Jury trial of accused serial rapist begins 75-year-old woman testifies in Portland court, identifies Waterboro man as attacker

PORTLAND – A 75-year-old grandmother identified a Waterboro man as the person who knocked on her door and then beat and raped her, in the first day of the trial of accused serial rapist Michael Chase.

After winning a $500 bingo jackpot, the widowed mother of five went home to her West End apartment and lay in bed reading a book in March 2000. Shortly after 2 a.m. she heard a knock on the door.

“I never should of answered it,” she told the Cumberland County Superior Court jury Monday.

Her account of what happened in the next few minutes provides the basis for the state’s case against Chase, 25, the man police call a violent sexual predator and serial rapist. Chase is accused of punching the woman with enough force to knock her across her kitchen and break her hip before dragging her through her apartment by her hair and forcing her to have sex with him.

Chase also faces charges of raping a 50-year-old woman in South Portland, a 16-year old girl in Waterboro last year and an 18-year-old in Old Orchard in 1999. Investigators say DNA evidence connects him to an unsolved Boston-area rape that occurred five days before Chase’s arrest last July 16.

Chase had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but withdrew it shortly before his trial began. Instead, said defense attorney Thomas Goodwin of Portland, Chase will try to convince the jury that they have the wrong man. “The seriousness of what happened to [the victim] is not an issue,” Goodwin said. “What is at issue here is who did it.”

Chase will be tried for each charge separately, so on Monday the only victim jurors heard about was the Portland grandmother.

The woman testified that Chase knocked on her door and told her that his name was Steve and he was looking for her daughter, who lives in another state.

He asked if he could leave a telephone number for her daughter and the woman opened the door to hand him a pen and piece of paper.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on her kitchen floor. “He hit me with his fist,” she said. The man raped her and then demanded money.

She was taken to Maine Medical Center where DNA evidence that was collected matched a blood sample taken from Chase after his arrest.

The woman has never been back to her apartment, and can’t even bear to see the furniture she had there, she said. “I don’t want no reminders,” she told the jury. “I can’t take it.”

Goodwin said that aside from the DNA, the prosecution’s evidence points to someone other than his client. He said the woman’s description of her attacker didn’t match Chase’s description.

Goodwin said the woman’s recollection of the event was tainted by a phone call from Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, who, she recalled, said police had caught the man who attacked her.