Maine transient linked to slaying in Connecticut Drifter’s criminal past leads to arrest

A warrant issued in Maine helped lead to the arrest of a drifter with a history of violent crimes, whom Connecticut authorities now have charged with murder.

Wayne X. Weaver, 40, remained at the Hartford Correctional Facility on Monday on a felony murder charge with bail set at $1.5 million, according to a corrections official.

Weaver, who has lived in Portland, Lewiston and the Bangor area and who also has gone by the name Xavier W. Weaver, was charged with murder on June 6 in Connecticut, the same day that an Androscoggin County grand jury indicted him in Maine on felony burglary and robbery for an incident in Lewiston in late March.

In Wethersfield, Conn., where the body of 47-year-old John Grace was discovered June 1 apparently strangled or smothered in a motel room, authorities homed in on Weaver as a suspect. The transient had been one of two men other than the victim inside Grace’s room at the Towne House Motel in the hours before Grace’s death, said Detective Lt. James Cetran, who heads the Wethersfield detective division.

Concerned that state laboratory results wouldn’t come quickly enough to prompt prosecutors to file the murder charge against Weaver, investigators applied for and got Weaver charged as a fugitive from justice in Maine, based on the Androscoggin County warrant.

Officials in Maine acknowledged that the murder charge takes precedence, but Androscoggin County District Attorney Norm Croteau said the state was willing to extradite Weaver if necessary.

Weaver was found sitting on the porch outside a Hartford boarding home at 3:10 p.m. June 5 and arrested.

One day later, as Weaver was in court facing the fugitive charge, authorities formally charged the former Maine man with murder, based on evidence investigators received since Weaver’s initial arrest. Cetran declined to comment on the new information, but acknowledged it wasn’t forensic evidence. Cetran also declined to say whether Weaver confessed to the slaying.

At the time of his arrest, Weaver had been released from a mental health facility, which had paid for Weaver’s stay at the Towne House Motel, according to police and published reports. The Hartford Courant reported that Weaver was being treated for “major depression” at the Cedarcrest Hospital, a mental health facility in Newington.

Here in Maine, Weaver was required to follow the recommendations of a caseworker from Bangor Mental Health Institute as part of his bail conditions stemming from his March 10 arrest in Brewer on a drunken driving charge and for operating a motor vehicle after revocation.

Cetran said that Weaver would check himself into mental health facilities whenever he felt he needed food or shelter.

Weaver has faced charges in at least three states, Maine, Connecticut and Massachusetts, where he was convicted for a 1999 robbery. Massachusetts authorities said that Weaver also was incarcerated in New Hampshire.

Weaver managed to accumulate a lengthy criminal history and “yet he was still on the street playing the system,” Cetran said.