Maine woman gets probation in warehouse fire

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ELLSWORTH – A local woman accused of starting a fatal 1999 warehouse fire in Worcester, Mass., will avoid jail time if she stays out of trouble for five years, according to officials.

As part of an agreement worked out Thursday morning in Massachusetts, the involuntary man-slaughter charges filed against Julie King, 22, and her former companion, Thomas Levesque, will be dismissed if each successfully completes a five-year probation term.

Worcester Superior Court Judge Daniel Toomey approved the deal Thursday morning at a brief hearing.

“The public and the defendants all agree the case should stop here,” Toomey said. “That is the path of justice I’m sworn to. And that is what I will do.”

Worcester County District Attorney John Conte agreed to a “deferred dismissal” of the charges, Louis Aloise, King’s attorney, said Thursday, reached at his office in Worcester. He said King has expressed remorse for her involvement in starting the fire even though she is not legally responsible for the deaths of six firefighters who entered the burning warehouse.

“She acknowledged she tried to put it out but couldn’t,” Aloise said, adding that the facts of the case are fairly well known. “There are no real surprises here.”

District Attorney Conte said he decided to make the deal after recently receiving medical reports saying King and Levesque are mentally impaired.

“They’re marginally retarded, which would make it just about impossible to try the case,” Conte said

King, then known as Julie Ann Barnes, and Levesque allegedly started the Dec. 3, 1999, blaze that killed six firefighters at the abandoned Worcester Cold Storage warehouse when they knocked over a candle during an argument. Prosecutors accused the couple, who were homeless at the time, of fleeing the warehouse without reporting the fire to authorities.

Ellsworth resident Debb King, who with her husband Tim King, has since adopted the accused woman, said Thursday afternoon they are relieved with the agreement.

“They realized that trying this case wasn’t going to solve anything,” King said. “We’re extremely grateful to [Conte] for doing this.”

With the agreement, Julie King will have to call her probation officer in Massachusetts once a week, her mother said.

Assistant District Attorney Larry Murphy said prosecutors consulted with firefighters before agreeing to the deal.

“We have spoken with the [Worcester] Fire Department and they are in agreement with the recommendation,” Murphy said.

Worcester Fire Chief Gerard Dio said he has mixed feelings.

“I trust the DA made what he thought was the best deal he could get,” Dio said. “I could imagine if my son died, I probably wouldn’t feel that there was enough punishment, but at least there’s something being done. They’re not walking off totally free. There’s some accountability.”

Julie King, who is developmentally disabled, will always regret the role she played in the blaze, according to her adoptive mother.

“For the rest of her life, she’ll always feel guilty for the firefighters,” King said. “She tears up when she talks about it now.”

Firefighters Paul Brotheron, 41; Timothy Jackson, 51; Jeremiah Lucey, 38; James Lyons, 34; Joseph McGuirk, 36; and Thomas Spencer, 42, all died in the resulting inferno. Their memorial service in Worcester drew 40,000 people, including President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Julie King, who now works at Holiday Inn in Ellsworth, is relieved she will not have to return to prison in Massachusetts, where she gave birth to a son fathered by Levesque, King said. The infant son, named Joshua, is in a foster home in Massachusetts.

King said the family still is trying to regain custody of Joshua, but said she could not comment specifically about any aspects of the custody struggle. Julie King should not be denied the right to raise her son by Massachusetts authorities, King said.

“What they are doing is wrong,” King said. “It’s totally, totally wrong.”

Aloise said that his client spent seven months in jail immediately after the fire and that she has changed for the better since she was adopted by the Kings. She was an abused, homeless 19-year-old when the fire happened and now is a productive member of society with a loving family, he said.

“She was not the same person sitting next to me in court today that she was two and a half years ago,” Aloise said.

The Kings already had adopted Julie’s younger sister Jennifer when, after the fire, they saw pictures of the young woman on television and recognized her as their daughter’s long-lost older sister. The Kings decided the sisters, who both are developmentally disabled, should be reunited and that they should do what they could to help Julie.

Thomas Levesque, 39, lives in Worcester.

Charges against Levesque and King were dismissed in September 2000 when a Superior Court judge in Massachusetts ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to try the former couple. The charges were reinstated in March after the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided there was enough evidence and overturned the lower court’s ruling.

The Associated Press contributed to this report