New Sweden seeks normalcy Lawyer’s unrevealed information, open police file leave poisoning case unresolved

Erich Margeson was sitting at his kitchen table feeding the family’s triplets Saturday afternoon while talking about life two years after he and 15 others were poisoned April 27, 2003, at a gathering at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church.

Fifteen people were sickened by arsenic-laced coffee. Walter Reid Morrill died from it. The Maine State Police maintain Daniel Bondeson, a New Sweden man who killed himself five days after the poisoning and left a note claiming responsibility, did not act alone in the country’s worst-ever arsenic poisoning.

Margeson, now 32 but the youngest of those poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee, has few lingering medical problems. He’s fortunate. Others suffer much more serious aftereffects from the poisoning. His liver functions always will be a problem, he has been told. Otherwise, recovery has come, but slowly.

A school custodian, Margeson holds no ill feelings toward Bondeson. Sven Bondeson, Daniel Bondeson’s nephew and Margeson’s neighbor, fed noodles to Noah, 4, the oldest of the Margesons’ four children. Margeson fed Evan, Reid and Nicholas, born March 31, 2004, nearly a year after the poisonings. The men joked with each other during the interview Saturday.

“My health is really good. I’ve rebounded nicely,” Margeson said, placing a cap on his head and spooning food into the triplets in highchairs in front of him. “I’ve had liver problems, but the elevations [of high metal residue] have come down. It will always be an issue, but I am recovering slowly, all the time.

“I’m very thankful for all the support we’ve received, locally and from across the country and the world,” he said. “That has been great for me while I’ve been healing. It’s helped me mentally, knowing that people were and are thinking of us.”

The soft-spoken man believes most victims have healed well, although some say otherwise. The poisoning is not an everyday topic of discussion about town, he said, except when anniversaries come and journalists bring up the incident and the continuing police investigation.

“There are not many of us who look over our shoulders,” he said. “Life has returned to normal, although some say no. It’s easier if you look ahead.”

He wonders whether police are right in believing someone else was involved.

“The arsenic investigation remains an open case,” Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said Friday. “It continues to be investigated, and the Maine State Police still contend that [Daniel] Bondeson did not act alone.”

While no investigator works on the case day-to-day, a detective is still assigned to it and works on it as new information comes forward and as time permits, according to McCausland. He said investigators have talked to many people several times in the two years since the poisonings.

“In all cases of this nature – this was a homicide – we will continue to investigate it as long as it takes,” McCausland said.

One man, Peter S. Kelley, a Caribou lawyer, could shed light on the case. He met with Daniel Bondeson on two occasions, one hour each time, in the days before Bondeson ended his life. He can’t talk about the conversations because of attorney-client privilege, but the state’s attorney general has petitioned Aroostook County Superior Court Justice E. Allen Hunter to remove the privilege.

Kelley has given Hunter a written report of his meetings with Bondeson. Hunter will decide what Kelley can reveal, if anything.

“I want to talk because it’s important,” Kelley said Friday. “Could it end the case? Maybe. It might, but then I don’t know what the police already have.”

While life has returned to normal for most in New Sweden, the cloud of suspicion remains for some.

Lois Anderson, a 59-year-old former teacher who was the last person to leave Cary Medical Center in Caribou after the poisonings, shares Margeson’s feelings that Daniel Bondeson has been forgiven for what he did, but she believes a cloud hangs over the Swedish colony because police have not completed their investigation.

“It troubles us because we don’t know all of the details,” she said by telephone Friday. “If we knew, we could relax.

“If we knew the ending, we could forgive,” she said. “If someone else is involved, we could forgive. It’s the not knowing.

“We also wonder if it all could have been prevented by someone,” she said. “If there is someone else, why didn’t they say something?”

Douglas Anderson, chairman of the New Sweden Board of Selectmen, thinks there is little animosity in the community, but he understands that for some people, especially those in the Lutheran church, they are affected in ways he doesn’t understand.

“We’ve had successful Midsommar Festivals, two of them, and people have come from all over,” he said. “That tells me something, and people from the church helped out in many ways.

“I think some will suffer the rest of their lives,” he said Saturday afternoon while taking in the kitchen of his new home. “For most of the people, life is normal, and this doesn’t affect their daily activities.”

Anderson said it’s very sad that this happened in their little community because the town is filled with good, down-to-earth folks who help each other out.

“It’s a lot better here than in most places I’ve lived over the years,” he said. “I’ve lived in eight other states, worked in 16 states, and in many places we didn’t know our neighbors.

“I came back here because I belong here,” he said.