Trail of ashes Two lost confessions, lack of tracking system and little intervention at an early age clear the way over 40 years for a serial arsonist

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The trail of ashes is long – and blistered with fear, loss, anger and pain.

From the first fire, at a Lubec sardine cannery in 1966, to his most recent release from prison in 2003, Ashton L. Moores, 59, has been guilty of or implicated in at least 18 arsons in Maine, including one in Orono that caused a man’s death.

He made two confessions that were effectively lost because they were thrown out of court.

Investigators in communities ranging from Port Clyde to Waterville to Belfast did not always know of his past because, until 2003, the state lacked a strong arsonist tracking system.

And apparently there was little intervention at an early age in his troubled life.

Each circumstance helped clear the way over 40 years for a man interested primarily in burning.

One thing changed dramatically this year.

In March, Moores was arrested in connection with the slaying of a Bangor woman, 43-year-old Christina Simonin. She died from a blow that fractured her skull, and she had been sexually assaulted.

Moores is to be arraigned today in Penobscot County Superior Court on charges of intentional or knowing murder, depraved-indifference murder and gross sexual assault.

Even though no fire occurred in the Simonin case, Moores’ arrest in the Bangor slaying has drawn the attention of law enforcement officials, particularly fire investigators, from around the region.

“Ashton was very well known in the Fire Marshal’s Office with his history … but that spanned three generations of state fire investigators that dealt with [him],” said Jim Ellis, a former state fire investigator and current fire chief in Holden.

“Everything was handwritten. We had no way of knowing. … There is a lifetime of crime there, spanning many, many officers,” Ellis said.

The first arson that sent Moores to prison occurred in July 1966 when he was 19. He was born and had family ties in nearby Trescott Township, and he was an employee of the R.J. Peacock Canning Co. in Lubec.

Apparently he set the fire in the basement packaging room of the Peacock plant, and even though the fire was relatively minor, he was charged with arson.

Awaiting trial in Washington County Superior Court, he was held at the Pineland Hospital and Training Center in Pownal, a now-closed state facility for people with mental retardation.

Records show that Ashton Leroy Moores had been referred by juvenile court at least five years earlier, in 1961, to the Bangor mental health facility now called the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Institute. A psychologist later testified that Moores suffered from “mild mental retardation,” but was “far too capable” to be admitted for short- or long-term treatment.

After pleading guilty in March 1967 to setting the Lubec fire, Moores was sentenced to the Men’s Correctional Center in South Windham.

Because handwritten records of his stay are lost somewhere in the prison system’s archives, how long Moores was at the penitentiary and when he was released could not be determined.

Why was Moores not committed to a mental health facility?

The answer to that is simple, said John Martins, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services. The legal system did not direct him there, Martins said, and a “not guilty by reason of insanity” finding is rare.

Ron Welch, director of the Office of Adult Mental Health Services in DHHS, said arson involving young people is a topic that’s being addressed in a variety of ways statewide because young arsonists can often be redirected.

“It’s usually seen as a symptom,” Welch said. “The arson itself is a symptom of another problem.”

Once fire setters become adults, the diversion techniques do not work as well, specialists say.

“You either get them at a young age and they grow out of it or they become repeat offenders,” said Kenneth Quirion, a retired fire investigator who questioned and arrested Moores in a series of Waterville fires.

The second fire was set in 1972, and Moores was sent to prison.

The third was set in 1981.

The fourth was set in 1989.

Between arsons Moores was on the street briefly, sometimes only months. As an adult Moores has been behind bars for a longer time than he has been free.

During Moores’ 1973 trial for the 1972 fire in Orono, he testified that his impulse to start fires is “something I can’t control,” according to a Bangor Daily News story.

“Who knows how many he’s done by now?” said Quirion. “If he’s out, he’s capable of anything and everything. Who really knows?”

When Moores was about 23, he was working at the Port Clyde Packing Co., a 200-plus employee sardine factory that burned in 1970.

The fire razed the entire factory, causing an estimated $1 million in damage, and broke out with 15 male employees in the building. Moores is believed to have been one of the 15, said St. George Fire Chief Tim Polky, who was a volunteer firefighter at the time.

Polky said he could not confirm that Moores was in the building when the fire broke out, but said he is sure that Moores was a suspect at the time.

“I know that there was a lot of rumors going around at that time,” he said. “We didn’t know he had set another fire,” Polky said, referring to the Lubec arson.

The Port Clyde fire wiped out the town’s largest employer, which provided a livelihood to people who arrived daily by bus. The owners did not have insurance, and the cannery was not rebuilt.

“It was devastating to the community,” a former Port Clyde resident who now lives in Tenants Harbor and who asked not to be identified said last month. “Everyone I knew worked there. I think the whole face of the community changed when that factory burned. It’s sad. Our way of life has changed.”

Polky said no cause of the Port Clyde fire was ever determined.

After three felony charges for writing bad checks in 1970, for which Moores received probation, he repeated the crime and was sentenced in June 1971 to prison. He was paroled on June 30, 1972.

He took up residence at 17 Margin St. in Orono presumably so that he could attend a meat-cutting school.

On Aug. 27, 1972, he set a fire at the Orono home of Edmund LaPointe, 76. With burns over 50 percent of his body, LaPointe died in a Bangor hospital the next day.

Moores, who went by the name Aston L. Mooers at the time, was charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to arson and was sentenced in June 1973 to eight to 20 years in the Maine State Prison in Thomaston.

Daniel LaPointe, the grandson of Edmund LaPointe, said in an interview last month with the Bangor Daily News that he was told Moores would be in a mental facility for the rest of his life.

“Why is he out?” he asked last month.

Moores served eight years for burning the Orono home and within months of his release was living in Waterville.

When a string of arsons shook Waterville in early 1981, there was still no useful way of keeping track of known arsonists.

Moores had moved to Waterville after participating in a Central Maine Pre-Release Center program in nearby Hallowell. The program had been run through the then-Department of Mental Health and Corrections. Inmates in this unit do public restitution work and participate in work-release programs.

When Moores’ Green Street apartment building caught fire, investigators grew suspicious. He was interviewed by Quirion and other investigators. The June 29, 1981, fire was set in a third-floor stairway leading to the roof of a six-unit apartment building, and several people were home at the time, according to the Waterville Fire-Rescue history Web site.

“I can picture going into his apartment and meeting him for the first time,” Quirion recalled in an interview. “After talking to him, something just wasn’t right. My instincts said to look further. I just kept questioning him and questioning him and he confessed.”

By July 1981, Moores had been arrested and charged with five counts of arson in Waterville, but a portion of his confession was thrown out because Quirion said something to the effect of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” which is coercion according to the Maine judicial system, said Quirion.

Four of the five arson counts were dismissed. Moores was convicted in May 1982 and sentenced to eight years in the Maine State Prison in Thomaston.

“The system failed again,” Quirion said.

After serving his third prison sentence for arson, Moores was released in 1989.

By October of that year he had set the first of what authorities believe were at least eight fires in Belfast.

The early 1990s were scary for Belfast residents, said Declan O’Connor, who still lives on Cedar Street in the Waldo County community.

“One building after another seemed to be going up,” O’Connor said. “Nobody knew who was causing it and it was obviously arson. Nobody knew if they were linked or if it was a series of coincidences or somebody taking advantage of the scare to get rid of some property that was pretty ugly.”

During one of the fires tied to Moores, O’Connor was on the roof of a building next door using a water hose, trying to keep the fire from spreading to the structure.

“Luckily, there wasn’t anybody hurt,” he said.

One of the fires Moores set was in his own apartment building on Church Street.

Most of the Belfast fires were set in small rooms or closets in the city’s downtown residential neighborhood, said Jim Ellis, the fire investigator at the time.

“There were people who could not sleep at night,” he said. “In the Waterville and Belfast fires, he had whole communities fearful. To say it’s not a violent crime, it’s not true. It has a lot of psychological effects” on residents.

Before Moores was charged with arson, he was charged with misdemeanor assault and served 30 days in jail for having sexual contact with a minor boy under the age of 14.

When he set his parents’ home and then his girlfriend’s apartment on fire in Belfast, police were able to connect the arsons to him, thanks in part to statements made by family members.

Another hiccup in the system occurred when a judge ruled that police used “ploys” to coerce Moores into confessing to setting the Belfast fires. His defense attorney got the confessions suppressed, adding yet another snag to the state’s case against him.

The judge ruled that Moores’ confession was tainted because at one point during the interview with fire investigators, some discussion occurred about Moores receiving psychological help.

Although Moores had raised the issue of his mental state, the judge ruled that for a confession to be considered voluntary, there must be no “direct or implied threats, promises or inducements.”

Training fire investigators to interview criminal suspects should be emphasized to avoid situations where confessions are thrown out, said A.J. Greif, a Bangor attorney who has not been associated with any of the cases involving Moores.

“The law has been pretty unchanged for 30 years, and you can’t use trickery or promises of leniency to induce a confession,” Greif said.

“It’s fairly hard to get a confession suppressed,” Greif said, estimating that one request in 100 is approved. “It takes some pretty bad police work to put the prosecution in that position.”

Moores was initially charged on 11 counts involving the eight Belfast fires. Without the confession, prosecutors reduced the counts to two, and he was sentenced in December 1995 to 20 years in prison with all but 15 years suspended and six years of probation. He spent the last five years of his sentence at the Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren, a minimum-security prison, and was released in December 2003.

Soon after his release, Moores was living in Bangor.

In October 2005 he was charged with criminal mischief for throwing rocks that broke windows on his landlord’s property. He was sentenced in March 2006 in Penobscot County Superior Court to 45 days in the Penobscot County Jail. He had to pay $150 in restitution.

A year later, he was accused of Simonin’s slaying.

If convicted on a murder charge, Moores faces 25 years to life in prison. The gross sexual assault charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

Why did Moores keep setting fires?

Moores’ family members could not be reached, despite repeated attempts. Moores’ brother sent an e-mail to bangordailynews.com after his brother’s March arrest, but further attempts to communicate with him were unsuccessful.

E-mail and telephone requests to interview Moores, who is being held in the Penobscot County Jail, were turned down by his Bangor attorneys, Terrance Harrigan and Seth Harrow. They also declined to answer five other questions sent by e-mail regarding Moores and asked that the Bangor Daily News not contact them again.

Including two active, unresolved 2004 cases at an undisclosed location, Moores has been charged or implicated in 18 arsons: one in Lubec, possibly one in Port Clyde, one in Orono, five in Waterville and eight in Belfast.

“Maybe he just wanted to go back to prison,” Quirion said, when asked about Moores’ history. “That’s where he’s comfortable. That’s where he’s been for three-quarters of his life. There is three meals a day and he’s safe there.”

Ellis said arsonists typically are “career criminals. There are many people that spend more time in prison than outside. There is a pathology for fire setters.”

Over the years, some state lawmakers have attempted to press legislation that would create an arsonist registry, similar to the state’s sex offender registry.

Rockland Fire Chief Charles Jordan Jr. urged creation of such a registry before the state Public Safety Commission in 2005, but quickly concluded that legislators were not interested, partly because of funding, he said.

“After the chilly reception, you learn to stop pounding your head against the wall … and move on to something else,” Jordan said.

Others have argued that repeat arsonists be given successively heavier penalties.

Legislators should seriously consider graduated penalties, similar to those for people who commit sexual offenses, Greif said.

“You need a statute that addresses repeat arsonists,” he said. “I think both arsonists and sex offenders are more likely to recommit [crimes] than murderers are.

“There are some people out there doing life sentences on the installment plan,” Greif said.