Police on Wednesday identified the man charged with the murder of Maine lawyer and philanthropist Robert Fuller Jr. as an employee of the Maryland assisted living facility where Fuller was fatally shot on Valentine’s Day.
Maurquise Emillo James, 22, of Baltimore, was arrested on Tuesday. He is also suspected of shooting at a state trooper during a traffic stop in Baltimore early Tuesday morning.
James was found in his vehicle in downtown Rockville, Maryland, on Tuesday, Montgomery County Department of Police Chief Marc Yamada, said. Police chased James on foot and ultimately arrested him.
He is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Fuller.
Fuller, 87, was found with a gunshot wound to the head about 7:34 a.m. on Feb. 14 in his apartment at Cogir Potomac Senior Living Facility on Potomac Tennis Lane in Gaithersburg, according to the Montgomery County Police Department.
He died at the scene, and after an autopsy his death was ruled a homicide.
James had worked as a med tech at the assisted living facility since October 2025 and continued to work there after Fuller’s death, Capt. Sean Gagen, head of the major crimes division for the Montgomery County Department of Police said on Wednesday.
He had worked the night before he allegedly shot Fuller and had given him medicine, Gagen said.
After police released a short video showing a suspect walking through a courtyard at Cogir around the time Fuller was shot, other people at the assisted living facility came forward saying they had seen James in the same plaid jacket on multiple occasions before the homicide.
The person in the video appeared to have long hair that Gagen suggested was a wig, saying that a search of two locations after James’ arrest turned up “numerous wigs at one of the locations along with a mask,” noting that the person in the video appeared to be wearing a mask.
After Fuller’s death, Gagen said, James was seen at Cogir outside of his normal work hours. While he was there, an employee got an alert from an alarm on an exterior door and confronted James, who allegedly denied being near the door and left saying he had to get his keys.
After he left, an employee and a security guard at the facility found a napkin and piece of folded paper at the exterior door suggesting that the latch had been wedged open, Gagen said.
Detectives later found that the battery had been flipped around to disable the door alarm, and a log of the security system found that the alarm had not been functional since early January, Gagen said.
When asked if James was potentially an ongoing threat after Fuller’s killing, Gagen said, “I truly believe we headed something nefarious off.”
However, police on Wednesday said they are still trying to determine a motive for Fuller’s killing and are hoping people will come forward with information now that James has been arrested.
James is being held without bond. A bond review is set for Thursday at 1 p.m., then a date will be set for a preliminary hearing.
The first-degree murder charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, John McCarthy, the state’s attorney for Montgomery County said.
Montgomery said James will be tried for the homicide first, then could be transferred to Baltimore to face charges related to shooting at the state trooper.
Fuller practiced law in Maine for more than 35 years, was a senior officer in the Naval Reserve, and wrote the novel “Unnatural Deaths,” published in 2009.
His philanthropy included contributions to many institutions in the Augusta area, including a $1.64 million gift in 2021 to modernize Cony High School’s Alumni Field complex.
He was a relative of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who served from 1888 to 1910 and notably voted to uphold segregation in the landmark decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that “separate but equal” facilities and accommodations for U.S. citizens based on their race didn’t violate the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. That 1896 ruling stood until 1954 when the high court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, struck it down in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Robert Fuller Jr. commissioned a statue of the former chief justice in 2013 that was installed in front of the old Kennebec County courthouse in Augusta. The statue, however, became controversial after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 and the scrutiny that followed of the country’s history of racial injustice. Fuller ultimately agreed to take the statue back and pay for its removal.
Fuller had moved to the Washington, D.C., area to be closer to family.
BDN writer Christopher Burns contributed reporting.
