The Three Murder Trials of Nancy Fredette

Nancy Fredette and her trial lawyer, Allen Beagle

Civic society clubhouse burns down, damages nearby buildings

In January of 1977, an unexplained fire destroyed the main clubhouse of a local civic society, called the Fraternal Order of the Eagles (FOE), known as the “Eagles”. The Eagles are an organization similar to the Oddfellows, the Masons, or the Elks. The fire also damaged a neighboring building – an apartment house that was owned by Fred and Nancy Fredette, and they occupied one of the units. Fred and Nancy, husband and wife, lived in Biddeford, Maine, with their 6 children and were fairly prominent community members and landlords.

Since the club had been totally destroyed, they would have to rebuild it, which required them to apply for a building permit. This bureaucratic process gave the Fredettes and other nearby families an opening to voice their long-held grievances to city hall and to the Eagles.

Neighbors oppose rebuilding, tensions escalate

They claimed that the club brought noise, litter, congested parking, and safety issues to their neighborhood. They acknowledged that the club had been there for over 50 years – since the 1920’s – but they claimed that the character of the club had changed in recent years – a younger demographic with far more cars. There had been a car explosion two years prior, in 1975, in their parking lot, and the Fredettes were particularly miffed that the Eagles hadn’t offered to help repair the damage caused by their most recent fire.

Insurance payout

At the same time that the Eagles were dealing with the reconstruction of their club, the Fredettes were dealing with the repairs of their apartment house. Though it isn’t entirely clear from the newspapers, I believe they enlisted a friend (and contractor), Gus Laverriere, to extract as much as possible from their insurance company for their fire claim. They made a deal with Gus: if he got $75,000 out of the insurance company, they would pay him a kick back of $5,000. He agreed, and was nearly successful. With his support, they got $73,800 from the insurance company. He did not perform the repairs, though. This smacks of insurance fraud…

A nefarious scheme or a clever invention?

According to Gus, things had soured tremendously between Nancy and Fred, and he recalled a day in October, months after he had moved out, with vivid clarity.

It was Saturday morning, and Gus was eating at a Biddeford restaurant with a friend when he was interrupted by Nancy. She approached his table and asked if he would chat with her privately. He ended up agreeing to take a ride with her in her car and she said, “I have got to get rid of Fred.” She pulled out her York County Savings Bank check book from her wallet. Gus said that “usually when someone wants to get rid of a husband, they get a divorce.” She retorted that “divorce was not enough,” and then offered him $3,500 if he found someone to do the job of killing her husband. Gus accepted her offer.

Again, according to Gus, a week later, Nancy dropped by his Hill Street apartment and made arrangements to meet with him at noon in the parking lot of a restaurant called Wonderbar on Washington Street in Biddeford. She said she would have what she promised him.

According to bank records, on that same day, Saturday, October 8th, 1977, Nancy applied for a loan. The application called for her husband’s signature. She forged it. The loan was approved, and the $3,300 was paid in cash to Nancy, who on the same date withdrew $200 from a savings account for a total of $3,500. Nancy later claimed it was for the purchase of a backhoe to help with the construction of a home that they were building on Granite Street. The backhoe was never bought, and she said simply, “the money was spent.” She later clarified it was used to buy building materials.

At noon, as promised, Nancy met with Gus and gave him an envelope containing the $3,500. He accepted the money with no intention of carrying out the heinous deed. His mind was focused on the $5,000 that they refused to pay him. This, he thought, would make a nice dent in their debt. Gus said that she suggested a timeframe for when the murder was to be done: “do it today because Fred will have money on him and it will look like a robbery.” And if not that day, then “don’t do it on Monday, for Monday is Columbus Day and Fred will be with the children.”

Gus chuckled as he set off for Arizona that very same day, where he would spend the rest of the winter, not to return to Maine until March.

According to Nancy, this whole scenario was a fabrication by Gus.

Nancy gets a gun

In February of 1978, amidst the ongoing threats, Nancy and Fred decided to get handguns. Fred collected guns, but he didn’t have a carry permit, so they filed for two permits with the police department. On the paperwork they cited the reasons for needing a gun is “because they carried large sums of money.” The police department approved the permits, and Nancy registered her Colt 32 – a small caliber, lightweight gun that was a good candidate for concealed carry (the bullets it fires are smaller than a 9mm round, but larger than a .22 caliber).

There are differing accounts of Nancy’s capability with the pistol, but she and her son, Fred Jr, both said that although she carried the gun with her, she didn’t know how to use it, and it wasn’t even loaded. She said that her husband, Fred Sr, was going to take her to the range to teach her to use it and get in some practice, but he never did.

On May 8th, 3 months later, Nancy notified police that her Colt 32 was missing, and about a week later on May 17th, she officially reported it stolen.

Around this same time, In April of 1978, after the repairs to their Birch Street apartment were complete, the Fredette family moved back in.

A fatal shooting, killer flees

On the morning of Friday, May 26th, 1978, Nancy said it was morning like any other. She woke up at 7:00AM, made breakfast for Fred, and looked in on the children. She was watching the clock, and gave Fred a heads up that he needed to get going. She yelled to her husband that he had five minutes until he had to get up and prepare for work. She went to the bathroom, closed the door, and started running bath water. As she was filling the tub, she heard three loud bangs – gun shots – she froze. She tried to get out of the bathroom, but could not – she said the door was jammed up against another door in the house, and when she finally opened the door, she found a chair in the way. While she was struggling in the bathroom, she said she heard footsteps from the kitchen of someone hurrying out the back door.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she found back door of the apartment wide open. She peered out, but saw no one. She then went down the hallway to the master bedroom, turning on the hall light on the way, and what she saw shocked her. Her husband lay bleeding on the bed, shot three times from close range. She called his name, but he did not answer. She ran to the phone and dialed the police.

Police arrive, cordon off the scene

At 7:25AM, police dispatch told nearby officers Robert Gregory and John Morang over the radio that gunshots had been heard at 55 Birch St. They quickly made their way over and got out of their patrol cars. They stopped at the wrong house, and as they were running down Birch Street, they saw children beckoning them from an upstairs window.

They quickly ran up the stairs, and when they arrived at the front door, they found it locked. After a short wait, Nancy opened the door and let them in. She was wearing a robe. She said that the intruder had just left. “He’s got a gun, he shot my husband, and he went out back.” The cops asked Nancy to stay in a front bedroom with her children, while they turned their attention to the intruder.

The back door was ajar. The police immediately checked out back, and found no one, so they returned to Fred.

Fred was critically injured. He was lying on his back in his bed, and he had been shot three times: once in the head, once in the wrist, and once in the neck. He was unconscious, but clung to life. Paramedics took him immediately to Portland Hospital, where he survived until later that evening when he passed away.

The police cordoned off the area and began their investigation. Nancy and the children, after brief questioning, were asked to leave the scene and to stay away from the house until their forensic work was complete.

Murder weapon discovered

Since this case was a homicide investigation, the state police were immediately involved, and they worked in concert with local Biddeford law enforcement.

Biddeford Police Chief Morin found a single black leather women’s glove in a filing cabinet in the living room, and he found its mate, the right one, on the floor at the foot of the bed where Fred had been shot.

Detective Letarte spent most the day making an inventory of the firearms and ammo in Nancy’s apartment (21 guns, several boxes of ammunition, including 32 caliber shells). Two spent rounds of ammo were on the floor and one was on the bed. One live round of ammunition was found on the floor of the bedroom, too, and it was later determined it had been extracted from the pistol.

The next day, the crime scene processing continued. Officer Leslie Bridges decided to take a look in the Fredette’s washing machine. He pulled out some damp clothes, and a gun fell to the ground. It was Nancy’s missing Colt 32 – the serial number matched the records from the police. Forensic analysis later confirmed that it was the gun that fired the three rounds that killed Fred. The spent shells were conclusively linked to the gun. They had found the murder weapon, but unfortunately, they could pull no prints from it.

The gun could hold up to 9 rounds (8 in the magazine and 1 in the chamber), but in common use, if you were to load a full magazine into an empty gun, it would only have an 8 round capacity. Three shots were fired and when the gun was found, the magazine was empty, which suggests that whoever shot Fred had decided how many bullets they were going to use when they were loading the magazine.

The murderer had stashed the gun in the washing machine right after shooting Fred.

The medical examiner, based on the trajectory of the bullets, believed that Fred had been lying down when he was shot.

A time experiment was done, and it would take approximately 33 seconds to enter the back door, fire the rounds, and leave by the back door, not including the time it would take to stash the gun.

Police believe they know who the killer is…

With the strong circumstantial evidence, and the discovery of the murder weapon, the state’s attorney’s office felt like they had a strong case against Nancy and they moved to indict.

They held a secret grand jury hearing on September 12, 1978, 3 ½ months after the incident, and the grand jury handed down an indictment against Nancy Fredette for the murder of her husband. They arrested her that day and booked her at York County Jail. She was transferred to Cumberland County Jail and then arraigned the next day, on September 13th. She pled innocent and was granted $25,000 bail – an unusual move in a murder trial – but likely was allowed in this case because of her responsibilities to her 6 children and the reliance of the prosecution on circumstantial evidence.

First trial verdict

The jury, after being given instructions by the judge, left the courtroom on Wednesday, December 19th, 1978, at 1:30PM to begin their deliberations. After 8 hours, at 9:30PM, they asked for a transcript of the testimony of young Stacey Fredette. Heated discussions and shouts could be heard in the neighboring courtroom through the evening, though it wasn’t clear to reporters what the arguments were about.

The jury retired that evening and were sequestered overnight. They continued their discussions on Thursday morning. At noon, the judge asked for a vote. The jury responded that it was split 10-2 and had been since they had begun deliberations. For four more hours the debate raged on, and finally at 4:30PM, after 16 hours of debate, the jury threw in the towel. A unanimous verdict would not be reached. It was over. A mistrial was declared. Nancy could go home. For now.

Second trial held

The second trial took about as long as the first one, and followed a similar path, wrapping up on Monday, June 30, 1980, 21 days after jury selection began. In closing arguments, Caroline told the jury, for almost an hour, that Nancy had no motive for the killing and that the state's "circumstantial case" was "replete with inconsistencies, doubts and uncertainties."

The jury retired to deliberate, and after seven hours, reached a verdict.

The next morning, Tuesday, July 1st, the jury foreman read the verdict: “we, the jury, find Nancy Fredette guilty of murder.” Nancy wept as her lawyer asked for a roll call from the jury. Over Nancy’s sobs, the jury, one after another, pronounced the word “guilty”.

Nancy, who had been out on bail since her arraignment, was immediately taken to York County Jail.

On July 26th, 1980, 3 weeks later, Nancy was sentenced to 35 years in prison at the Women’s Correctional Center in Windham for the murder of her husband. Justice Robert Clifford said she could be eligible for a reduction of up to a third off of her sentence for good behavior.

Nancy cried out, "I am innocent of murdering my husband. I accept only the judgement... of my Lord and God, and this judgment is tainted by error."

Supreme Court appeal

Caroline made an appeal to the Maine Supreme Court on several grounds, and in June of 1983, while Nancy was serving her sentence, things took a surprising turn: Nancy’s appeal was successful, and her conviction was vacated. Her case was returned to the Lincoln County Courthouse by the Maine Supreme Court. She was getting another trial.

The Supreme Court agreed with Caroline that Justice Clifford had made a prejudicial error in allowing three witnesses for the state to give testimony. Under the difficult-to-understand legal concept of hearsay, their testimony should not have been allowed. In principle, hearsay standards exist to prevent just anyone from testifying at trial. It serves to establish minimum standards for what can be generally be considered reliable testimony.

The justices, in their decision, said that Gus Laverriere had reason to lie – he was owed $5,000 by the Fredettes which they refused to pay and they weren’t even on speaking terms. In other words, Gus had a possible motive to fabricate the entire murder-for-hire plot as a way to get back at her, so the other witnesses should not have been given the opportunity to bolster his testimony. The three witnesses in question had each testified that Gus had told them about his meeting with Nancy before he left for Arizona.

Third trial. Three times a charm?

Nancy’s third trial began on January 25th, 1984. She had a new attorney, Martin Ridge, because her longtime attorney, Caroline Glassman, had appointed as a justice for the Maine Supreme Court in August of 1983, two months after the court granted Nancy a new trial. Caroline was the first woman to serve as a high court justice in Maine, and stayed there until 1997.

During Nancy’s third trial, a jury of six men and six women deliberated for 11 hours over the course of two days before reaching their decision. Nancy sat with her daughter, son and grandson in the witness room while the jury deliberated over her fate. “I have to believe there is going to be justice this time.” she said. Marlin, her lawyer, said he was hesitant to express too much confidence, but had a hopeful outcome for his client. Assistant attorney general predicted the outcome of either a guilty verdict or a 4th trial.

“We the jury find Nancy Fredette... innocent of the 1978 murder of Fred Fredette.”

Nancy was free.

Closing

The murder case of Fred Fredette was an extraordinary event from Maine’s criminal history, but it is mostly forgotten today.

Nancy Fredette was found both guilty and innocent of the same crime, and after her third trial, when she was finally released, her freedom was short-lived. She passed away in 1985 at the age of 39, just over a year after the last trial ended. There isn’t a lot of info on Nancy or Fred themselves, despite extensive trial coverage. I was unable to find an obituary for her or find details of her death, but what struck me the most about her sudden death was the impact to the family she left behind. The children who lost their father 8 years prior... who endured a trio of traumatic trials… who lost their mother to 3 years in prison… They too, are victims.

But I can’t help but wonder what really happened in the Fredette household the morning of May 26th, 1978.

Fred Fredette’s death technically remains unsolved, and we will never know who pulled the trigger that took his life away.

Could there really be an intruder who committed this brazen crime and slipped away, unseen?

What caused one jury to find Nancy guilty and the other innocent?

Did Nancy Fredette get away with murder?

This story intrigues me and also leaves me with a lot of questions... so, what do you think?