Relative hopes to immortalize notorious uncle

Newspapers get a lot of requests from people who need help in researching information about the lives of interesting characters from the past. But the query that crossed my desk the other day was a bit more unusual than most.

A man named Randal S. Ripley, who lives at 175 South Wilson St. in Manchester, N.H., wants to hear from people in Maine who might have known his colorful Uncle Gus. Ripley is not only looking for old friends, he also hopes to correspond with people who might once have been associated with his late uncle as criminal accomplices, arresting officers, prison guards, fellow inmates or even victims. So if you happened to have crossed paths with his Uncle Gus years ago, and would like to share a favorite encounter story, Ripley is all ears.

When his exhaustive research is completed, Ripley intends to write a book that will chronicle the life and hard times of the infamous Augustus “Gus” Heald Jr.

If that name rings a bell, perhaps it’s because you were around in the 1960s and ’70s when Heald was forging his highly publicized reputation as one of the state’s most notorious outlaws. A career criminal with a rap sheet that included everything from manslaughter to armed robbery to jail-breaking, Heald was described in a story about his death in 1992 as “one of the most intimidating men ever to walk the streets of Belfast.”

Always willing to help a fledgling writer, I called Ripley to ask why he would want to write a book about such a bad character as his black sheep of an uncle.

“I know he had a record as long as I am tall, and I’m not short,” said Ripley, 40, who grew up in Belfast and is now in the heating and air-conditioning business in New Hampshire. “The criminal Gus that most people knew was definitely not a very nice person. But the Gus I knew was a much more complex person. There were really a lot of Guses. He was not some brutal, dumb guy, but a really intelligent man, and I want to write about how someone so smart could get caught up in a life of crime the way he did.”

A quick check of this newspaper’s file on Heald reveals just how much material Ripley will have to work with when he gets around to writing his book.

Heald was born in Searsmont, one of six children in his family. He left school in the eighth grade, and soon after was sent to reform school. In 1965, he was arrested in connection with the double murder of Edna Hamilton and her sister Mariba Beard. Witnesses at the time reported hearing five gunshots and seeing Hamilton, then 48, of Searsport, stumble from her sister’s Belfast apartment shouting, “Oh my God, he shot me. He killed May and she’s all stove to pieces up in the bathtub.”

A witness said she saw a man who resembled Heald fire two shots into Hamilton’s back. Heald was charged with Hamilton’s murder, but never prosecuted in Beard’s death. An all-male jury – despite having several witnesses and even the murder weapon to work with – convicted Heald only of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

“I do know that the general populace was extremely uncomfortable in his presence,” former Waldo County lawyer Roger Blake recalled at the time of Heald’s death. “He was a real disquieting force, and I have often wondered whether the jury was intimidated by that.”

Although sentenced to a term of 10 to 20 years at the state prison in Thomaston, Heald studied the law earnestly and successfully petitioned the courts for his release on the grounds that his civil rights were violated during his arrest.

He was released in 1968, and convicted two years later for his part in the holdup of a Brewer grocery store. Before he could be sentenced, however, he and two accomplices sawed a couple of window bars at the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor and escaped by sliding down a rope made of bedsheets and twine. The jailbreak launched the most intensive manhunt in the state’s history at the time. The FBI caught Heald several days later in Iowa, and he was sentenced to another 10 to 30 years in prison.

In 1975, Heald made headlines again for the role he played as mediator in a prison uprising and as a legal adviser and advocate for inmate rights. When three inmates took over the Thomaston prison’s east wing, with a guard as their hostage, Heald quelled the potentially deadly situation by calling in Bangor Daily News Rockland bureau reporter Ted Sylvester to help in the negotiations. At 6-foot-6 and 240 pounds, Heald was a fiercely imposing figure who assured the reporter that he would be safe inside.

Later that year, Gov. James B. Longley commuted Heald’s sentence to five to 30 years. In 1977, Heald was released on parole. A year after that, he was arrested again in connection with an armed robbery and assault at a New Hampshire motel, and was sent to the Concord Reformatory. Released in the mid-1980s, Heald managed to stay out of trouble for the remainder of his days.

In May 1992, according to the police report of his death, the 60-year-old Heald passed out drunk in the cab of a pickup truck and never woke up.

Ripley said he never has been ashamed of being the nephew of one of Maine’s most notorious criminals. In fact, he considers his uncle’s wayward life a compelling enough story to share with the world.

“It’s not my life story,” he said. “I feel no guilt for being his nephew, so there won’t be any apologies from me for the way Gus lived. The book will certainly not be an attempt to polish his image in any way. But when I think of Gus, I don’t just think of the hardened criminal. I think of the other man I knew growing up, the uncle who always came to our house during the holidays, the family guy who stayed with us between prison stints, the man my mother took me to visit in prison. What made him interesting was that he had sides to him that most people could never know from the news stories about his crimes. I want to write a book that explores everything about him and his life – the good, the bad and the ugly. It will have everything, I can promise you that.”