Man caught stuffing body into car pleads guilty to murder

PORTLAND — A 23-year-old man, caught loading a body into a car, pleaded guilty Monday to murder for beating and slashing a bartender who refused to spend the night with him.

As part of a plea bargain, James R. Slaughter admitted that he beat John W. Gaffney, 25, with weights and cut his throat early on the morning of Feb. 25.

Two Portland police officers caught Slaughter trying to load Gaffney’s bloody body into the passenger seat of a friend’s car while they were on a routine patrol Feb. 28. As the two officers approached Slaughter, he said: “I’m under arrest. It’s a body.”

In exchange for his guilty plea, Assistant Attorney General Eric Wright said the prosecution would recommend that Slaughter be sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Wright said members of Gaffney’s family, who had driven to Portland from the Worcester, Mass., area to attend the hearing, supported the 40-year sentence. A murder conviction in Maine carries a minimum penalty of 25 years in prison and a maximum of life.

Cumberland County Superior Court Justice G. Arthur Brennan said he wanted to reserve the right to accept or reject Slaughter’s guilty plea until after a pre-sentence report was completed of Slaughter’s past. No sentencing date was set.

Under questioning from Brennan, Slaughter, who had no previous criminal record, said he understood the rights he was giving up and was pleading guilty voluntarily.

Wright summarized the prosecution’s evidence in court. He said Slaughter, a native of Yarmouth who worked at the Idexx Corp. in Portland, had known Gaffney for about a month. Gaffney, a native of Worcester, Mass., had lived in Portland for several months, working as a bartender and waiter.

The two men had gone to Slaughter’s Portland apartment after a night of heavy drinking at two bars frequented by members of the gay community, Wright said after the hearing.

Wright said in court that Slaughter later told police during a five-hour interrogation that he thought Gaffney was nice and believed their relationship “was going somewhere.” Slaughter also told police he wanted Gaffney to spend the night at his apartment, but Gaffney refused, saying he just wanted to “be friends,” Wright said.

“The defendant said he smashed (Gaffney’s) face with weights from a weightlifting set and then slit his throat,” the prosecutor said.

Dr. Kristen Sweeney, Maine’s chief deputy medical examiner, found in her autopsy that Gaffney’s injuries were so numerous she couldn’t tell how many there were, Wright said.

She found that he had multiple skull, facial and nasal fractures. Gaffney also had been strangled and had a 6 1/2-inch slit in his neck, Wright said.

“There was blood splattered on the walls of the bedroom up to 7 feet high,” he added.

After Slaughter killed Gaffney early on a Monday morning, he kept the man’s body in the bathtub of his fourth-floor apartment for three days. Wright said Slaughter bought a shovel, apparently planning to bury the body. On Wednesday afternoon, a friend of Gaffney’s reported him missing.

Early Thursday morning, Slaughter put Gaffney’s body in a plastic garbage bag and stuffed it, head first, into a roll-away garbage can, Wright said.

Neighbors in his apartment building later told police they heard a loud noise at about 1:45 a.m. that sounded like “dead weight being dragged downstairs,” Wright said.

As Slaughter worked to put the body in the passenger seat of a friend’s car, two police officers on a routine patrol stopped, thinking they spotted a man helping a drunk, the prosecutor said.

When the officers approached the car, they smelled something strange, the odor of a decaying body, and Slaughter admitted he had a body, Wright said.

“The officers then saw blood on the man’s hands and clothing,” the prosecutor said.

Slaughter initially told police he had been drinking heavily, blacked out and awoke Monday morning to find Gaffney had been killed. But under questioning at police headquarters, Wright said, Slaughter later “put his head on the table and said, `I know what I did to him.”‘