Town note
Kittery is in York County, Maine, zip code 03904, area code 207; about 50 minutes from Portland, about an hour and five minutes from Boston, and 40 minutes from Old Orchard Beach.
about 0:08:34The story
Kittery, Maine, is the southernmost town in the state, in York County at the mouth of the Piscataqua river. It began as an English settlement around 1623, was incorporated in 1652 as the first town in the district of Maine, and has a long shipbuilding history, with the first US Navy vessels built on Badgers Island and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard working on ships from the War of 1812 to Vietnam. It has 9,653 residents, a median age of 47.1, is about 94.5% white, and is best known as a destination for outlet shopping. The episode is told as a case that only passes through Kittery.
The story starts in Maryland in 1987. Dawn Marie Romano, aged 20, married her high-school boyfriend Keith Garvin, a naval officer based at Oceana, Virginia, in the summer. She lived in an apartment in the Lincoln Woods complex in White Marsh, Baltimore County, with a poodle puppy named Pepper. On November 1, 1987 Keith came up on a day pass; she cooked him lasagna from her mother Betty's recipe, and he rode his motorcycle back to Virginia. At about 8.30 p.m. her brother called briefly to collect keys to Keith's car and left as she was about to walk the dog.
He played lacrosse, studied health science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County without finishing, and worked in his father's pharmacy opposite Johns Hopkins Hospital. He had been told at 11 that he was adopted and reacted violently. He married Phyllis Hurt, but from about 1986 his drinking and drug use, including stealing pills from the pharmacy, worsened. On November 9 he received a year of supervised probation.
He met Dawn as she walked Pepper and persuaded her to let him use her phone. Inside, he made her undress, sexually assaulted her and shot her twice at contact range, at the left eyebrow and right ear. When Keith could not reach her by phone after midnight, he asked his father-in-law Frederick Romano to check.
On November 16 Patricia Hurt, Phyllis's sister, a 43-year-old hospital secretary and mother of two, was reported missing by another sister, Daniel Jones. Sergeant Sydney Brandham found blood at Stillwood Circle, the s' townhouse, and secured it. About 10 a.m. the Maryland State Police found Patricia's naked body in a ditch near Interstate 95 and White Marsh Boulevard. Detective Charles Naylor obtained a warrant and found the .25 handgun in the master bedroom dresser; it was the weapon used on Dawn.
At about 1 p.m. he checked into room 48 of the Coachman Motor Inn under his real name and paid in advance. Lori Ward, a student at the University of New Hampshire who worked part-time at the motel and hoped to become a vet, was shot and sexually assaulted between about 5.24 and 6.30 p.m., and her body was left in a small room behind the front desk. About $300 was taken. Kittery police responded to a distress call. Police found room 48 abandoned with a bloodstained shirt, rope and a vodka bottle. At about 5.10 p.m. on November 17 Freeport police contacted him; a motel manager had recognised the Mustang. After a short negotiation he surrendered unarmed from room 215 to Maine State Police. His car held the room key, bloodstains, an AR-15 and a .380 pistol matched to the Hurt and Ward killings.
In 2001 he told the Baltimore Jewish Times he had sexually assaulted and shot the three women.
On June 17 the US Supreme Court vacated the stay about an hour before the scheduled time, and Governor Bob Ehrlich Jr. denied clemency. His parents said goodbye at 3 p.m. and left, and Rabbi Jacob Max counselled him. His last meal was a chicken patty with potatoes and gravy, green beans, marble cake, milk and fruit punch. He was pronounced dead at 9.18 p.m., and about 60 people outside, including victims' relatives, chanted. Betty Romano watched; Frederick Romano said he had died too easily.