A young Canadian man who had travelled to Maine to meet his father for the first time used the occasion to go hunting for sex offenders. By the time his rampage was over, three were dead, including the vigilante himself.
Stephen A. Marshall, 20, of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia went to meet his father in Houlton, Maine on Saturday.
Using his father's pick up, the young man drove off to murder men he had never met.
Marshall found Joseph L. Gray in front of the TV in his Milo, Maine home. It was a little after 3:00 a.m. Before Gray's wife could get of bed to see what all the fuss was about, the 57-year-old man had been shot dead.
Marshall then got in his father's pick up and drove about 25 miles to the home of William Elliott in Corinth. Elliot, 24, like Gray, was a convicted sex offender who had never before met his executioner.
The truck Marshall was driving was seen leaving Corinth around 8:15 a.m. It was soon abandoned near an ice rink in Bangor.
It seems that from there Marshall walked to the local bus station, where he hopped on a Vermont Bus Lines coach headed for Boston. In a bathroom at the station police found bullets they linked to the murders.
Before the bus could pull away police rushed on to apprehend the murderous runaway. Before they could grab him, though, Marshall pulled out .45 and shot himself in the head. He died instantly. Paramedics found another gun on the boy and tended to five other passengers who were unharmed but had been splattered with blood.
The only apparent link between the two victims is their listing on the state's on-line sex offender registry. Authorities have had the list taken down as a precaution while they investigate the bizarre murders further.
"We will try to establish what is the link between these three men but as of tonight there's no known connection," Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said.
2 comments:
They haven't released the details of Elliott's case yet, but it is oddly possible that he was killed for an action which, though viciously prosecuted in the United States, isn't even a crime in Canada. One wonders if that was the motivation, since surely there were more serious offenders he could have located. Or maybe it was all geography, but Elliott's rapsheet doesn't even make him sound like a particularly impressive child molester (he's 24 and already finished his sentence involving a 14-17 year old).
To be honest, I have not had a chance to really dig deeply into this. But I hope to tonight. Upon first hearing this, my initial thoughts were that this poor kid was abused himself, and was for what ever reason unable to go after his abuser, so he lashed out at others. Maybe he was to scarred to go after his abuser, or maybe his abuser is no longer in his life.I could be totally on the wrong trail here, but that is just what I though when I first read the article. Strangely, I was just having a conversation with a friend about these lists being made public, and how someone could do something just like this.
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