BANGOR – A Southwest Harbor woman awaiting trial for murder took her own life Wednesday inside a Penobscot County Jail cell.

Sheriff Glenn Ross confirmed at a news conference Wednesday afternoon that Michelle Mills used a bedsheet to hang herself. She was 38 years old.

Mills had been incarcerated since her arrest in June 2006 when she was charged in the gruesome slaying of an elderly woman in Southwest Harbor.

Police believe Mills used a ceramic gargoyle statue to bludgeon 83-year-old Jacqueline Evans, a retired college professor, to death inside Evans’ home. The murder was spurred by a dispute over money, according to court documents that claim Mills had previously been hired by Evans to serve as a caretaker for a sick friend of Evans.

Just last month, Mills’ murder trial in Hancock County Superior Court was delayed while her attorney, Jeffrey Silverstein of Bangor, filed a motion to explore his client’s psychological capacity.

Ross was unaware of Mills’ mental health at the time of her death but said she was not on suicide watch.

“She had asked to go back to Hancock County [Jail]. She said she didn’t like it here, but there was nothing to indicate that she was suicidal,” Ross said.

Richard Bishop, deputy sheriff for Hancock County, notified Mills’ mother of her suicide, Ross said.

Steven Juskewitch, an Ellsworth attorney and longtime friend of Mills’ family, said by telephone Wednesday afternoon that he had no indication she was suicidal.

“There’s really not much to say other than it’s tragic. It’s a pretty big shock to the family,” he said.

Mills’ body was found at 11:20 a.m. by a jail officer making routine rounds.

Ross said she tied a bedsheet around her neck in a makeshift noose and then hung the rope from a window connected to her jail cell door.

Mills’ suicide is still under investigation, but the sheriff said women inmates are sometimes permitted to put sheets over their windows for privacy. Shortly before she was found dead, a jail worker had asked Mills why the sheet was over the window and she responded by asking for privacy.

When the jail worker came back through the area no more than 15 minutes later, Mills didn’t respond and that’s when the discovery was made, Ross said.

The guard who found Mills used a knife to cut the sheet and administered CPR but could not revive her.

Even though Mills’ murder charge was in Hancock County, she was being held at Penobscot County Jail as a safety precaution. Ross said she was being held in his facility because there were potential witnesses at Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth.In November 2006, five months after her initial arrest, Silverstein had successfully negotiated bail in the amount of $500,000 surety or $250,000 cash, which is rare for a murder case.

Silverstein said last month, however, that his client was never able to come up with the money.

Long before Mills was charged with murder, the woman lived a difficult life, according to Juskewitch.

Her adoptive father, David N. Grant, has a record of violence that stretches from convictions of assault and rape in Hancock County in the 1980s to a conviction last year in the 2004 murder of his elderly mother-in-law.

When she was a teenager, Mills’ half-brother died in a tragic automobile accident at the age of 17.

More recently, Mills’ ex-husband, Peter Mills, was indicted on multiple charges, including gross sexual assault. The indictment alleged that Mills drugged and raped three women in 2005. At a trial earlier this year, Peter Mills and a co-defendant, Stephanie Stark, 44, of Bar Harbor, were found guilty by a jury. They have not yet been sentenced.

Juskewitch said the fact that Mills’ mental capacity had come up in recent court proceedings should have been an indication something was wrong, but he stopped short of blaming jail officials.

“It’s tragic because now we’ll never know,” he said.

Suicide attempts have been prevalent at Penobscot County Jail in recent years, despite an increase in prevention efforts, according to Ross.

“We feel we’re doing everything we possibly can, but none of these measures could have prevented what happened today,” the sheriff said.