open cases, no matter how old they are. And I want everyone else listening to realize that you're a part of this too. Every time we talk about these cases, these humans, every time we shine a light on the potential breakthroughs in forensics and the law enforcement officials and scientists and evidence technicians and attorneys out there piecing together plans to close long-standing crimes, it's so much more than something to listen to while you fold your laundry or drive to work.

I'm going to share with you a link in the description of this episode to a list of Maine's unsolved homicides. I've covered many of them on Dark Down East already, but I hope you'll take a moment to familiarize yourself with all the names and faces in Maine still waiting for a day like Rita's. The pursuit of justice isn't a job only for law enforcement. It's a community effort. By staying informed and engaged, you contribute to a shared narrative that says we won't forget and we won't stop until every family gets the answers

they deserve. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.