In those two years between the swab and the match, Michael Hutchinson served six months in prison, got out on probation, and returned to Bridgton. Then he violated his probation when he failed to show up in court to answer a driving-to-endanger charge, one that involved driving high with his children in the car. He had also tested positive, on separate occasions, for weed and cocaine. His probation officer recommended that a warrant be issued for his arrest, and the Bridgton Police were eager to comply, happy to haul in a guy who had always given them trouble—driving under the influence, domestic violence calls, drug possession, the usual. But first they had to find him.
The Bridgton cops knew Hutchinson would soon be getting married to his second wife. “Let’s get him then!” they said, laughing, having no idea they would be arresting the killer who had evaded them for almost a decade. They pulled him over as he was driving from the ceremony to the reception and transferred him back into state custody immediately, leaving the confused wedding guests waiting who knows how long at the VFW hall. It was Bernie King, who had been one of the first on the scene of Mom’s murder, who made the arrest. A mere twenty-one days later, the state crime lab caught up on their backlog and discovered that Michael Hutchinson’s DNA matched the samples from the Crystal Perry case. After all those years, the timing aligned perfectly. He would remain in jail until the murder trial began.
Upon hearing about the match, Hutchinson’s new wife, Christy, called her cousin, Dennis Lorrain. Christy knew, of course, that Dennis had once been engaged to Mom.
“They charged Michael again!” she said. “They’re saying he killed Crystal Perry.” She was distraught. “Do you know anything about this?”
He didn’t. But as they talked, Dennis rewound the tape in his mind. He remembered a day back in 1998. He and his friend Tammy had been standing in her driveway, talking about the murder, and she said, “I thought Michael Hutchinson did it.” But Dennis didn’t take her very seriously. At the time he thought, Nah, I’d fucking know that. He and Michael weren’t friends, but they’d been in the same high school class. I know him, he thought. I’d know that. But when it came down to it, Dennis knew anything was possible. And despite all the trouble he’d been through as a suspect, all of the polygraphs and blood draws and the aggressive interviews with Pickett, he had continued to cooperate with the police over the years, even calling them up and bringing them leads when he found them. He respected Walt, and he understood the science of DNA testing. As Christy spoke, he could feel himself getting twitchy, warming up. He started to get angry, thinking he had missed this guy. He had been right fucking there.
Dennis interrupted Christy’s tears. “Just so you know,” he said, his voice level, a man giving a reasonable warning, “he’s safe as long as the cops have got him. But if he gets out for any reason, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to kill him.”
38
* * *
The day Walt called me, the Durham County district attorney went public about an investigation into an accusation of gang rape by several members of the lacrosse team at nearby Duke University. The house where the attack was alleged to have happened was less than a mile from mine. Suddenly I wished my house had more secure windows. Suddenly the drafts and the chill that seeped in through the warped floorboards made it seem like anyone could come in. I asked my roommates to please remember to lock the doors at night.
The case went national; the woman was black, the boys were white. The press was far more interested in the effect these accusations would have on the lives of these promising young men than in the effect of the possible rape on this girl. The district attorney had asked news outlets not to use the alleged victim’s name, but MSNBC let it slip: Crystal. This was when I learned that many people considered Crystal to be a low-class name. To me, “Crystal” meant beautiful. To others, it meant disposable.
Regardless of their guilt or innocence, I’d always feared young men like these, high on their own privilege and secure in their image of boys-will-be-boys innocence. I had long known that evil could hide in plain sight, that this must have been the case in Bridgton. And now I had proof that it had been, that Michael Hutchinson, at nineteen, had a baby face, that he had a soft voice, that he worked hard at his job. That you’d never know, just by looking, that he was a murderer. And I was learning that some people still weren’t convinced he’d done it. That’s impossible, they said. He’s such a normal guy.
A normal guy who had been the subject of numerous domestic violence calls. Who had beaten his ex-wife, Melanie, in front of their children. She had an active restraining order against him at the time of the DNA match, and still she went on television, polished and calm, and said, “I don’t believe Michael’s a murderer. I don’t believe he’s capable of it, and I support him fully.”
Lisa Ackley, the Bridgton News reporter who had insisted that the paper run the body bag photo at the time of the murder, immediately wrote an article contrasting Melanie’s statement with what she had written in her application for the restraining order, which she had filed just one month earlier. Melanie had described a night when Michael assaulted her while their young children were at home. “When I attempted to go to my daughter,” she said, he locked her in the bedroom with him, refusing to let her out. She eventually managed to call the police, who took Michael to a motel. “He immediately called me and threatened to kill me if I didn’t go bring him cigarettes to the motel,” she said. He told her that he’d walk to their house, and “the longer it took the angrier he’d be and the worse I’d suffer.”
* * *
The indictment was handed down on April 6, 2006, around two o’clock, in a hearing where the DNA analyst, the state prosecutor, and Detective Chris Harriman presented affidavits to a grand jury, who agreed that there was enough evidence to charge Michael Hutchinson with murder.
Early that April afternoon, I sat at my desk, ears tuned to the shrill fax-machine clatter that would mean Walt had sent me Chris’s affidavit, which would contain a clear summary of the facts of the case and the evidence that had been presented. Once I read that statement, I would finally know many of the details the police had been unable to tell me before. I sat at my desk tensely, waiting. My coworkers now knew what had happened—I’d had to tell them so that they would be prepared if reporters or others tried to reach me. But I didn’t want any of them pulling those pages off the machine and reading them. It would be unseemly, too personal. At the end of that day, the charges would be made public, media coverage would heat up again in Maine, and thousands of people would know what I was about to discover. But I didn’t want anyone around me to know. I wanted to stay within the safety of distance.