John Benoit’s claim (letter, Aug. 15) that Dennis Dechaine’s truck was locked is incorrect, as the rear slider window was unlocked.
Perhaps more importantly, as reported by Maine State Police Detective Hendsbee, the doors could be locked without a key. Thus, anyone could have removed items.
The state lab found no fingerprints, hair or other evidence that Sarah Cherry had been in that truck, and the tracking dog indicated no scent of her. Prosecutor Eric Wright explained these inconvenient findings by claiming that this was “how God wanted it.” Really?
I give much greater weight to scientific evidence, including time-of-death evidence and fingernail DNA evidence, which support Dechaine’s claim of innocence.
But since Benoit is more interested in circumstantial evidence, I would suggest that it is most unlikely that Dechaine would have locked his doors in any event, and that, having parked the truck in the woods 75 feet off the road, he would have then taken Sarah back across a public road. If, after the murder, he had simply returned in the direction of the nearby road, he would certainly have found his truck.
With 100 percent of the scientific evidence supporting Dechaine’s innocence, with two detectives’ testimony discredited by their own notes, and with circumstantial evidence that is inconclusive, the only significant evidence remaining in the state’s case is that somebody removed incriminating items from Dechaine’s truck.
The most complete account of the evidence in this tragic case is found in the second edition of “Human Sacrifice,” by retired federal agent James P. Moore and published in 2006.
William Bunting
Whitefield
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