AUBURN — The girlfriend of a Lewiston man convicted in 2014 of murdering 20-year-old Romeo Parent pleaded guilty Monday to trying to provide her boyfriend with an alibi.
Felicia Cadman, 22, of Mechanic Falls pleaded guilty in Androscoggin County Superior Court to attempted hindering apprehension.
If she complies with the conditions of her plea and doesn’t run afoul of the law for one year, she will be sentenced to 364 days in jail, with all of that time suspended except for eight days, which she has already served. If she violates the terms of the agreement, she faces six months in jail. She also must spend one year on probation once she has been sentenced a year from now.
A felony charge of hindering was dismissed.
Cadman had sought to provide an alibi for William True, 22, on the night of April 9, 2013, when Parent was killed. Cadman, in an effort to deceive police, told them she had been with True that night.
Prosecutors said True had, in fact, been in a wooded area in Greene that night participating in Parent’s murder.
A jury convicted True of murder in December 2014. He appealed his conviction. While that appeal was pending, prosecutors agreed to recommend a 25-year prison sentence for True. In Maine, murder carries a prison sentence of 25 years to life. He also was convicted of felony hindering for which he was sentenced to 10 years to be served at the same time.
Assistant Attorney General Deborah Cashman had said prosecutors always believed True had played a secondary role in Parent’s murder.
Michael McNaughton, 28, of Lewiston was convicted of Parent’s murder six months before True. The two defendants had been scheduled for a single trial in July 2014, with True facing only the hindering charge. However, he was indicted by an Androscoggin County grand jury on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder on the first day of McNaughton’s murder trial. True went to trial in December 2014, when he was convicted of murder but acquitted of the charge of conspiracy.
McNaughton has not been sentenced. He, like True, challenged his conviction in Androscoggin County Superior Court. That challenge continues.
McNaughton’s attorney, Verne Paradie, had argued that Cadman made statements to police that implicated True in the murder, but not McNaughton.
Prosecutors told the jury at True’s trial that he had been one of three men who went with the victim to Greene on the night of April 9, 2013. True and McNaughton lured Parent down a path on a dead-end dirt road on the pretense of burglarizing a camp for drugs, prosecutors said.
Once in the woods, Parent was beaten, stabbed with a screwdriver at the base of the skull and fatally strangled with a homemade garrote fashioned from a bicycle wire and wooden dowels.
The next day, Nathan Morton, 26, of Greene drove True and McNaughton back to the crime scene where True and McNaughton stripped Parent’s body, bound his wrists and ankles and stuffed his body into the trunk of Morton’s 2007 black Volkswagen Passat, prosecutors said. He drove to Jug Stream in Monmouth, where True and McNaughton dumped Parent’s body in the stream near a dam.
Less than a week before Parent’s murder, he and True had committed a burglary together. Parent had told police about True’s involvement. Police arrested True and put him in jail over the weekend of April 6 and 7, 2013, while Parent remained free.
Parent was branded a “snitch” and the rumor circulated that “snitches need stitches,” according to trial testimony. A short time after True was released, Parent was dead.
Morton implicated True in the murder more than a year after the slaying by telling investigators that True was at the scene the night of the murder as well as a day later to dispose of Parent’s body in a stream in Monmouth. Morton said he drove True, McNaughton and Parent to the murder scene the night Parent was killed and drove McNaughton and True back to the scene the next day. A Maine Crime Laboratory analyst said Parent’s blood was found on True’s pants.
Morton pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and hindering apprehension or prosecution in exchange for his trial testimony. A murder charge was dropped. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison with half of that time suspended.
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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