Two murderers with ties to central Maine met in the exercise area of the Maine State Prison in Warren Tuesday night — one of them ended up dead; the other is facing another possible murder charge.
Alan D. Powell Jr., 57, originally from Oakland, died about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday after he was attacked by 42-year-old Guy Hunnewell III, originally from Fairfield, according to Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland on Wednesday.
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Powell and Hunnewell “recreated together” at the prison in the past, but without incident, according to Scott Fish, director of special projects at the Department of Corrections.
Fish did not know if the men knew one another before their separate murder convictions.
Powell was serving a life sentence for stabbing and strangling Martha Daigle on June 29, 1989, inside a Waterville apartment house that residents referred to as the Bee Hive, at the corner of Elm Street and Western Avenue.
Hunnewell was sentenced to 40 years in prison for fatally stabbing Stephanie Gilliland, 20, of Benton, on Dec. 30, 1997.
An autopsy on Powell’s body will take place at the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta, McCausland said. No other details of the death have been released.
The death is being investigated as a homicide and Hunnewell remains at the prison.
State police detectives went to the prison Tuesday night and conducted interviews with guards and inmates, McCausland said.
The case against Hunnewell will likely be presented to the next session of the Knox County grand jury in July, McCausland said.
Brutal homicide
Bobbi Frappier, Daigle’s grandson, was 12 years old and living with his grandmother, but had stayed at a friend’s house the night she was killed. He was the one who found her body when he got back to the apartment.
“It was pretty gruesome,” he said Wednesday.
Daigle was killed inside a Waterville apartment house that residents referred to as the Bee Hive, at the corner of Elm Street and Western Avenue.
Frappier said he didn’t know Powell, but feels bad for the man’s family.
“When someone does something like that they don’t only hurt themselves, they hurt their family,” said Frappier, a lifetime registrant on the Maine Sex Offender registry.
Daigle, who was 64 when she was murdered, was the mother of 17 grown children and several grandchildren, according to Morning Sentinel archives.
She had been stabbed repeatedly in the groin, raped and strangled to death.
Waterville attorney Pamela Ames, who prosecuted the Powell case as an assistant attorney general, said Powell was a violent man who had made threats to Daigle in the past.
“It was one of the most brutal homicide cases I tried in my prosecutorial career,” Ames said by phone Wednesday. “He had stabbed her repeatedly and there was a charge of gross sexual assault, which is one of the reasons he got a life sentence.”
Ames said the guilty verdict hinged on physical evidence and motive. DNA evidence was unavailable at the time.
Police used a rolled red bandanna found under Daigle’s body to bring charges against Powell.
Waterville police testified they saw Powell, then 33, sporting a red bandanna rolled in a similar way as he walked around the city. Hair samples taken from Powell’s head were “remarkably similar” to hairs found on the bandanna in June 1989.
Ames said Powell had mental health issues, but never showed an indication of mental disease or defect to mount a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Powell’s criminal record included a conviction for aggravated rape in Texas as well as rape and attempted rape in Maine.
At the time of his death, Powell had served approximately 22 years of a life sentence.
Vicious, premeditated
Hunnewell killed Gilliland, a former girlfriend, in a jealous rage, according to Sentinel reports. The two had dated and worked together at Sonny’s Pizza on Main Street in Fairfield.
Gilliland’s body was found inside Hunnewell’s apartment at 50 High St. in Fairfield. She had been stabbed several times, police said.
Hunnewell pleaded guilty to the murder in November 1998 and the sentencing judge described the attack on Gilliland as vicious and premeditated.
In an interview in December 1999, Hunnewell’s father, Guy Hunnewell Jr., owner of a mud run race track in Embden, said his son’s mother died when the boy was 2. The Hunnewells returned to Maine to the family farm in 1976 and the elder Hunnewell remarried.
Contacted Wednesday, Guy Hunnewell Jr. said he had not been told of Tuesday’s attack on Powell.
He said his son, whom everyone called Chip, was an average student at Carrabec High School in North Anson, but a strong athlete, excelling in baseball, basketball and soccer.
After graduation, Chip Hunnewell did odd jobs as a laborer until landing a work in 1990 at Sonny’s Pizza, where he met Gilliland.
In October 1999, Hunnewell was arrested in Waterville on charges that he assaulted and terrorized a man he thought had been seeing Gilliland.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
dharlow@centralmaine.com
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