Police question Vassalboro man

A 47-year-old Vassalboro man was in the Kennebec County Jail on Monday night undergoing questioning by investigators, possibly in connection with last week’s slaying of 21-year-old Colby College senior Dawn Rossignol of Medway.

Police stressed that Edward J. Hackett was being held only on a parole violation from a Utah State Prison.

Officials in Utah confirmed that Maine investigators had contacted corrections officials there Monday morning seeking information about Hackett and people he may have associated with while in prison.

Hackett was arrested at his parents’ Vassalboro home Monday and by evening was still being held on just a parole violation and not a murder charge, according to public safety spokesman Stephen McCausland.

Hackett returned to Maine last March when he was released on parole from a Utah prison where he had served several years after a 1994 conviction for kidnapping and robbery.

According to Jack Ford of the Utah Department of Corrections, Hackett’s first conviction there was in 1979 for theft. Hackett was in and out of the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, during the 1980s and escaped two or three times, Ford said.

In 1988 he was arrested in Massachusetts and served time there until 1990, but was back in Utah when he committed the kidnapping and robbery in 1994. He remained in prison until his release on parole last March, Ford said.

Ford said it was common for one state’s parolees to go to live in other states and said those other states must agree to supervise the parolee.

Details of the 1994 crime were not available Monday night.