Man guilty in wife’s murder

BANGOR – Roscoe Sargent was found guilty Friday of murdering his pregnant wife by Maine Superior Court Justice E. Allen Hunter.

Hunter rejected the defense team’s argument that Sargent was guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter because he suffers from an abnormal brain condition.

The judge read his 17-page written verdict aloud Friday, two weeks after Sargent’s jury-waived trial ended.

“The court rejects the idea that the defendant could have been in some kind of a state of suspended awareness and engaged in uncontrolled, unconscious, autonomic movements,” Hunter read. “Such a notion is simply inconsistent with the evidence that indicates the defendant made a number of specific and distinct decisions.”

Sargent, 30, stabbed Heather Fliegelman Sargent 47 times using at least two different knives. The 20-year-old woman was eight months pregnant with her first child at the time of her death. Sargent was not charged in the death of his unborn son – no matter how late-term the pregnancy, Maine’s homicide law does not apply to unborn fetuses.

Fliegelman Sargent’s father, grandparents and other family members wept and held hands when the verdict was announced. Sargent did not react to the verdict.

The defendant was indicted for intentionally or knowingly committing murder and murder by depraved indifference. Hunter found him guilty on both counts.

Police found Fliegelman Sargent’s body and four dead cats on Monday, Jan. 6, 2003, at the couple’s Bangor residence in the Rainbow Trailer Park on outer Ohio Street. That morning, Sargent had turned himself in to federal authorities accompanied by Brett Baber, the Bangor attorney appointed in 2001 to represent him on drug possession charges in U.S. District Court in Bangor.

Hunter found that she was murdered sometime in the afternoon on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2003, after the couple had completed a paper route for the Bangor Daily News and gone grocery shopping.

Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson, who prosecuted the case, said outside the courtroom after the verdict was announced that he would recommend Sargent be sentenced to life in prison due to the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death.

“We want life,” George Fliegelman, the victim’s father who lives in Connecticut, told reporters on the courthouse steps after the verdict. “We don’t want this guy to have the chance to enjoy the daily pleasures the rest of us have. Heather and her baby don’t have that opportunity and he shouldn’t.”

Fliegelman Sargent’s aunt, Kristen Eckmann, and Eckmann’s sister-in-law Kristy Fowler-Eckmann, both of Bangor, wore T-shirts outside the courtroom that read, “One crime. Two victims. Two murders.”

After the trial ended on March 5, Fliegelman Sargent’s mother, Cynthia Warner of Minnesota, showed reporters a photograph of a dead infant. She identified the boy as the child her daughter was carrying and said that her daughter had chosen the name Jonah for him. Warner said the state Medical Examiner’s Office had told family members that if Fliegelman Sargent had received immediate medical attention, the unborn baby would have lived.

Warner did not attend the reading of the verdict Friday.

“I don’t feel closure and I don’t know that I will,” Kristen Eckmann said of her reaction to the verdict. “Jonah would be 1 year old this month and he would have cake on his face and be playing with my daughter. I will always think about that.”

Kristen Eckmann said that she is pro-choice but supports the enactment of a fetal homicide bill in Maine that would apply in cases of violence such as her niece’s case. She urged people to support the federal fetal homicide law that is scheduled to be debated in the U.S. Senate next week, but admitted that the provision of that bill would not apply in her niece’s murder.

Benson refused to comment on the fetal homicide issue.

Defense attorney Christopher Largay of Bangor said in a phone interview Friday afternoon that he believed life was an appropriate sentence under Maine law in this case. He expressed concern that Sargent would receive adequate medical treatment for his brain abnormality, which doctors testified most likely was a result of injuries he suffered as a young child. Sargent’s sisters testified that their father physically abused him as a toddler.

Sargent pleaded guilty last week in U.S. District Court in Bangor to drug charges after maintaining his innocence for more than three years. He faces up to 20 years in prison on drug possession charges and another five years on a firearms charge.

Law enforcement officers seized 11 pounds of marijuana and 3 pounds of psilocybin, or psychedelic mushrooms, with an estimated street value of $30,300, drug paraphernalia and a loaded shotgun. State drug agents arrested Sargent on Dec. 29, 2000, in Bangor.

Hunter ruled Friday that Sargent would not be sentenced on the murder conviction until he had been sentenced in federal court on the drug charges.

That sentencing is expected to be scheduled for late April or early May.