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A Bangor man on trial for killing his ex-girlfriend said that he “choked” the woman who was found strangled, according to the man’s former cellmate.
Richard Thorpe, 44, is charged with depraved indifference murder in the September 2024 death of Virginia Cookson. Thorpe pleaded not guilty in November 2024, and his trial at the Penobscot County Judicial Center began Tuesday.
Cookson, 39, was found dead on the floor of her Larkin Street home on Sept. 25, 2024, with bruises on her face and an electrical cord tied around her neck. The cause of her death was strangulation and blunt force injury, according to the medical examiner’s report.
In 2024, Thorpe told his then-cellmate, Zach Thompson, that Cookson was “whipping him with an electrical cord when they were arguing about crack” before he took it from her and “choked out” Cookson with it, Thompson said.
Thorpe did not say he killed Cookson, Thompson said.
Thompson, who was in jail for burglary at the time, said he asked Thorpe why he was in the Penobscot County Jail after he saw Thorpe on the news while they were watching television together.
Thompson said multiple times that he didn’t remember Thorpe’s exact wording because Thompson was detoxing when he was cellmates with Thorpe.
Many of his first answers were “I don’t remember,” but when pushed by lawyers or read what he put in his initial statement, he would say “sure.”
Thompson shared what Thorpe said with a guard, and later a Bangor Police officer, because he wanted to move cells, he said. Thompson also asked for his $1,000 bail to be lowered, but it wasn’t, he said.
Assistant Attorney General Kate Bozeman and Penobscot County Assistant District Attorney Chelsea Lynds called 26 people to the stand over the past four days, many of whom were police officers from multiple departments that worked on the case.
The majority of new information revealed in Friday’s testimonies came from Liam Funte, Maine’s deputy chief medical examiner.
More than a dozen photos from Cookson’s autopsy were shared Friday. All of them showed bruising and abrasions on Cookson’s face, neck, back and limbs.
Other additional evidence came from Rachel Williamson, Thorpe’s mother.
Williamson, who was subpoenaed to appear, answered questions about a video Thorpe sent her and Cookson two days before Cookson was killed. The video showed Thorpe being upset about Cookson cheating on him and not letting him live in her house.
The lack of evidence during a six-hour window the night Cookson was killed led Thorpe’s attorneys, Mitch Roberge and Jim Howaniec, to question if the evidence shown connects Thorpe to killing Cookson during those hours.
Previous testimonies revealed that Thorpe’s car and phone were at Cookson’s home from around 10 p.m. to 4:22 a.m. during the time of her death. Thorpe’s phone was later recovered in a field in Levant, but could not be accessed because it was factory reset, said Jordan Perry, the lead Bangor detective on the case.
Although the video and cellphone data show Thorpe was at her home, the prosecution cannot say what the two were doing.
“You don’t know if they were doing drugs, having consensual sex or if he was murdering her at that time,” Howaniec said after Perry said there was no information about what happened in those hours.
Howaniec also pressed witnesses about a lack of video evidence from two entrances to Cookson’s home. Cookson’s Larkin Street home had three entrances. One, the front door, had a camera monitoring it. The others, on the side and back, did not.
Without surveillance of all doors, it’s unclear if someone else entered Cookson’s home and murdered her, Howaniec said.
Bangor Police officers previously testified that no other phone or person could be tracked to Cookson’s home at the time of her death.
After the state called 26 witnesses, the defense called two. They were both Cookson’s neighbors and saw her the night before she died, but only for a few minutes as she was getting in a car with Thorpe.
Thorpe did not take the stand.
After all witnesses were called, Howaniec on Friday motioned for Thorpe to be acquitted because the trial lacked sufficient evidence and forensic evidence that said a third person’s DNA could have been at the crime scene was unexplored.
The motion was not sustained by Justice Ann Murray.
Closing statements will begin Monday morning.
