B&B cook held in 4 slayings 3 bodies found in Newry, 4th nearby

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NEWRY – A cook was charged Tuesday with shooting the owner of a bed and breakfast and three other people, dismembering three of the bodies and burning the fourth in a grisly Labor Day weekend killing spree.

Maine State Police chief Col. Craig Poulin refused to discuss a motive for what he called the worst homicide case in Maine in 14 years.

Christian Nielsen, 31, told detectives that his four-day rampage began Friday with an Arkansas man and continued two days later with the slaying of the owner of the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast, where he was staying in Newry, according to state police. The daughter of the inn’s owner then was killed along with a female friend when they arrived there unexpectedly Monday, authorities said.

The bodies of the three women were found Monday at the white 1830s farmhouse in Maine’s ski country near the New Hampshire line, about 75 miles northwest of Portland. Nielsen then led detectives to the man’s burned remains in the woods about 15 miles away.

“It’s a crime of horrific proportions,” Poulin said.

Nielsen, who was charged with four counts of murder, smiled as he left Oxford County Superior Court, where he was ordered held without bail. Nielsen wore a bulletproof vest during the short hearing and was returned to jail afterward.

State police were alerted Monday evening by family members who arrived at the Black Bear to find a woman’s body and blood outside. Nielsen’s father told troopers that he thought his son had committed the killing, according to the documents.

Detectives at the Black Bear found the bodies of owner Julie Bullard, 65, who lived at the bed and breakfast, her daughter Selby, 30, and a third woman, Cindy Beatson, 43, both of Bethel.

Christian Nielsen later took a detective to the location of a fourth victim, James Whitehurst, 50, of Batesville, Ark., whose remains were discarded north of Grafton Notch State Park, 10 to 15 miles away in the town of Upton, officials said.

Nielsen recently had been renting a room at the Black Bear while working at another bed and breakfast in nearby Bethel. Whitehurst, described as a handyman who was helping out Julie Bullard, also had been staying at the converted farmhouse.

State police Sgt. Walter Grzyb said the two men did not know each other beyond the fact that they were staying at the same inn.

It’s unclear what sparked the killings, and Poulin declined to say how the bodies had been dismembered or discuss a motive for the killings.

But Robin Zinchuk, executive director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce, said she learned from one of Selby Bullard’s colleagues that she had made a phone call to inquire about the process of evicting Nielsen.

State police declined to address the report. Oxford County Sheriff Lloyd “Skip” Herrick also declined to comment.

News of the slayings swept across the communities in Maine’s western mountains.

“We’re all just numb with shock,” said Zinchuk.

Police assured residents they had nothing to fear. “We believe no one else was involved, and there are no additional victims,” Poulin said.

Police were called to the Black Bear at a time when many vacationers were streaming out of Maine at the close of the Labor Day weekend.

Nielsen, who police said knew at least two of the victims, has family in western Maine, but his last known address was in Farmington.

Nancy White, co-owner of the Sudbury Inn, was stunned to learn that the cook she and her husband had hired this summer had been arrested for murder. She described him as a reliable employee, a good cook and a “soft-spoken, quiet individual.”

“The whole thing is surreal. It’s a shock to this small community,” she said.

Julie Bullard operated a bed and breakfast in San Francisco that she sold before coming to the Bethel area a couple of years ago with her daughter to operate the Black Bear, Zinchuk said. She converted the 130-year-old white clapboard farmhouse with a red roof into a six-room bed and breakfast with a pool and tennis court.

“Her daughter, Selby, had just lost her husband in a car crash, and I think in some ways she and Selby were doing something together, getting a fresh start,” Zinchuk said.

For a time, Selby Bullard operated an optician’s shop in town that filled eyeglass prescriptions, Zinchuk said.

More recently, she had been working part time with Beatson at Apple Tree Realty Inc. while continuing to fit glasses for an optometrist across the border in New Hampshire, said Bonita M. Sessions, designated broker with Apple Tree.

Julie Bullard decided in February to close the Black Bear, Zinchuk said, and there was a for-sale sign out front.

The seven-bedroom, eight-bath property was listed as a private residence. The asking price was $639,000.

Nielsen had a history of driving offenses that included an arrest for drunken driving, but nothing more serious, Farmington police said. His license was revoked a year ago, said Farmington police Lt. Jack Peck.

Maine is a state known for its low crime rate.

Maine’s last quadruple murder occurred on Dec. 3, 1992, when Virgil Smith set fire to a tenement at the foot of Portland’s Munjoy Hill neighborhood, killing a woman, two men and a 10-month-old baby, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Smith was upset after his girlfriend broke up with him, he said.

Earl Losier shot and killed four people, including his brother, at a neighbor’s apartment in Bangor on March 19, 1988, because of a loud stereo that disturbed him.

AP writers Jerry Harkavy and David Sharp contributed to this report.