CARIBOU – Christopher Shumway was found guilty and criminally responsible Wednesday for his actions in the grisly murder last year of 20-year-old Erin Sperrey, his supervisor at a local Tim Hortons donut shop.

After a nonjury trial in July, Superior Court Justice E. Allen Hunter concluded Shumway, 20, was guilty on three counts: murder, gross sexual assault involving Sperrey, and robbery of the restaurant.

In announcing the verdicts Wednesday, Hunter said he also concluded Shumway was not insane at the time of the death and during Shumway’s subsequent actions.

Sentencing was postponed until the court gets a pre-sentence report, possibly in six to eight weeks.

Shumway was being held without bail at the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton.

He faces a maximum of life in prison.

According to Hunter’s decision and testimony during the trial, Shumway had wanted money to leave the state, eager to return to his home in Massachusetts. He feared losing his freedom, having used alcohol and drugs while on probation for having made harassing telephone calls to women in Caribou.

He wanted the cash that was stored in an office at Tim Hortons, and he knew Sperrey, a supervisor there, had an office key.

While working the evening shift on Jan. 2, 2005, Shumway pushed Sperrey hard when she was in a freezer at the back of the restaurant and took the keys. Minutes later, after Shumway gave the keys back and apologized, Sperrey told him he had to leave.

“Things were going from bad to worse for him,” Hunter said. “[He] renewed his attack upon Sperrey by grabbing her around the throat and commencing to choke her to death.”

She fought for her life, and the battle went from the freezer to a hallway to the kitchen and to an employee restroom, where Shumway stifled her screams, rendering her unconscious. She was still alive when he began to kick her face, head and chest with great force.

She was beaten so badly an auricle of her heart tore.

He left her in the restroom while he waited on customers. She had stopped breathing when he returned. He put her in Sperrey’s car and then stole some $1,200 from the restaurant.

He sexually assaulted the dying woman. Later he abandoned the car after driving off the road in a snowstorm on Interstate 95.

He hitchhiked to Bangor, leaving Sperrey’s body in her own vehicle. He was arrested on the morning of Jan. 3, 2005, at a Bangor motel.

“It was a very tough day,” Johna Lovley, Sperrey’s mother, said outside the courtroom after the verdicts were announced Wednesday. “I was hoping he [the judge] would do the right thing. I don’t care what happens to [Shumway] now,” she said. “My life, our lives, will never be the same because of what he did.”

She said the verdict gave her a sense of closure about Shumway, but not about her daughter.

Neither Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson nor Bangor defense attorney Chris Dalton said anything at the hearing.

“We are very pleased with the verdict,” Melissa O’Dea, another prosecutor, said after the hearing. “It is clear that Justice Hunter paid careful attention to the evidence and came out on the side of justice.”

Justice Hunter said Shumway not only acted in an intentional and knowing manner, but he also “engaged in conduct manifesting a depraved indifference to the value of human life.”

“The court concludes that the defendant engaged in voluntary conduct that directly caused the death of Erin Sperrey,” Hunter said, reading from a 16-page decision. “[He] was acting intentionally and knowingly.

“The court finds that the defendant was not in a dissociated state at the time he killed Ms. Sperrey nor was he suffering from any severe abnormal mental condition,” Hunter said. “It is significant that during the course of his assault on Ms. Sperrey, the defendant perceived customers had come into the restaurant and were also at the drive-in window.”

He remarked that Shumway, fearing to delay discovery, suspended his attack and waited on customers.

Sperrey’s mother, her sister, Amanda Knight, and several others in the Sperrey family section of the courtroom wept when Hunter outlined the beating and sexual assault Sperrey suffered at the hands of Shumway.