Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

September 25, 2012

Day 4 of Mercier cold-case trial features taped denials

By Doug Harlow dharlow@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

SKOWHEGAN -- From when he was first accused right up to the weeks leading to his arrest last year for the murder of 20-year-old Rita St. Peter in 1980, Jay Mercier maintained his innocence.

In recorded interviews with State Police Detective Bryant Jacques in 2010 played in court on Tuesday, Mercier stuck to the story he has told ever since he became a suspect in the murder 32 years ago: He did not know St. Peter, had never met her, had never picked her up in his truck and never had sex with her.

He kept to the story, even when confronted with DNA evidence pointed to his having had sexual contact with St. Peter.

In one of three taped interviews with Jacques played Tuesday, Mercier could be heard saying that if he dies in the coming months, he has one request:

"If you see my obit in the paper, do not put it in the paper that the (Rita St. Peter) case is closed," Mercier, 57, said. "I've told you everything I know."

In one of the interviews, Jacques challenged Mercier's statement that he didn't know St. Peter.

"There's absolutely no doubt you had some contact with Rita St. Peter," Jacques told Mercier in an interview recorded in November 2010 at Mercier's home in Industry. "There's got to be an explanation because both things can't be true."

St. Peter was last seen alive around midnight July 4, 1980, walking toward the bridge over the Kennebec River connecting Madison and Anson. She had been at a Fourth of July party and stopped at the Depot Tavern in Madison for a drink before heading home to Anson.

Prosecutors say Mercier, now 57, sexually assaulted with St. Peter, beat her with something like a tire iron, then ran her over with his truck.

In testimony Tuesday before Justice John Nivison in Somerset County Superior Court, Jacques said he took over investigation of the St. Peter murder case in 2005. He said later that year he worked with Alicia Wilcox, a former technician at the State Police Crime Lab, to develop a plan to break the state's longest running cold-case homicide.

"There was a 'to do' list created," Jacques said Tuesday. "We wanted to get together to see what we had."

What police had against Mercier were tire markings from Mercier's pickup truck that corresponded with photographs taken of tire tracks near St. Peter's body. There also were glass slides with fluid samples taken from St. Peter's body during her autopsy in 1980.

In 2009, the crime lab identified sperm cells in the fluid samples.

The problem with Jacques' to do list, Skowhegan attorneys John Alsop and John Martin told the court, was that investigative methods in 1980 and in subsequent years were not up to modern standards. They said some evidence was missing, including a comb and some photographs and there was no conclusive evidence that the truck tires matched.

Notebooks and paperwork from previous detectives had not been passed on to new investigators and some of the police officers and witnesses have died, making the case more difficult to prove, they said. Martin added that DNA from two other unidentified men also was found in St. Peter.

He said there even was some debate if St. Peter's body had been run over, Martin said.

Jacques took the first of what would be three trips to Industry to talk with Mercier in January 2010. He said they talked about where Mercier's truck was parked when he got home in the early morning of July 5, 1980, and that the Depot Tavern, where St. Peter had stopped, had been torn down.

(Continued on page 2)

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