The Shining, But More Quaint

details of the account remain covered until revealed He took a room on a permanent basis, almost like an apartment, because the owner, sixty-five-year-old Julie Bullard, was struggling to fill the place and wanted the steady income. Julie had moved to Maine a couple of years earlier from San Francisco, where she had run a bed and breakfast in the Castro district for years after twenty-four years in sales. She had remodelled the Black Bear Inn, and the local chamber of commerce credited her with bringing it back to life. By the summer of 2006 she had decided to sell up: bookings in the mountains were too thin to live on, and one of her daughters had bought a house in Brooklyn and invited her to move down. She had also taken on a live-in handyman, James Whitehurst, giving him a free room in exchange for repairs and some cooking.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He had studied English at the University of Maine at Farmington on and off from 2001 without ever finishing a degree, and he worked as a line cook, most recently at the Sudbury Inn in Bethel after being fired from the Family Fair restaurant in Farmington in 2005 for not getting on with his co-workers. this part of the story is covered for now The local police chief, Richard Keayton III, said the name did not stand out. A bookseller in Farmington who knew him as a regular customer described him as very bright, unpredictable and closed off, fond of classic literature and comedy books, and said he would be very surprised if any of it had to do with a cohesive ideology.

details of the account remain covered until revealed That day he invited Whitehurst on a fishing trip, saying he had his own cabin in Upton, about thirty miles away, with a great lake. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it There was no cabin and no fishing hole. this part of the story is covered for now He left him there and drove back to work his restaurant shift; colleagues said he was just himself. The next day, Saturday, he returned, doused the body in petrol, set it alight and buried what was left in a shallow grave off the road.

By Sunday Julie Bullard was asking where Whitehurst was. details of the account remain covered until revealed He shot her repeatedly inside the inn in what was described as a hail of gunfire, then went to work his Sunday shift at the Sudbury Inn in Bethel, where his boss regarded him as reliable.

On Monday 4 September, Labor Day, Selby Bullard, Julie's thirty-year-old daughter, could not reach her mother. Selby had broken her leg a couple of months earlier and was still limping; she had recently lost her husband in a car accident and had a twelve-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son. She and her friend and colleague Cynthia Beaston, forty-two, who both worked at the Apple Tree Realty office in Bethel, drove out to the inn to check on Julie, worried that an asthma attack had left her unconscious. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He then dismembered all three bodies with a chainsaw, a hacksaw and a pickaxe, cutting off fingers, apparently to remove rings. He also killed Julie's two dogs, apparently for fear they would drag body parts into the open. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed He found the two women and the dogs, then a third body under a tarp about fifty yards away, and telephoned police. At about 5.30 p.m. Trooper Dan Hansen of the Maine State Police was dispatched to what was logged as an unattended death at the Black Bear Inn. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Hansen found father and son sitting on a bench, radioed for backup, and asked what was going on. this part of the story is covered for now I shot them all. The gun's in the house in the tool chest.' He said he would tell the story only once. Hansen cautioned him, cuffed him and put him in the cruiser with the in-car video running. details of the account remain covered until revealed Hansen asked one further question, whether anyone was alive, and was told everyone was dead.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Hansen found the third body under a tarp. this part of the story is covered for now That evening Lewis led officers to a fire pit in C Surplus, and a forensic anthropologist later confirmed the remains were Whitehurst's. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He told her he had thought about killing people since he was about twenty-six and that he would certainly have killed more if he had not been caught.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed The court suppressed only one remark, his answer to Hansen before the caution that it had 'been a while', and refused the rest. In December 2006 he was placed on suicide watch after cutting a deep X into his scalp with a disposable razor. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Psychologists testified that he had a schizoid personality disorder and possibly Asperger's syndrome, and his lawyers sought to have him declared incompetent and to run an insanity defence. He was found competent. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Dr Anne LeBlanc, head of the state forensic service, said he was not psychotic but had a personality disorder with antisocial, narcissistic and schizoid features, and Dr Charles Robinson, a forensic psychologist for the defence, called it a spree killing. The prosecutor argued the murders were premeditated, that he intended multiple deaths, desecrated the bodies, killed the dogs and used a dangerous weapon, and that he had shown no real remorse. Victim statements came from Whitehurst's sister Donna Diana Taylor, who drove from Arkansas, from Julie's daughter Brooke Bullard, and from Cynthia Beaston's brother and mother. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now Whitehurst's remains were sent to Arkansas for burial, and his sixteen-year-old son cleared a patch of the woods where he died, laid a heart of stones and left a letter under a rock.