Arsenic-case book roils community Author of ‘Bitter Brew’ rejects police theory that Bondeson had help

PORTLAND – New Sweden churchgoers who drank coffee laced with arsenic continue their slow recovery, and the police investigation of the mystery surrounding the poisonings two years ago appears to have stalled.

But that doesn’t mean things are all quiet at the tiny northern Maine town and the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church.

A book airing the church’s dirty laundry and offering a resolution to the case has stirred memories and caused hard feelings.

Maine State Police investigators still adhere to the belief that longtime church member Daniel Bondeson, who was linked to the poisonings after he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound five days later, did not act alone.

That theory is rejected by Christine Young in her book, “Bitter Brew,” which hit the bookstores this month.

Young maintains that an emotionally unstable Bondeson was driven by pent-up anger and resentment when he spiked the coffee pot with arsenic on April 27, 2003, and that his sister, Norma, has been unfairly targeted by some townspeople as having been a party to the crime.

One church member, Walter Reid Morrill, 78, was killed and 15 were sickened when they drank the tainted coffee after the Sunday service. Daniel Bondeson’s body was found the next Friday in the farmhouse where he had been living alone since his father died.

The contents of the blood-streaked suicide note implicating Bondeson are still being withheld by investigators. But Young’s book quotes detectives as saying the 53-year-old bachelor’s note indicated that he didn’t mean to kill anyone but “just wanted to give some people a bellyache like they gave me.”

Sources told her Bondeson emphasized that he had no accomplices by writing “I acted alone. I acted alone” and underlining the words as reinforcement.

Young’s book portrays the town as a hotbed of gossip and the church as riven by grudges and feuds. A television journalist who covered the story as it broke, Young believes the investigation took a wrong turn when police trumpeted their theory that someone else was involved in the poisonings.

“To me, the story is more about what happened in the aftermath of the poisoning, with the vilification of Norma Bondeson,” Young said in an interview. “That was the story – how everybody turned on her and she became the town pariah.”

Bondeson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who returned to New Sweden and remains active in the church, has steadfastly declined to talk to reporters.

Authorities never mentioned Bondeson by name, and she was not accused of involvement in the case. But news reports noted that detectives had searched her home in Amesbury, Mass., and Young said it was common knowledge that she was under a cloud of suspicion.

While they will not discuss specifics of Young’s book, authorities insist that the case remains open despite a lack of any apparent progress.

“The detectives’ contention is that Daniel Bondeson did not act alone. That has not changed in the last two years,” said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes, who heads the state’s criminal division, said he did not necessarily subscribe to the accomplice theory but stopped short of calling the poisonings a cold case.

“There are questions that remain unanswered at this point. We’re working on trying to get some of those answers as best we can,” he said. “It would be helpful to us and to the community if we can get some of those answers.”

The reaction to Young’s book among Swedish Colony residents, both within and outside the church, has been mixed. Some say they’re OK about the book, some are critical, and others prefer to keep their feelings to themselves.

But Young’s account may not be the final word.

Brenda Jepson, who says Young focused too much on petty bickering in the church and failed to capture the character of the area she moved to 10 years ago, is writing a book about the poisonings that she hopes will be published later this year.

“I plan a much more positive view of this community, a more positive view of the people living here, and how heartbreaking a tragedy it was for them,” Jepson said.