Gogan pleads guilty to killing mate Hartland woman facing six-year prison sentence

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ALFRED – On the day that her murder trial was supposed to begin, a 57-year-old Hartland woman who shot and dismembered her husband pleaded guilty to manslaughter and walked away from a York County courthouse facing six years in prison.

After a morning conferring with her two attorneys, Vella Gogan was escorted into the York County Superior Court and told Justice Paul Fritzsche that she was guilty of the Oct. 1, 1999, manslaughter death of her husband, Gene Gogan.

The deal between Gogan and the Maine Attorney General’s Office was made when prosecutors found themselves faced with four psychological reports, including two by the State Forensic Service, that Gogan was a severely battered woman and truly believed that her husband was going to kill her.

That presented the defense with a strong case that Vella Gogan shot her husband of 37 years in self-defense, despite the fact that Gene Gogan, 62, was sleeping in a bed when his wife fired the first shot.

The plea agreement calls for Vella Gogan to be sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all but six years suspended, and six years of probation. Sentencing is scheduled for Wednesday, April 4, at the Kennebec County Superior Court in Augusta.

The trial was moved to the York County Superior Court in Alfred because of the large amount of media attention the case received in eastern and central Maine.

Last week, Gogan and her defense attorneys, Janet Mills and Michaela Murphy, both of Skowhegan, requested a jury-waived trial.

The offer from the Attorney General’s Office was made last week, and Gogan considered the offer throughout the weekend, her attorneys said.

“She went back and forth,” said Murphy. “It was a very difficult decision for her.”

On Monday morning, Gogan, dressed in a black pantsuit and wearing her long, gray hair in a neat French braid, answered a multitude of questions posed to her by Justice Fritzsche, who needed assurance that Gogan was aware of her legal rights and the consequences of her decision to enter the guilty plea.

In Maine, a manslaughter conviction carries no mandatory minimum sentence, as opposed to a murder conviction, which has a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Though the defense attorneys said they felt they had a good chance of getting Gogan acquitted based on the battered-woman defense, they said the risk of a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison weighed heavily on their client’s mind.

In the courtroom, members of Gene Gogan’s family sat lined up in the first row of bleachers on the left side of the courtroom, while Vella Gogan’s family and supporters sat in the front row on the opposite side.

Neither Gogan nor any member of her family chose to comment as they formed a protective huddle around her and left the courthouse at the end of the hearing.

Gene Gogan’s family also did not want to comment, but one unidentified man with the family said sharply, “The judge just forgot to give her back her gun and her knife so she can do it again.”

Gogan shot her husband three times with a .22-caliber handgun while he slept in an upstairs bedroom of the couple’s modest home on Route 43 in Hartland on Oct. 1, 1999, according to Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson.

She then dragged his body to the couple’s truck, drove down a logging road in a remote area Mayfield Township about 25 miles from the couple’s home and cut him into about 13 pieces, Benson told the court.

Two days later, Gogan’s sister, Carlene Pelletier of Moscow, made a rare and unexpected visit to the home. The two women had seen each other only four times in the past 30 years, according to Benson.

Gogan then told her sister what she had done, and the women went to the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department to report that she had killed her husband.

A week later, Gene Gogan’s body was recovered.

On Monday, Murphy said outside the courtroom that Gogan had told her three days after the death where Gene Gogan’s body was located, but also talked of suicide and appeared mentally strained. Murphy said Gogan wanted to tell police immediately where her husband’s body was so that he could be buried, but Murphy recommended the delay so that Gogan could be examined by a psychologist.

“I needed to know that her mental state was stable enough so that she knew what the consequences of that decision would be,” the defense attorney said. “That’s why there was the delay in her telling police where the body was. She wanted to tell them sooner.”

During an interview after Monday’s hearing, Murphy and Mills said Gene Gogan had abused and controlled their client throughout their 37-year marriage. In recent years, when his health began to fail, the abuse became more frequent and more violent, they said.

They said Gogan had gone to a woman’s shelter three or four times but had always returned because of Gene Gogan’s failing health and because “she really did love Gene.”

Murphy said several neighbors and family members interviewed told a private investigator that they had heard Gene Gogan threaten to kill his wife and the family dog, burn down the house and kill himself.

“She had tried to leave and had always come back,” Murphy said. “He was all she knew, and she in a way really depended on him, no matter how bad the abuse was. … His abuse had become much worse over the past couple of years and had really escalated in the weeks before his death.”

Gogan had been awake and eaten little on the day she killed her husband, Murphy said. She had been on prescription sleeping pills and an anti-depressant but had stopped taking them, “because she felt he would kill her if she fell asleep,” the defense attorney said.

On the morning of his death, Gene Gogan violently lifted Gogan into the air so that she struck her head on the bottom of a high cupboard, Murphy said. Gene Gogan then made her get into the truck and drove her to the same remote Mayfield Township location where she would later dispose of his body, the attorney said.

“He took her there with two loaded guns in the truck and ordered her out of the truck,” Murphy said. “She felt strongly that if she got out of that truck that he would kill her right there. She refused.”

After Gene Gogan fell asleep later that night, Vella Gogan shot him in the left ear. The first shot did not penetrate the brain, Mills said. Gogan said her husband sat up and reached for a loaded .38-caliber pistol he kept near the bed. She then shot him twice more in the ear on the right side of his head, Mills said.

Mills also noted that her client cut her husband up, simply as a way of disposing of his body.

Benson made no comment to the press after the hearing, but handed out a prepared press release that appeared to take a subtle shot at the Maine statute surrounding allegations of self-defense.

“The state had overwhelming evidence in this case that Vella Gogan intentionally or knowingly caused the death of her husband. Unfortunately, however, that is only part of the trial equation. When the issue of self-defense is generated … the burden shifts to the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant … knew either that her husband was not about to use deadly force against her, or that she knew it was not necessary to use deadly force against him. In this case, all of the forensic experts, including those from the State Forensic Service, agree that the defendant had an honest, though perhaps an objectively unreasonable, belief that her husband was about to use deadly force against her. Under Maine law, that translates into a manslaughter.”

Throughout Wednesday’s two-hour proceeding, Gogan appeared to have some difficulty understanding much of what Justice Fritzsche was asking and telling her. The woman stopped often to confer briefly with Mills and Murphy.

After each conference, however, Gogan signaled that she understood the question. The questions appeared to weigh on her after a time, however, and she tilted her head into her hands as she seemed to struggle to go on.

In the end, Fritzsche said he was comfortable that Gogan knew what she was doing and was doing it of her own free will.

The judge agreed to allow Gogan to remain free on the $200,000 surety bond, which was posted by her brother shortly after the death. She was ordered to continue to live with her brother at his Canaan home until the April 4 sentencing.