Accused killer ‘fell through cracks’

PORTLAND – An inmate with a criminal past and a history of mental problems was released because of a breakdown in communication between law enforcement agencies and the prison system.

The next day, a Bangor woman was found beaten to death, and the former inmate now stands accused of her murder.

Authorities are sorting out the miscue that led to the release of Carl Heath a day before he allegedly beat cabdriver Donna Leen to death with a hammer. Heath is now in jail in New Jersey, where he was arrested.

Heath, 20, of Fryeburg, was still wanted in Cumberland County but it was overlooked by a database search when he was released Oct. 12.

Heath was serving time for offenses committed in Oxford County when Sheriff Lloyd Herrick asked the state to take Heath because he assaulted people at the jail and damaged the solitary confinement cell.

From there, he was released into the custody of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s department and taken to court on a charge of failing to pay for a motel room after escaping from the Bangor Mental Health Institute.

A judge sentenced Heath to 48 hours in jail, gave him credit for time served, and he was released after a database check.

The next day, Leen, 60, was dispatched to a Bangor construction site, where Heath is believed to have broken into a trailer and called for the cab. The next day, the cab with Leen’s body inside was found in a field in Corinth.

Heath was arrested Wednesday after a routine traffic stop in New Jersey and plans to fight extradition to Maine.

Questions on how Heath slipped through the cracks in the system still remain.

Law enforcement agencies throughout Maine can access a database of warrants to see whether a person is wanted by another jurisdiction. Not included in the database are the “writs of habeas corpus” used to bring a person in custody before a court. An inmate held by one jurisdiction is “writted out” for court appearances in the second jurisdiction.

The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department had a writ for Heath to appear last week for sentencing in a burglary case in South Portland.

One of the problems, according to Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, is that in law enforcement agencies’ rush to computerize, few thought about compatibility between the systems.

“All we did was accelerate that we are islands unto ourselves,” he said. “It’s paper, it’s phone calls, it’s courts working independently of each other, it’s sheriff’s working independently of each other.”

Authorities in Cumberland County knew Heath was held by the state prison system. There had been two previous writs for appearances related to the burglary charge. An error apparently led to the third and final writ indicating that Heath was at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, but he was not there, said Capt. Francine Breton of the sheriff’s department.

It turned out that Heath was actually housed at the Maine State Prison in Thomaston – and that Kennebec County officials had picked him up from there.

After the Kennebec County court dealings, Heath was returned to the state prison, where his sentence for Oxford County was coming to an end.

“That’s when there was a big mix-up,” Breton said.

The way she understands it, someone at the prison noticed that Heath was “writted out” to Cumberland County but learned from the court that his case had been continued, which implied the writ was not needed. With no writs apparent and no other warrants, the prison handed over Heath to Penobscot County.

Maine State Prison Warden Jeff Merrill insists that the state prison system never received a writ from Cumberland County.

“We didn’t have any paperwork other than the outstanding warrant from Penobscot,” Merrill said. “If we had had something, then obviously we would have kept him.”