CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire man has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in the 2011 disappearance and death of a Maine woman whose toddler daughter was found abandoned in her car.
Michael Petelis of Ossipee is scheduled for a plea-and-sentencing hearing at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Carroll County Superior Court in Ossipee.
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Petelis was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery in the case of Krista Dittmeyer, 20, of Portland. Her body was found in a snowmaking pond at Cranmore Mountain in Conway five days after her car was found idling in the ski area’s parking lot — her 14-month-old daughter unharmed inside.
Prosecutors said Dittmeyer was lured to Petelis’s apartment by her close friend, Anthony Papile, also of Ossipee. Senior Assistant Attorney Jane Young said at Papile’s sentencing last May that Papile clubbed Dittmeyer in the head three times as she was climbing the stairs. Prosecutors said the pair had plotted to steal drugs and money from her.
Young said Papile and Petelis bound Dittmeyer’s legs and torso with duct tape and put her in the trunk of her car, which Papile drove to the ski area. Papile, a former ski area employee who helped build the snowmaking pond, admitted that he held Dittmeyer’s bound body underwater and then pushed her away from land. The cause of her death was prolonged cold-water submersion.
Papile was sentenced to 50 years in prison for Dittmeyer’s death.
Another man, Trevor Ferguson of Tamworth, was sentenced to at least seven years in prison for conspiring to rob her. Prosecutors said Ferguson agreed to give Papile a ride home from the ski area in exchange for money and drugs.
At Papile’s sentencing, Dittmeyer’s mother tearfully recalled what a loving mother she was to her daughter, Aliyah.
“That day in April, Anthony Papile took away my daughter, a sister, a mother and a kind and loving friend,” said Lanell Shackley, who is caring for Aliyah.
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