Gogan gets 6 years; victim’s family livid

loading...

AUGUSTA – After embracing her family, Vella Gogan of Hartland was led away by deputies Wednesday to begin serving a six-year prison term for killing and dismembering her husband after what some say was a 37-year-long abusive marriage.

Earlier in the two-hour sentencing hearing held at Kennebec County Superior Court, Gogan, 57, sobbed as she briefly addressed the court.

“Your honor, I’m very sorry for what I did to Gene,” she said as she stood at the defense table flanked by her two attorneys. “I’m sorry for hurting his family and my family. I loved Gene very much, but I thought he was going to kill me and I didn’t want to die.”

Last month, Gogan pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the Oct. 1, 1999, slaying of 62-year-old Gene Gogan at the couple’s home in Hartland.

After shooting him three times in the head as he slept, Gogan dismembered his body and disposed of the pieces in a rural stretch of woods in Mayfield Township.

Originally charged with murder, the state Attorney General’s Office offered last month to lower the charge to manslaughter after one psychiatrist and three psychologists concurred that Gogan had been abused throughout her marriage and suffered from battered woman’s syndrome.

The killing of Gene Gogan was, in her mind, an act of self-defense, the doctors reported after their individual examinations of her.

On Wednesday, Justice Paul Fritzsche accepted the plea agreement that called for Gogan to be sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all but six years suspended, and six years probation.

In the courtroom, about 15 members of Gogan’s family sat on benches at the back of the courtroom, while the same number of Gene Gogan’s family members sat on the other side.

Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson did not address the court during the hearing, leaving it to Gene Gogan’s family to speak to the judge about the crime’s effect on them.

When Gogan pleaded guilty last month, Benson released a brief press statement in which he stated that he had “overwhelming” evidence that she intentionally killed her husband, but took a subtle shot at the Maine statute surrounding allegations of self-defense.

In this case, it would have been the burden of the state to prove Gogan did not kill her husband in self-defense, contradicting four reports to the contrary.

During the hearing, Gene Gogan’s family expressed outrage at what they called a lenient sentence and suggested that if the marriage was abusive, Vella Gogan was the abuser.

Susan Estes, a niece of Gene Gogan’s, said she was ashamed to be a resident of the state of Maine and had lost her faith in the judicial system.”No, we’re not satisfied,” she shouted angrily. “You think he had it coming, right? Well, hell no, he didn’t.

“How could anyone in their right mind do this?” she shouted.

Estes said the six-year sentence would set an example in the state of Maine.

“I hope your conscience destroys you,” she shouted tearfully at Gogan. Cynthia Spencer, another niece of Gene Gogan’s, said Vella Gogan had spent years isolating her uncle from his family.”If the situation here was reversed, Gene would have been behind bars immediately,” Spencer said.

Gogan was involuntarily committed to the Augusta Mental Health Institute for a few months after the incident, but since has been living with her brother in Canaan.

In a statement written by Cynthia Spencer, but read during the hearing by her husband, Art Spencer, she said Vella Gogan killed Gene Gogan out of rage, not fear, and that Gene Gogan was not the man the defense portrayed him to be.

She further advised men involved in unhappy marriages to “sleep with one eye open.”

But Justice Fritzsche said he did not believe a six-year prison sentence for Gogan was going to make the murder rate go up.

“I don’t think we’re going to have husbands stacked up like cordwood across the state [because of this sentence],” he said.

Fritzsche appeared to think the sentencing agreement was reasonable and said that, had he tried the case, based on the evidence he had in front of him, he probably would have found Gogan guilty of manslaughter.

“I think I would have agreed that murder was too much and an acquittal not appropriate,” he said, adding that there was substantial evidence that Gogan was abused.

Attorneys Janet Mills and Michaela Murphy, both of Skowhegan, represented Gogan. During Wednesday’s hearing, Murphy told Fritzsche that her client was born into a home of domestic violence. She said that when Gogan was 11 years old, in a desperate attempt to save her mother’s life, she had sat on her father’s back and pounded on his head with a gun until he was unconscious and the gun was in pieces.

Mills told the court that the state never understood the Gogan case.

“They’ve never understood this case,” the defense attorney said. “They don’t understand it still. … Vella Gogan refused to wait until the gun was at her head or the knife at her throat, but it is nonetheless self-defense.

“It was an act of desperation. … She is not a cold, calculating woman as the state would have you believe. … There is no question that this woman is of no risk to anyone,” Mills said.