Man charged with slayings faces trial

One murder suspect in a series of 1988 Bangor-area homicides remains under indictment, and he is scheduled to stand trial beginning next week.

Jury selection will start Monday in Penobscot County Superior Court for the trial of Edward Clinton Robinson Jr. He was charged in connection with the June 1988 shooting deaths of a man and a woman at Tozier’s Trailer Park in Bangor, now known as Pray’s Trailer Park. Security will be tightened for the trial, which may take up to two weeks.

The slaying of Patricia Maguire and Robert Blanchard at Maguire’s mobile home was the city’s second multiple killing that year and the fifth and sixth of nine homicides in the Greater Bangor area for 1988, the city’s most violent year in recent memory.

Of five people charged with murder in the area that year in separate incidents, two have been convicted of murder and one has been convicted of a lesser charge of manslaughter.

In one case — the gunshot slaying of Bangor letter carrier Peter Bassett outside a State Street bar — a suspect was arrested and indicted. But the indictment was dropped when new information surfaced that led police to question the extent of the man’s involvement. Although the investigation officially remains open, officials have made no subsequent arrests.

Police charged Robinson, now 52, of Bangor, with the double slaying a year ago — a little more than a year after it happened — against a backdrop of a publicity campaign by a group composed of families of victims of unresolved Maine homicides.

Robinson had been romantically involved with Maguire and was the man the victims’ families suspected from the start. A week and a half before his arrest, Robinson sought and received a protection-from-harassment order against Ronald Blanchard — the son of Robert Blanchard and son-in-law of Maguire.

Robinson alleged that Ronald Blanchard, a Green Beret in the U.S. Army, had repeatedly harassed him. On one occasion, Blanchard had posted signs near Robinson’s residence saying that he had murdered “such ‘n such,” Robinson claimed, and on another, confronted Robinson outside his home and shouted, “murderer, murderer.”

Days later, relatives of the victims called Bangor police complaining that Robinson had been harassing them. Robinson was arrested three days later in connection with the double homicide.

Robinson has been jailed without bail since last July. The lawyer originally appointed to represent him, Andrew Mead, recently was elevated to District Court judge and had to withdraw from the case. He was replaced by Bangor attorney Wayne Foote.

At last year’s bail hearing, Mead characterized the state’s case against Robinson as a “fairly thin circumstantial case.”

In a pretrial proceeding, a judge initially forbade Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Hjelm from presenting during the trial statements that Robinson made to police under questioning two weeks after the shooting. But the judge later amended his ruling, agreeing to allow the statements, but only for the limited purpose of discrediting Robinson.

According to a transcript of an audiotaped recording of the interview, Robinson talked with police about his gun collection, his off-and-on romance with Maguire, and a cross-country trip he started the weekend of the shooting. He withdrew money for the trip from a Bangor bank that weekend, according to the transcript.

He also described his military service during the Vietnam War and a lingering war-related mental illness. He told investigators that he periodically heard voices — sometimes male, sometimes female — in his head.