NEW SWEDEN – Maine State Police investigating the death of a New Sweden man and the poisoning of 15 other people from arsenic found in brewed coffee served at a church gathering also were investigating Friday the shooting death of a Woodland man at his home.

There was “no connection at this point” between the shooting and the poisonings, considered a homicide investigation, according to Stephen McCausland, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman.

The man, Daniel Bondeson, 53, underwent emergency surgery early Friday evening at Cary Medical Center in Caribou. The shooting took place at 3:22 p.m. Bondeson died at 6:30 p.m., according to a hospital spokesman.

State police investigators were trying to get a search warrant Friday night to search Bondeson’s residence, located about three miles from the Gustaf Adolph Evangelical Lutheran Church in New Sweden, where the poisonings occurred on Sunday.

Lt. Dennis Appleton of the state police, lead investigator in the poisoning investigation, also was at the Bondeson residence, and the shooting was under investigation, McCausland said.

Asked if the shooting might be self-inflicted, McCausland said, “At this point, we don’t know.” He said it also wasn’t known whether Bondeson was a church member.

Appleton said Friday night that a relative who didn’t live with Bondeson but often went to visit him, called police to say an ambulance was needed.

According to several church members who asked to remain anonymous, Bondeson, unmarried and working as a nurse’s aide in a local nursing home, was raised in the New Sweden church and was a longtime member.

They also said they did not see him at the church Sunday.

Bondeson reportedly attended a bake sale on Saturday at the church.

One person who attended the funeral of the man killed by the arsenic said that Bondeson didn’t attend the service at a Caribou funeral home.

It is believed that at one time he may have been a full-time teacher out of the area and may have been a substitute teacher more recently.

Two state police vehicles were parked Friday night outside the two-story, wood-frame farmhouse located on Bondeson Road, a dirt road about two miles from the main highway, Route 161. Police had the house cordoned off.

The house appears poorly maintained, with several junk trucks in the yard. Behind the residence is a large barn.

Appleton said that an autopsy on Bondeson’s body would be conducted Monday in Augusta. He said investigators wouldn’t execute the search warrant until daylight today.

About 50 people attended services Sunday at the church, located in the small town of 621 people. Police said 27 of them remained for the social afterward, where beverages, sandwiches and sweets were consumed. Several parishioners complained that coffee served at the social tasted odd.

The mass poisoning happened at the oldest Lutheran church around, built in 1871 on Capitol Hill Road, in New Sweden. One man is dead and 15 people remained hospitalized Friday, eight of them at Cary Medical Center in Caribou and seven at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. The victims are 30 to 70 years old.

Walter Reid Morrill, 78, died Monday morning at the Caribou hospital. A funeral service was held Wednesday in Caribou, and he was buried Thursday afternoon in his native Brownville.

Hospitalized in fair condition at Caribou are Richard Bechtel, Patsy Bechtel, Shirley Erickson, Lois Anderson, Mary Bengson, Reginald Greenier, June Greenier and Erich Margeson.

Listed in critical condition at EMMC late Friday were Dale Anderson, Lester Beaupre and Ralph Ostlund. Herman Fisher, Carroll Ruggles and Robert Bengson were listed in serious condition there. The condition of one other person at EMMC also was not known.

The shooting development came Friday as investigators said police will ask parishioners, victims and others in the community for fingerprint and DNA samples to match against specimens taken from the crime scene.

Appleton, head of the Maine State Police Criminal Investigation Division III, said earlier Friday that police also are seeking assistance from the FBI with profiling and psychological evaluations, and from the federal Food and Drug Administration for information on foods and arsenic.

It was learned Friday that bioterrorism money the state received less than six months ago may have saved several lives in the incident. The money allowed the state to have treatment for arsenic poisoning available and to have a clinical toxicologist in Maine and other technical expertise.

Appleton was optimistic that an arrest would come sooner rather than later, he said after a Friday noon press conference on the lawn of the Aroostook County Courthouse in Caribou.

“There was no evidence, for or against, that this was a hate crime against Christians,” Appleton said. “However, it is a hateful crime, and it was against Christians.

“We don’t know the motive yet,” the state investigator said, but “there has been some talk of combining churches in the area, and some people are unhappy with that. We are aware of this.”

Dr. Dora Mills, director of the Maine Bureau of Health, said the bioterrorism funds allowed the state to have chelation agents on hand in Maine for the treatment of arsenic poisonings. The money also resulted in the state’s having an epidemiologist in Aroostook County, a medical toxicologist on staff and a statewide conference calling system to get all parties together.

“It could have been a lot worse than it was,” Mills said Friday. “Potentially, it could have been much more serious, including more deaths and much more seriously ill people.

“Also, the clinicians at Cary and EMMC were outstanding in the diagnosis,” she said. “That, coupled with stockpiles of chelation agents we have in Maine, [prevented] a more serious situation.”

She said the changes have happened since late 2002 and January. Chelation agents and support for the local hospitals and clinicians were not available before January.

Chelation agents allow the arsenic to bond to it, and the material is removed from the body through urination.

Asked if strangers were present in the church congregation last Sunday, Appleton checked with Sgt. John Cote of the CID, standing behind him at the noon press conference, and said, “There is nothing to indicate that they were not all longtime residents of the community.”

Appleton said the person who made the coffee last Sunday, whom he did not name, is one of the 15 people hospitalized.

“It’s dangerous to close our minds to any possibilities,” Appleton said. “The denial we see in the community, that it could be someone from the community, is understandable, and it is not hindering investigators.

“People are being truthful, answering our questions as truthfully as they can,” he said. “It’s a homicide investigation, it is being treated as such because we don’t believe it to be an accident.”

Asked if investigators could be wrong, Appleton said, “In the end, if we are wrong, we will step up to the plate and say so.”

The high concentration of arsenic found through tests of specimens was a major factor leading investigators to believe that the mass poisoning was a homicide and not an accidental incident. Appleton did not say what amount was found.

“One of the contributing things in our decision that this is a homicide was the concentration of the arsenic,” the investigator told reporters Friday. “It would not take a large amount of arsenic in a concentrated state to do what has been done. Pure arsenic is extremely deadly.

“We’ve done a lot of work at the church, and we can’t see evidence that it was an accident,” Appleton said. “There were no old pesticide containers there, unless someone removed them before we arrived.”

Police don’t how the arsenic got to the church or what container it was in. They also did not know where people who wanted arsenic could obtain it.

Appleton said his people were waiting for laboratory results on the arsenic, its strength and other characteristics, and for results of tests from the state crime lab.

He said the 30-cup percolator used to make coffee for the church social had been used about two weeks before for another gathering. While there were several coffee pots at the church, only one was used, along with one urn.

Police have interviewed all but two of the people who have been hospitalized. They have made initial contact with even those two, who are in critical condition at EMMC.

Appleton characterized the case as “intriguing,” but not “surprising.” In the first couple of days, he said, “it was similar to other murder cases.”

He didn’t remember any other murder cases in his career involving poison. He investigated one poisoning, he said, “but no one died.”

In 1984, a West Enfield woman was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter after she pleaded guilty to a charge of poisoning her husband with medicinal-like capsules filled with strychnine. Cheryl Murchison, then 21, was sentenced for killing her husband, Joseph Murchison, 28, in September 1983 at their West Enfield home.

Standing on an 8-inch-high camera case so that he could be filmed over the tower of microphones, Appleton told 20 to 25 reporters that his team of investigators will remain in the area and in Bangor to interview victims, families and friends, and community people. Appleton said he would not discuss whether police have suspects, and he would not discuss specific evidence.

The poisoning has caught the attention of the country and other parts of the world. Reporters in Caribou on Friday came from throughout the state and also represented ABC News, CNN, and the Boston Globe. Several of them carried maps to find their way around northern Maine.

Next to the Lutheran church in New Sweden were two mobile dish transmitters used by radio and television.

Investigators have set up a “war room” at the Aroostook County Courthouse at Caribou while the investigation continues.

Along with the murder of Walter Reid Morrill, Appleton suspected that someone who is arrested could be charged with at least assault, aggravated assault, or attempted murder, one count for each person hospitalized. Other charges could also come into the situation.

Appleton said press conferences will be held every day on the day until further notice.