Orland man given 10 years, 4 months in retrial

ELLSWORTH – After declaring the crimes that Frederick Lawless committed to be “the stuff that horror movies are made of,” Hancock County Superior Court Justice Andrew J. Mead on Friday sentenced the 72-year-old man to serve 10 years and four months in a state prison.

Lawless, formerly of Orland, was found guilty on charges of kidnapping, criminal restraint, assault, terrorizing and criminal threatening after a two-day retrial earlier this week. He also was found guilty in a separate nonjury trial on a charge of possessing a firearm as a felon.

Lawless was charged with kidnapping and threatening to kill his ex-wife on May 18, 2000. During the retrial, Marcia Lawless testified he threw her to the floor, punched and kicked her, tied her hands and feet with rope, and put tape around her mouth. He told her he was God and he was going to shoot her, then shoot himself, she said.

During a sentencing hearing Friday, the judge said the crimes were “utterly horrific.”

“To be brutalized, to be tied up, to be duct-taped – it’s right out of a Stephen King novel,” he said.

Mead ordered Lawless to serve 10 years on the kidnapping charge, followed by four months on the gun offense. He received concurrent nine-month terms for each of the lesser charges.

The ruling is similar to that which Lawless received in 2001, the first time a jury found him guilty of kidnapping his ex-wife. At the time, he was ordered to serve 11 years in prison. So far, he has completed about 51/2 years of that original sentence.

Credit for time served will be applied to his new sentence.

Lawless has a 40-year criminal history punctuated with multiple assault convictions, including one on his own daughter, Janice Barker, in 1999.

“He has no remorse. He is a danger,” District Attorney Michael E. Povich, the prosecutor in the case, said Friday. “Frederick Lawless is why we build prisons.”

Defense attorney Jeffrey Toothaker argued unsuccessfully for a five-year prison term, which would have essentially set his client free. The former Orland man served in the U.S. Marines during the Korean War, was wounded in combat and received the Purple Heart, Toothaker said.

During the sentencing hearing, Lawless’ daughter, his former wife and Lawless himself addressed the court.

Marcia Lawless said she still fears for her safety.

“My family is still terrified of him. I’m still very afraid for my life,” she said.

Barker said it has been difficult to watch her mother go through the ordeal of a second trial. She characterized her father as “a very scary person” who needs to be in control of the people around him.

“We were under his thumb as far back as I can remember, and sometimes it still feels like we are,” she said.

Lawless, who appeared in court wearing an orange shirt and blue pants issued by the Hancock County Jail and a gold cross around his neck, stood before the judge and offered an apology of sorts.

“All I can say is I’m sorry for the mess I’ve caused you, but I didn’t do it,” he said.