EP 52 | I Heart Lewiston, Maine with Bernadette from Murderific true crime podcast

[Bonus] This episode is about gun violence, mental health, mass murder, a terrorized community, and trauma. Listen with care. In episode 52, we go to Lewiston, Maine where a local man known to the community opened fire on two businesses in the largest mass casualty event in Maine’s history that left 18 dead, 13 injured and an entire region at a loss.

In the second part of this episode, I speak to Bernadette, host of the Murderfic podcast, who lives in the area of Southern Maine where the manhunt for the shooter was going on and ultimately where he was found. 

We talk about the crime, the impact on the close community and what we have come to learn about the man who committed the crimes.

Crime of the Truest Kind
Hosted by Anngelle Wood
Online: CrimeoftheTruestKind.com
Follow @crimeofthetruestkind

Murderific Podcast

Governor Mills Launches “Healing Together” Online Resource to Help Support to Lewiston Victims and Families

City of Lewiston to Open Community Resiliency Center CRC to Offer Services on Mon, Nov 13

City of Lewiston Families and Victims Fund

Maine Community Foundation

Lewiston-Auburn Area Response Fund

Mass shootings, as catastrophic as they are, often shine a spotlight on the larger, hidden crisis of mental health. When the 18 shooting victims were identified by Maine State Police, there was not someone in the community around Lewiston who did not know one, some or all of them.     

Ronald G. Morin, 55
Peyton Brewer-Ross, 40
Joshua A. Seal, 36
Bryan MacFarlane, 41
Joseph Lawrence Walker, 57
Arthur Fred Strout, 42
Maxx A. Hathaway, 35
Stephen M. Vozzella, 45
Thomas Ryan Conrad, 34
Michael R. Deslauriers II, 51
Jason Adam Walker, 51
Tricia C. Asselin, 53
William A. Young, 44
Aaron Young, 14
Robert E. Violette, 76
Lucille M. Violette, 73
William Frank Brackett, 48
Keith D. Macneir, 64

Transcript

Anngelle Wood: 0:00

Well, hello, my name is Angelle Wood and this is Crime of the Truest Kind. Welcome back, looking forward to seeing everyone Thursday. That's November 9th, Off Cabot, Beverly, Massachusetts, our first live crime night together. It is linked at CrimeoftheTruestKindcom. Tickets are available, and this is one of many more events that I am planning to do. My background is largely in radio and marketing and events. I plan an annual music festival, so this stuff comes a little bit easier for me. My name is Angelle Wood. This is Crime of the Truest Kind. This is a true crime.

Anngelle Wood: 0:59

local history and storytelling podcast. I write about crimes, I set the scene, I connect story themes and I talk about the things that happened here in Massachusetts and New England. This episode is about gun violence and mental health and mass murder, a terrorized community and trauma. Please listen with care. This is episode 52. We go to Lewiston, Maine, where a local man opened fire on two businesses, the largest mass casualty event in Maine's history. It left 18 people dead and 13 injured. The actions of this one man traumatized an entire state and region.

Anngelle Wood: 1:49

I'm happy to surprise you with a second episode in the same week. My intentions were much different when I first set out to cover these topics, but there was so much information for each story Gardner and Lewiston Maine that they really deserved their own episodes. In the second half of this episode, I talked to Bernadette, Bernadette, the host and creator of the podcast called Murderific, which is currently on hiatus, and I always say nudge, nudge, maybe she'll be back, maybe she will. Bernadette is a native of southern Maine and lives in the area where all of this took place the Lewiston, lisbon, auburn, bowdoin area. We talk about the case, particularly the impact on the community.

Anngelle Wood: 2:37

Now, in episode 51, I tell the story of Breanne Pennington, a young mother of four who was killed in her home in Gardner, massachusetts, just three days before the events of Lewiston, Maine. Her husband, who is wanted for her murder, is still at large. So New England was experiencing a few man hunts. Aaron Pennington remains on the run. We don't know whether he is alive or if he is dead, much like the Robert Card case, before he was ultimately found. New England has experienced a great deal of terrorizing moments as of late and we are continuing to learn more information about each case, and it is certain that new things will be learned after this episode airs. While none of this makes any sense, we remain stunned by the events in Lewiston, Maine on October 25, 2023. We need to be shocked and saddened and disgusted, because we cannot be a society that becomes desensitized by things like this, and as much as I would like to say it won't happen again, it will, all we have is hope that it's not us or someone we love.

Anngelle Wood: 3:51

The shooter we have come to learn was known to authorities, robert Card, 40 years old of Bowdoin, Maine. He did not have a criminal record On his criminal history. There is one charge for DUI dating back to 2007. There was a massive statewide manhunt to find him, the man responsible for killing 18 people in two locations in Lewiston, Maine on October 25th. An arrest affidavit that was unsealed this week suggested he had more businesses in his sites that were close to where he lived. Let's say he had experienced a bad breakup and a decline in mental health just before he targeted a bar where he had met his ex. According to the police documents, he had distanced himself from his family in the months leading up and was getting increasingly more paranoid and believed four local businesses that Schmengies Bar and Grill just in time recreation, where the shootings took place, and Gowell's Market in Litchfield and Mixer's nightclub in Sabattis. He thought they were all broadcasting online that he was a pedophile. One of his sisters told police that he had been delusional since February 2023 after that bad breakup, and a brother told officers that he had started to believe specific people were out to get him and had been calling him a pedophile. That included the manager of Schmengies, Joey Walker, who was one of the people who died that night. Maybe I need to clarify, but nobody was broadcasting that he was a pedophile no one. There was no evidence he was a pedophile, just paranoid delusions, and the brother suggested it all started around the time he started wearing a hearing aid.

Anngelle Wood: 5:43

Card also believed that his family was involved in the conspiracy, and it was his family who first identified him as the suspect. Once police had circulated a picture of a man entering the bowling alley. Last Wednesday, only two and a half hours after the first shooting, card's sister contacted the Lewiston police and made the identification. On the night of the shootings, his brother told police that he had been in a relationship with a person only identified as JC and that the two had met at Schmengies during a Cornhole tournament. The brother said that ever since that relationship had ended and Card started wearing hearing aids. He had been saying crazy things. The affidavit states we learned that Card's former girlfriend had two daughters that he took to Schmengies to eat on occasion. That's when he felt people were looking at him negatively. As the urgent search for him began, a brother told police that he might go to Maine recycling because he had an issue with another employee there this past spring. That is where he had worked for about a year and a half until he left voluntarily earlier in 2023.

Anngelle Wood: 6:59

Distance between Robert Card and his family had started to grow over the course of several months. After more than two days, he was eventually located found deceased on the property of his former employer, a recycling plant in Lisbon, Maine. In the time sense, we have begun to piece together just how badly the institutions who are supposed to prevent events like this may have failed the people of Maine. Now some of you listening may hear that statement and feel defensive. Based on everything I've seen in relation to this catastrophic event, there are so many questions.

Anngelle Wood: 7:45

In May, members of Card's family contacted police saying they were concerned about his mental health and he had 15 guns in his possession. In July, after a disturbing incident at a training facility at West Point in New York. Card spent two weeks at a mental health treatment facility there. In August, the Army determined that Card should have access to his weapons and ammunition restricted. In September, a reservist contacted police to say he had concerns over Card. He was worried that he might go to quote shoot up the Army Reserve Facility in Saco. After hearing this, sageta Hot County Sheriff issued an alert to law enforcement agencies statewide, noting Card was armed, dangerous and was making violent threats. That alert was canceled on October 18th, just one week before the attack on two locations in Lewiston, Maine.

Anngelle Wood: 8:51

The Bangor Daily News reported that Robert Card's New York mental health evaluation would not have triggered Maine's yellow flag law because he was put into protective custody out of state. That is a tragic realization. Imagine everything else that falls through the cracks Now. I think most of us would agree that something should have been triggered for Card. It's always the hindsight that gets you. Experts have said on more than one occasion that Card's actions should have triggered Maine's yellow flag law, and cases less severe than Card's have led to just that. The state's yellow flag law, which came into effect on July 1st 2020, can temporarily restrict an individual from possessing firearms if police placed the individual in protective custody and have that individual undergo an evaluation by a medical professional, which can then lead to the police petitioning a judge to have that individual's firearms removed. And Maine's yellow flag law was designed to be a middle ground between gun rights advocates and gun control advocates, and it is therefore less sweeping than any other state's red flag laws, by which, in some cases, a relative can directly petition a court to have their family members' firearms seized. Now, this man was a US Army reservist stationed in Soco and, according to the documents provided by Sagittahawk County Sheriff's Office, card's unit, which contains several members of Maine law enforcement, was aware of and concerned about Card's erratic behavior and the violent threats he was leveling before the shooting.

Anngelle Wood: 10:38

Though the state of Maine has taken some steps to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have, M aine law does not require background checks on all gun sales. It makes it easier for prohibited purchasers to access guns no questions asked. Maine does not have an extreme risk law, also known as a red flag law, that empowers families and law enforcement to prevent tragedies before they happen, and in 2015, the state repealed one of the few gun safety laws it had, allowing people to carry hidden loaded guns throughout the state without a permit concealed carry. You know you do a little reading about this stuff. It's helpful to know. Mainegov firearm laws can be complex. It is the responsibility of each person holding a Maine concealed handgun permit to check with the state or jurisdiction they are traveling to to determine whether that state honors Maine's permit and whether there are any restrictions or conditions imposed on out of state permits and the carrying of firearms. This is known as reciprocity right. This discussion always goes to restricting gun access. We can't pretend America has a shortage of guns.

Anngelle Wood: 11:51

We got them and now we can make them. Ghost guns are a thing, but this isn't about that. High capacity weapons are terrifying to most and there is no way to know if any kind of gun restriction would have prevented what happens in Lewiston, Maine. And now I know a lot of people who say you'll never take my guns. And you're right. No one's gonna take your guns. That would have already happened In a word, new town.

Anngelle Wood: 12:21

But any and all good gun owners should agree that there is a massive responsibility in owning, carrying for and properly storing guns. Education is key, right, and if I'm being honest, I'm not even pro or con gun. I grew up in a home where they were like laying on the table. I stepped over them on the floor. I mean, that's not a brag, that's total irresponsibility. And without outing the person, someone in my household gave away one of those guns and well, you gotta report that.

Anngelle Wood: 12:53

What I am is pro not killing people. That should be a thing. I am also against wiping out lots of people in very short amounts of time. Is there an aim for that? But I'll say something else honest. I shot guns and it's fun, for sport. I don't shoot at anything, living Not into that, but I get it. I've got lots of friends who do lots of kinds of things, but I'm pretty sure they're not fucking assholes about it. I'm not here to preach about what you should and shouldn't believe, but what did authorities know and when did they know it? There were checks on Robert Card. Two local law enforcement chiefs told the Associated Press that an alert was sent in mid-September to watch for Card, who had made threats against his base and his fellow soldiers in Sackle Maine. But after attempts to find Card failed, law enforcement moved on.

Anngelle Wood: 13:56

They said we couldn't find him. County Sheriff Jill Emery, whose jurisdiction includes Card's home in Bowdoin, said the awareness alert was sent to every law enforcement agency in the state after his deputy conducted a welfare check of Card's home and was unable to find him. So what I've been able to deduce with my research is that in Sackle, maine, where the Army Reserve barracks are, they also added patrols for about two weeks and Card never showed up. That is according to Saco Police Chief Jack Clements, as told to the Associated Press. When questioned about what came next, the County Sheriff told the AP he couldn't recall if there was any follow-up because I don't have any reports in front of me and, well into that, somebody has been reviewing those reports. Chief Clements defended his department to the alert about Card. He referred to it as a generic thing and said we had some report that this guy's made veiled threats. He added that search alerts are common in this department had given the alert about Card its due attention. Okay, on November 1st 2023, Maine Governor Janet Mills announced intent to formally establish an independent commission to investigate the circumstances and the police response to the Lewiston shooting.

Anngelle Wood: 15:30

The Maine Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Shawshawk the man we saw in all of the press briefings. He said in a news conference that, despite Card's history of mental illness, there was no record of Robert Card being involuntarily committed to a mental health facility Just because there appears to be a mental health nexus to the scenario. The vast majority of people with mental health diagnoses will never hurt anybody. That's true. He said all that, but here's the other part. He was committed in New York, not in Maine. Several firearms were recovered in the search in the investigation of Robert Card and the guns recovered were legally purchased Remember R obert Card did not have a criminal record and, as we learned, his hospitalization in New York did not trigger a Maine yellow flag and if any background check was conducted it would come up clean. When police located his abandoned car, inside they found a rifle and two firearms were discovered with Card's body. He was in a trailer at the Maine Recycling Corporation where he had once worked, where he left voluntarily. There were many reports that Robert Card was fired. That was not the case. He left on his own. A spokesperson for the Maine Attorney General's office confirmed to USA Today that Maine's yellow flag law is an alternative to red flag laws around the United States which allow law enforcement and judges to remove an individual's access to firearms. As we know, maine does not have a red flag law. So what has this done to the close community around Lewiston, maine? It has been traumatizing beyond words.

Anngelle Wood: 17:17

I talked to Bernadette, host of the podcast Murderific, the true crime podcast she hosted for several years until just recently when she went on hiatus in June. Now Bernadette lives in the town where Robert Card's car was found and where the search for him centered. I wanted to talk to her for a few reasons. She's as local as it gets and she's very aware of all of it and she is one of the true crime podcast people I met early on when I started and she was always kind and always very supportive of me. We just had a conversation. Now that the first wave of trauma and chaos has passed for the people of the Lisbon and Lewiston area, what is the sense of what's going on on a local level with folks now that the media trucks are pulling away?

Bernadette : 18:17

Now that the story is over, basically, I feel like everyone is just in shock. Like it happened and it was terrifying, and it was horrifying and it was sad, and now he's dead. The shock is still there and I feel like a lot of people feel numb and everyone that I talk to, everyone is talking about it nonstop, because everyone knows everyone in Maine and you could live in Fort Kent or you could live in Portland and someone knows somebody that was murdered that day, or somebody knows somebody's brother or sister or even Robert Card's family. Everybody knows everybody in this state and that's the truth. So I just feel like the shock is wearing off a little bit and I feel very numb actually.

Anngelle Wood: 19:16

That's a legitimate thing, because I feel like that's something that people don't realize. They feel like, okay, well, this guy's been caught, it's over, we don't need to think about it anymore. But the ramifications of what's going to happen in that area. Let's talk about all the businesses that were shut down for days, not to mention the two businesses where the shootings took place A bowling alley, which I bet is hopping a lot of the time I mean this was a Wednesday night that this happened and there was a room full of people and you have a local bar that is probably full of regulars most of the time. I mean that's going to be really difficult for these folks to put these things back together.

Bernadette : 19:56

Yeah, I feel like Maine is one of those places. Other people would be like oh well, they're obviously going to shut down because that happened. Maine's not like that. These places will get it together and come back and not shut down. On principle. They don't want evil to win. It's not who we are and they won't shut down but tell me what it was like for folks.

Anngelle Wood: 20:23

I mean, I know what it was like here. I'm in Massachusetts, I'm a New Englander. I love everything about Maine. We talk sometimes about maybe that's where we'll end up later on eventually, but it's a place where there's a tremendous amount of locals and there are transplants. We know that. Yeah, I hear the stories. When we're up there vacationing we get the Massachusetts. People are coming up and buying stuff. Yeah, that might be me.

Bernadette : 20:53

The ruining our state, the driving up the property values, but I love it there because of all of these things.

Anngelle Wood: 21:02

It's a special place and it's full of people who just want to help each other. Like you said, by and large, everybody knows each other. Yes, so when this news broke out, I mean, we were collectively shocked as a region and a nation, because stuff like this doesn't happen in Maine. It just doesn't happen like this in Maine.

Bernadette : 21:24

Yeah, not yet, not until now.

Anngelle Wood: 21:27

It shows what we're headed for as a society.

Bernadette : 21:31

Right. I mean there were times where you would go to the movies and you'd look around and you're like, ok, something could happen, but it never had not like that. And the suspect was yeah, and it wasn't like, oh, you don't know where he is. He could be somewhere in the state. He literally could have been in my backyard, that's right, so any kind of was. Yes, he really was. When he was found about two miles from where I live. So when that happened that night and then they were doing the searches, there were literally helicopters over my house at night. So you're sleeping with a police scanner, you're sleeping with a gun, you've got the news on and I mean talk about next door.

Anngelle Wood: 22:20

Yeah, when you first started to learn what was happening, what were people saying? You were in touch with folks, obviously, because it was. It was business as usual For everybody. Everybody was at work, doing their family things, going shopping. What was the sense of when this really hit?

Bernadette : 22:41

It was like what Six, almost seven pm, yeah that Wednesday night and everything shut down for the next day. Everything was just shelter in place. People were so scared, businesses were closed, ll being closed. That should tell you something that hardly ever happens Maybe one or two other times and everyone was calling people to see if they were okay. People were calling and saying are you okay? Do you know people that were injured? Everyone was calling everyone because the sense of community here is pretty large and it was. I mean I can't stress how terrifying it was. It really was. I still think I'm in shock. It was very traumatic and really scary. Just the fact that on Sunday, 1,000 people showed up at church for the victims and 1,000 people that's a lot in one place. The community here is really getting together and raising money for the people that were injured and there are a lot of people who are going to be recovering for a long time after this, physically and, of course, emotionally, right.

Anngelle Wood: 23:50

In addition to the 18 people who lost their lives, all of their associated family members, and then there are a number of people who were injured to varying degrees. It seems to me that people figured out who this perpetrator was pretty quickly. Yes, there were screen captures of this person. People figured it out almost immediately when they heard what was going on, that it was this person. Can you speak to that, right?

Bernadette : 24:14

I think that police were notified about him in the months or the month before that something was going to happen and I know the police tried to go to his house and he wasn't home and I don't know if they gave up after that or what, but obviously a lot of red flags were missed. And also, instead of coming down really hard on the police I think it's really hard when you know someone is having mental issues you know something might happen. You can't arrest somebody before something happens, so you can't come down too hard. Obviously a lot of red flags were missed and it seems like that happens over and over, so that's sad.

Anngelle Wood: 24:53

We know that much more has to be done with red flag and yellow flag laws, and I don't know enough about what those laws entail, but it's safe to say that some things were missed in this instance and unfortunately we have a lot of trauma as a result of it.

Bernadette : 25:10

Well, there are no red flag laws in Maine.

Bernadette : 25:14

None at all. In my head, if someone has been convicted of any sort of domestic abuse or restraining order, they can't have a gun for a year. If you, apparently the wording is if you're committed into a mental institution, then you wouldn't have a gun for a year. To me those are very common sense laws. It's not saying nobody can have guns. It's saying if these things happen for everyone else's protection, this person can't have a gun. And of course obviously you can go get a gun anywhere, like I get that, but you don't have a gun in your access, like immediate access in your home, because you wouldn't be allowed to, even if we had a red flag law that maybe it wouldn't have even affected him. But obviously laws are one thing, but there's a huge lack of mental health resources in our state and it seems like everywhere.

Anngelle Wood: 26:12

To be honest, and you're right, and this is a person who everything that I've read about him a 40 year old man who had spent 20 years in the military as a reservist this isn't somebody, I believe, that saw any kind of active duty, so PTSD doesn't come into play in the instance of this person was in the front lines in Afghanistan. That's not the case with this person. Could they have experienced other traumas? They certainly could have, but there's no mental health support for somebody who's involved in the Army reserves.

Bernadette : 26:53

I mean, where do we go with? There's a lack of mental health care, it's just a fact. It's not something the government is putting money into, no, and also, I don't know if you watch the public safety commissioner all the times he gave speeches over the three or four days. He did mention and I was really glad that he did that most mentally ill people will never commit crimes. They're more likely to be a victim of a crime, and I really love that he pointed that out, because you can't just look at someone to be like, oh, they're mentally ill, take their guns away, because that's not the case.

Anngelle Wood: 27:31

No, you're absolutely right. I think they did. I think all of the folks the public facing folks during this did an amazing job. I agree I felt like they were very communicative. I think they were very honest with what was going on. This isn't really something public officials really want to have to talk about ever, right, obviously so. But I think they did a pretty great job with keeping everybody up to date, because and we know the nature of the Internet fodder and armchair detectives etc. And web sleuthing that everybody wants to be, you know, the super Internet cop and go and try to solve cases, which is pathetic. We've been involved in this true crime thing for a long time and it's dangerous, right, it can be very dangerous for people and in the back of my head, I'm thinking like I really hope we don't have some like justice warriors out there that want to go and try to find this man on their own, because clearly he had, he had proven that he was going to kill people and did, unfortunately, way too successfully and that he was.

Bernadette : 28:40

He could have been anywhere and hunting season started on Saturday, which is actually a huge thing in Maine and then you would have had all these hunters in the woods and a person in the woods.

Anngelle Wood: 28:54

Oh my God it would have been awful. They were almost going to have to delay it, weren't they?

Anngelle Wood: 28:58

Yes, which have been horrible for a lot of people who plan on that Right. So somebody outdoors people and that region of the state. There are a number of resources to support the folks, both businesses and the families of those who were injured and the families of those who were killed. I cannot implore enough on people to vet these places because, as what always happens is there's always someone trying to hustle money on the backs of someone else's tragedy.

Bernadette : 29:30

I can definitely send you some links. I know there are a lot of GoFundMe's right now that will go directly to the families. You can always donate blood, of course, because that helped a lot of people, folks who- were killed.

Anngelle Wood: 29:45

they come from all parts of the state. I think that maybe some people might be under the impression that these are all people that lived right in Lewiston and I know the families were pretty adamant about not wanting necessarily to include the hometowns of some of the folks that passed away.

Bernadette : 30:02

Yeah, I saw that too. I mean, I'm sure you don't want media knocking on your door to talk to you about things that were the most traumatic things that ever happened to you in your life. That's not helpful. In fact, today I saw on Facebook I can't believe this. They were saying if you would like to send a card or a message to Robert Card's son, here's an address to do it. But they named him on Facebook and I was like what a nightmare. There's no common sense there.

Anngelle Wood: 30:36

Do you know much about his son? I know that he's like 13. That's all I know. This is going to be a traumatic thing for that child to have to deal with in the coming weeks and months and years to realize all of this that has happened.

Bernadette : 30:53

Robert Card's family too, I believe. They've been getting death threats and they were nothing but helpful from the beginning and before, and I can't imagine the pain they're going through also.

Anngelle Wood: 31:07

His family. As much as anyone else wanted him to turn himself in tried to inform people of some of the things that were going on with this guy.

Bernadette : 31:19

Yeah, they definitely went to the police ahead of time.

Anngelle Wood: 31:23

Yeah, and it seems to me, based on some of the research that I have done up until now, that they were trying to flag him on their own, trying to indicate there's something going on here. And there was one story I recall reading I don't remember where it was one of the many publications that a family member said I try to remember the context of what they said that when they heard what had happened they kind of knew it was him.

Bernadette : 31:54

So awful Like your worst nightmare yeah.

Anngelle Wood: 31:57

Because of the location, because of some of the details, they did the process of connecting all of those dots. So so many hours passed where there was a manhunt. Unfortunately, there were a number of manhunts on the East Coast during this long weekend. So I heard the Robert Card manhunts in the Lewiston Maine area. There is another person at large right now in the Gardner mass area that I'm watching very closely, a man that allegedly murdered his wife.

Bernadette : 32:30

Any updates on that?

Anngelle Wood: 32:31

Nothing, nothing. I'm trying to follow it and I have a few folks that live in the town who are plugging in some information as things are made known to the locals. There's still nothing. So is this person gone? I think we are probably dealing with a similar situation as Robert Card, that the authorities are putting in some real search hours, but the likelihood of this person still being alive I don't know. Just like Robert Card, his car was found. They were thinking oh, did he get away on a jet ski, did he?

Anngelle Wood: 33:09

on a boat? On a boat? Was somebody waiting for him? Did someone pick him up? Did he arrange something? I don't think he did any arranging. I don't really think that there was much planning involved with this really.

Bernadette : 33:20

Yeah, I did notice in the in the video he definitely had ammunition with him, but I think that may have been the amount of planning that he did, because it seems like he I mean, we don't know for sure, but he parked his car, walked along the water on paths and may have suicided that exact same night.

Anngelle Wood: 33:45

I think that probably was the case and we know that there was a note he had written for, we believe, his son, with some personal details. We don't need to know what the note says. No, if that's something that was meant for a family member, we don't need to know and I don't think that we need to press anybody on that.

Bernadette : 34:09

quite frankly, pretty basic information his phone passcode, his bank account numbers, and that's it.

Anngelle Wood: 34:19

Do you know, without having to reveal any personal stuff about the former partner? It's believed and again, this is all stuff we may find answers to or we may never there was a reported like former girlfriend or a former partner who may have been targeted at one of those venues which which Robert Card had been, I'll say, a regular, for lack of a better term. Do we know any more information as to whether that partner may have been targeted, that there's an X that exists somewhere?

Bernadette : 34:58

Well, when I first started looking into it, I saw that there was a restraining order and that there were a couple ex-girlfriends that were afraid of him. And then the police said the only thing they found in his past records was an OUI. So maybe that's not true, but I mean, they are saying that he may have been targeting an ex-girlfriend, but they also said that he was fired from his job, and that wasn't really true. He wasn't fired, but he just didn't work there anymore.

Anngelle Wood: 35:27

Well, and if he's having a mental health crisis, we know that things start to fall away. People's ability to show up at a job regularly and work through the day, all of these things are affected. And you know, I do have compassion for somebody who is having a mental health crisis. I can't look at the situation and say, oh, poor guy. That's not really how I feel completely. I really do wish he got help. I really do wish we didn't have 18 dead loved ones and 13 more injured ones or more.

Bernadette : 36:05

It's so much bigger than all of us. Yeah, it's hard to make sense out of something that doesn't make sense.

Anngelle Wood: 36:11

That's right. These are the things I think about, and I think there are a lot of people like me. So we've had school shootings, we've had grocery store shootings, we've had church shootings, we've had synagogue shootings, we've had movie theater shootings, mall shootings. Now we've had bowling alley shootings and your local bar shootings. We're not safe. And Maine, quiet town, maine, and big city, minneapolis and small town, you know Oklahoma, you know it's, it's anywhere and everywhere.

Bernadette : 36:45

Yes, and Maine's not excluded. No.

Anngelle Wood: 36:48

I'm not the kind of person who looks at everything, as you know, everything's bad news. I try to be positive, I try to see the good in things, but at the very same time I get really nervous for people. I get really nervous for parents putting their children on a school bus and I get really nervous for, I guess, for all of us for leaving the house. You know, for some people, covid, a COVID lockdown, was great and magical and they learned how to, you know, a big bread. But for a lot of other people, a COVID lockdown was dangerous.

Bernadette : 37:25

Yeah, in many ways Mental health, wise addiction wise.

Anngelle Wood: 37:30

If you were in a bad relationship with somebody, you couldn't get away from them. Yeah.

Bernadette : 37:33

You know, there's.

Anngelle Wood: 37:34

There's a lot at stake. You know, you really did hit the nail on the head. When we talk about things like where are the mental health resources? I don't know where they are. I know that. We know that the United States of America has money for the war machine.

Bernadette : 37:51

Yeah, that's never going to stop. The government's priority is not its citizens, and they've shown that time and time again. And we're suffering and a lot of people are suffering.

Anngelle Wood: 38:03

Clearly there's some responsibility to be had in what has happened with the Robert Card story. We can finger point all day long and it's not going to change the fact that this man felt in his mania or whatever he was experiencing. Going in and shooting people was the answer or the solution or what he was being directed to do by his voices. We're probably never going to know everything that happens. You know we hear stories about. I remember reading in a number of publications where he had severe hearing problems and he had hearing aids and that increased the voices that he was hearing. I'm like there was probably some psychosis.

Bernadette : 38:51

It's just hard for me to understand how, if it wasn't a mental health issue, it does seem a lot of times, whenever there is a mass shooting or a spray shooting, it's a white male who cannot handle life's issues. It's not women going out and shooting people. It's not. I mean, obviously women kill people. I'm just saying when there's a mass shooting, you know, 99% of the time it's a white male who got fired, lost his girlfriend, etc, etc. And instead of dealing with that or getting mental health, they take a bunch of people out with them and it's very hard to understand. I don't understand.

Anngelle Wood: 39:35

It is horrifying, and I'm with you on that. Unfortunately, statistically, it is generally a middle-aged white person.

Bernadette : 39:45

Yeah.

Anngelle Wood: 39:46

There's some research, deeper research, that needs to be done in this area, and we need to figure out what the hell is going on. To try to remedy some of this stuff.

Bernadette : 39:58

I mean, this keeps happening over and over, and you can talk about the guns or politics or mental health, yeah, but I feel a little bit helpless about it. But all you can do is love the ones around you and support your community. And it really starts there. And because the government's not going to help us and we have to do something ourselves, in a in a small way, to change anything, and that's the only hope, yeah, I can come up with in this situation.

Anngelle Wood: 40:28

And that's the true beauty of community is that really the folks around us are going to be the ones that are going to be more helpful. Yes, in a community like Lewiston and the surrounding areas, no one ever anticipated this was going to happen. On a Wednesday night, out going to the bowling league or what they were playing another game right, cornhole, cornhole. No one would imagine on a Wednesday night, cornhole League that those folks wouldn't be coming home again that night.

Anngelle Wood: 41:06

And it seems absurd to even say it out loud A Wednesday night. Cornhole game was the last thing somebody did. It's horrifying and truly sad. I'd like to think that we can prevent this from happening again, but really the only way we're going to be able to prevent it is by talking about it. Correct, yes, and you know. You always hear it. You always hear it after something like this happens. Well, let's not talk about politics. It's all political. What we're going to do about it, I don't know. I don't know. We can vote until our hands fall off, which is important. I'm not saying not to vote. Voting is very important, but we need to think about who those people are that we're putting into office Right the common sense things that you, you hit the nail on the head. We're not even asking for stuff that that sounds radical and crazy.

Anngelle Wood: 42:04

We're asking for some common sense stuff that really everybody across the board can agree on.

Bernadette : 42:11

Yeah, the smallest changes would actually save a lot of lives.

Anngelle Wood: 42:17

Thinking about Maine being a state where there's a lot of sport hunters, is a lot of sports men and women. You know, I know for a fact that people who are gun owners, they want other people to be responsible gun owners. Of course, no doubt in my mind about it the people who are common sense gun owners want people to be, to use common sense with their guns. This situation with Robert Card in Lewiston Maine and murdering 18 people, it's just none of those things.

Bernadette : 42:52

I feel like it could have been prevented.

Anngelle Wood: 42:55

And there's so much I don't think we're ever going to know about what led to this.

Bernadette : 43:00

Right, but it ended very badly for him and his family and many other people.

Anngelle Wood: 43:08

I'm glad that he didn't go to another location. He went to two. Oh, I know, was he thinking about more? I'm just glad that it stopped where it stopped Right. The areas where you are Lewiston, lisbon, bowden is probably not too terribly far from where he was found right. Yeah, pretty close. There must be memorial plans for the folks coming up. There's going to be, unfortunately, a whole lot of funeral services to come in the next several weeks.

Anngelle Wood: 43:44

Lots of memorials around the town, people hanging up pictures and you know you're hearing things like Lewiston Strong and people love each other and I look at a similar situation when I was watching what was happening in the Lewiston area how the lockdown came and people respected it as people would. It wasn't completely unlike what happened in my area when the Boston Marathon bombers were discovered. It wasn't even in Boston proper when they located and identified these two guys. It was in the Cambridge and Watertown area, which is, you know, a handful of miles away from where the bombing happened.

Bernadette : 44:35

I think the police had the same determination in. Maine as they did in Boston, because, like I remember, my sister went to a, she had a concert in Boston during the Boston bombings and the police were like opening her trunk and looking through her trunk and things like that and they must have been everywhere. That must have been terrifying for you. It was scary.

Anngelle Wood: 44:59

Once we learned that they found them and they were chasing them and then they were having a gunfight on the street of Watertown. It was horrifying, and it was. We were all collectively, much like your community in southern Maine. We were like get those motherfuckers Right, we'll stay home, we'll stay home, you go and do what you got to do, we'll get out of your way, we do it again. That was terrifying because they really were hell bent on killing more people. They had already proven by then that they were ready to kill and they were, as we understand it, they were on their way to the next thing. We believe that those two men were going to go to New York City and try to pull some shit in downtown Manhattan.

Bernadette : 45:53

Wow.

Anngelle Wood: 45:54

And it was similar to what they did in Boston, and they stopped them. One of them died and one of them is in prison for the rest of his life. He's very young and he could very well see an execution. I don't know if that'll happen in our lifetime, but he got the death penalty, they took it away and they gave it back.

Bernadette : 46:13

Oh, I didn't know. They gave it back.

Anngelle Wood: 46:16

The feeling in. You know, people in Massachusetts is definitely understood yeah, they lost an area, definitely understood what was going on and what was at stake because you had somebody who was, you had a rogue shooter on the run. There was no way to know what that in those hours immediately after the shootings, whether he was going to go after more people, there was no way to know. Right, and the right thing to do is what they did Everybody just stay put for right. Now we got some shit we got to do and they figured it out. They figured it out and very shortly after they lifted the stay at home order, they found his body and they may have found him before that.

Anngelle Wood: 46:58

They just didn't let us know that right.

Bernadette : 47:00

Well, they said it was. They found him on the third time they looked. I guess it's a pretty big property. We can't in Maine say never us anymore. You know it's, it's everywhere.

Anngelle Wood: 47:13

It's overwhelming when you think about it like that.

Anngelle Wood: 47:15

It's overwhelming when you think of. You know people have lived through this kind of traumatic experience and the things that they, this wisdom and understanding that they possess, against their wishes. You know, nobody wants to be a part of that club. Nobody wants to be like. Well, I experienced that, unfortunately. I know what you're going through and let me tell you what worked for me. Nobody wants that experience at all.

Anngelle Wood: 47:41

No, it's part of a club nobody wants to be a part of, and I say that when I'm referring to you know, various cases of, you know, missing loved ones. Nobody wants to be in this, this club of, oh, you know, my loved one went missing. What happened to your loved one? It's this bonding, this, you know, trauma bonding that it's so unfair that people even have to know what that feels like. It's truly sad and disappointing. In thinking that, you know there's a whole bunch of trauma taught. There were little kids in there, lost family members and parents and little kids trying to figure out, you know, where their loved ones are. And these are the things that come from this.

Bernadette : 48:23

Yeah, I always think of, like you'll hear 18 victims. Well, no, that's not true.

Anngelle Wood: 48:29

It's the circle around those 18 and then the circle around that and then the circle around that Right, it's absolutely right, and you know when. Think about the first responders and what. What they have to work through is just it's outrageous. Well, thank you for for chatting with me. Yeah, thanks for checking on me. You have your family close by right. You have a support team around you, yeah, and you've born and raised there, right Is that your is?

Bernadette : 49:00

that your home? No, I was born. I've been born and raised in Maine, but I've lived everywhere in Maine. I've lived in Marteville and Bangor and Lisbon and I've lived all over Maine, Good state.

Anngelle Wood: 49:13

For me, it's a peaceful place. I'm sorry that experiences like this ruin that peaceful feeling for people.

Bernadette : 49:20

Like I said, maine's a strong state and we're just going to try to work through this and come out stronger, because that's all you can do to go on.

Anngelle Wood: 49:30

And that's what's special about New Englanders. I say that a lot about just. You know more so the region where we are. You know sort of Massachusetts and North, although you know you can include Connecticut in there. You know even the park that likes the Yankees. Sorry, connecticut, I love you but we are.

Anngelle Wood: 49:49

I say we're a crusty people and it has to do with a lot of things that has to do with, like our weather worn souls that people don't quite understand what that means. It's very cold here and our skin gets really chapped, but it does something to our hearts and our souls that makes us stronger. And it really is true we're just a different kind of people and people don't really understand it so much. They got caught up in like the accents and stuff like that, which is all part of our beauty, right. But it's, new Englanders are special people.

Anngelle Wood: 50:26

I don't really think I ever want to leave. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world. It has the best people. We have a different understanding about things. That doesn't translate in other parts of the country. It's just something special, right. So love to everybody in Lewiston and Lisbon and there's a lot of folks that have a lot of physical healing to do and a lot more folks that have some emotional healing, and you have a great force of people and unfortunately, these are the kinds of stories that we'll be retelling for a long, long, long time. Remember when you know. Thank you for your time, it was great to just chat with you. Let's make sure we keep in touch and take care.

Anngelle Wood: 51:30

There are a number of ways to support the victims of the Lewiston main shootings. There's help for the victims and families and support for mental health. I will link them all to the show description and the episode notes. A community resilience center will open at 184 Main Street in Lewiston on Monday, november 13th. There's the Central Main Medical Center, compassionate Care Fund for Trauma Response and Support, the Lewiston Auburn Area Response Fund, the City of Lewiston Support Fund and many, many more that I will share with you Now.

Anngelle Wood: 52:11

It's most important to center the victims of this story 18 people between the ages of 14 and 76, with pasts and presents and dreams and plans and goals and futures Ron Moran, 55,. Peyton Brewer Ross, 40,. Joshua Seal, 36,. Brian McFarrelain, 41,. Joe Walker, 57,. Arthur Strout, known as Artie, 42,. Max Hathaway, 35,. Steven Vozela, 45,. Tom Conrad, 34,. Mike DeLaurier, 51,. Jason Walker, 51,. Tricia Aslin, 53,. Bill Young, 44, and his son, aaron, 14.

Anngelle Wood: 53:14

Bob and Lucy Violet Bob was 76. Lucy was 73. They were married for almost 50 years. Bill Brackett, 48, and Keith McNeer, 64. Keith was only visiting Maine. He's from Southern Florida. There is that adage time heals all wounds. I don't believe that, as the days and weeks go by, distance will grow between our hectic day-to-day and these stories, but for the families and the loved ones of these people, their lives are going to be very different. Thank you for listening. I will post links and information at CrimeOfTheChewistKindcom and in the show notes. Follow the show at Crime of the Chewist Kind and maybe I'll see you Thursday night for our first live and in-person meetup at Off Cabot in Beverly, massachusetts. And yes, please lock your goddamn doors.