WATERVILLE (AP) — The bell at Colby College’s Lorimer Chapel will ring 10 times on Monday for the 10 years that have passed since a 21-year-old student was abducted and murdered by a prison parolee.
Dawn Rossignol of Medway was kidnapped in a parking lot at the Waterville college just after 7 a.m. on Sept. 16, 2003. Her body was found the next day near a stream in a neighboring town.
The murder of the 21-year-old senior, who hoped to become a pharmacist, made national news and shocked the Colby community, which many thought of as a sanctuary from crime and violence.
Edward Hackett is serving a life sentence for her death after pleading guilty to murder, kidnapping and other charges. At the time of the killing, he was on parole for kidnapping and robbery in Utah and was living with his parents in Vassalboro.
Waterville police and Colby security officials agreed the killing could have happened anywhere and couldn’t be blamed on the college security.
“Everyone who looked at this situation agreed that it was a random act. Colby is comfortable that our security protocols were more than adequate at the time,” spokeswoman Ruth Jacobs told the Morning Sentinel (http://bit.ly/1bkwPPM ).
The killing also shed light on the challenges facing the corrections system and mental health care providers.
Hackett was on parole from the Utah prison system, where he’d been convicted for burglary and kidnapping, when he told mental health care providers he knew he was not going to be successful and that he planned to do something violent so he would be returned to the structured setting of prison, according to his court-appointed lawyer.
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