Trial full of frustration for families of murder victims

The families of two shooting victims at the center of a Bangor murder trial have seen an uncomfortable number of murder cases end in acquittals in the last two years.

Mindful that the case against the man accused of killing their parents is largely circumstantial, the children of Patricia Maguire and Robert Blanchard have resigned themselves to the probability that Edward Clinton Robinson Jr. will go free. They are prepared to settle for having seen the case go through the process.

“In this state? State of Maine? Oh, he’ll probably be found … not guilty,” Ronald Blanchard, Robert Blanchard’s son and Maguire’s son-in-law, told reporters at lunchtime Monday outside the Penobscot County Courthouse. He has sat through the proceedings in his Green Beret uniform, beside his sister, Rhonda Blanchard-Robichaud. Frequently, his tension manifests in tightened facial muscles and cracking knuckles.

“I’m not going to throw any stones at the Bangor Police Department,” he said. “I think they’ve done all they could do. We knew going into this case that win, lose or draw, we presented a case, we pushed a case. They took it to court. That’s what we asked for, that’s what we got.”

He and his wife, Vicki Blanchard — Maguire’s daughter, made the long trip on a military flight from Germany to attend the trial.

Frustration is compounded for Vicki and her sister, Cindy Commeau. Because they are prosecution witnesses — Cindy discovered the bodies and Vicki witnessed disagreements between her mother and Robinson — they have been sequestered and cannot watch the trial. They wait in the hall outside, watching other witnesses enter and leave.

“We can’t sit in the courtroom and listen to our mother’s murder trial,” said Commeau. “That’s pretty bad. The suspect’s setting in there. He has more rights than we do.”

Particularly frustrating for the sons and daughters is the fact that rules forbidding indirect “hearsay” testimony render Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Hjelm unable to present evidence suggesting that Robinson threatened Maguire a week before the shootings. Maguire, who had dated Robinson, told her daughters about the alleged threats.

“She had nobody else to talk to but her daughters, but they will not take her daughters’ point of view,” said Ronald Blanchard. “She’s dead now. She can’t speak for herself.”

The family blames neither Hjelm nor the police.

“I’m saying there’s something wrong with the damn judicial system, ’cause these certain points cannot be brought up here,” Ronald Blanchard said Monday. “I mean, when a person comes to you and says, `I think so-and-so is trying to kill me,’ and all of a sudden they end up dead, you have no bearing in the (murder) case at all. There’s something wrong.”

The family has found it difficult to keep silent about the case. With no arrest forthcoming a month after the shootings, the daughters went public with their frustration. Last summer, Ronald Blanchard was slapped with a protection-from-harassment order after Robinson, who would be charged with murder a few weeks later, claimed that the Green Beret had accused him of murder in public confrontations and in signs placed near his property.

They don’t think pressure from the family members, who since have become actively involved in a fledgling group for survivors of homicide victims, pushed authorities into making a premature arrest.

“We’re not considered victims,” said Commeau. “The victims themselves are dead and the family members are not considered victims. We’re victims of the system.”

If the case ends in an acquittal, Blanchard’s children said they would go far away — Ronald to Germany, “where I know I’m safe,” and Rhonda to Connecticut, with other family members.

“I’m not going to rest easy until I read his obituary in the newspaper like I did my father and my mother-in-law,” said Ronald Blanchard.