Jury selection to begin in contract murder

BATH – Jury selection is to begin Monday in the murder trial of Norma Small, the Belfast woman accused of contracting for the death of her husband two decades ago.

Although the killing took place in 1983, the trial of Small, who turns 63 today, was moved from Waldo County to Sagadahoc County Superior Court because of the notoriety of the alleged triggerman and publicity surrounding the case. Justice Nancy Mills will preside over the Small trial.

“I think we would have had a hard time getting a jury in Belfast. I don’t think we will have any problem in Bath,” defense attorney Peter Mason said.

The state contends that Small hired Joel Fuller, 46, to slay her husband, Mervin “Sonny” Grotton, 46, a U.S. Navy petty officer, so she could collect his life insurance and survivor benefits as a widow of a serviceman. Small has received nearly $200,000 in benefits in the years since Grotton’s death.

Grotton was gunned down in the dooryard of his Belfast home on Dec. 16, 1983, as he returned home for the weekend from his duty station in Rhode Island.

Fuller, who is serving two life sentences for a pair of drug-related murders that were carried out after the Grotton killing, also has been charged with murder in the case and is awaiting trial.

A third man implicated in the case, Boyd Smith, 42, of Brooks, was found not guilty of murder when tried in Penobscot County Superior Court in February. Smith admitted in court that he gave Small’s name and address to Fuller and testified that he told Fuller that Small was looking to get rid of her husband.

Grotton was shot three times with a .30-30 rifle, the final bullet fired at close range as his assailant approached within a few feet of Grotton, who had fallen to the ground after the first two shots. The assailant slipped away, leaving three spent cartridges behind.

Although authorities never recovered the murder weapon, they did come into possession of a .30-30 rifle that had been found in a brook in Lincolnville a few years after the murder. A witness at Smith’s trial testified that Fuller mentioned using the same brook as a dumping place for a rifle he used to kill a man. The witness, Larry D. Phillips, 44, of Waterville said Fuller told him the victim’s “wife had offered him $500 to shoot her husband for the insurance money.”

Smith, who is expected to be a key witness at Small’s trial, testified in his own defense last winter that Small had pressed him for several months to kill her husband. Smith had a brief relationship with one of Small’s daughters at the time and was living at the Grotton family home on Wight Street in Belfast.

Smith testified that at one point he waited in the shadows when Grotton arrived home one night to determine whether he could go through with the killing. He said the thought of taking Grotton’s life left him nauseated and wobbly.

Smith testified that when he told Small he could not do what she asked, she began to demand that he find someone who could. He said he eventually turned to Fuller because “he had a reputation for being a wild man, somebody who would do most anything for money.”

Smith testified that he met Fuller in a Belfast bar, and the two went outside for a walk.

“I told him I knew somebody that was looking for somebody to do a job for them,” Smith said. “He asked me what the job was and I told him someone wanted somebody killed.”

Though the murder went unsolved for 17 years, it was never forgotten.

Investigators from the Maine State Police, the Navy and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs continued to follow up. The team scored a breakthrough when undercover officers posing as former cellmates of Fuller’s confronted Small about her involvement.

The officers gained additional information when they met with Smith a few weeks later under the same pretense. Fuller was indicted for murder in March 2001, and Small and Smith were indicted for murder two months later.

“It was Norma Small’s plan to have her husband killed. Smith acted as the middle man, Fuller was the trigger person,” Maine State Police Lt. Tim Doyle said at the time of the indictments.