Killer studied sex offender lists

AUGUSTA, Maine – A man who fatally shot two people named in Maine’s sexual offender registry drove by the homes of four others in the area who appear on the list, a police official said Tuesday.

Stephen Marshall also viewed the national registry, as well as those in New Hampshire and Vermont, said Col. Craig Poulin, Maine’s state police chief, briefing a legislative committee on the investigation into the April 16 killings.

Marshall got information on 34 sex offenders from Maine’s online registry, then created his own list of 29 offenders, with their pictures, names and addresses, on his own computer, Poulin said.

Investigators are studying Marshall’s computer hard drives, which they brought back from Nova Scotia, where the 20-year-old killer lived.

As a teenager, Marshall lived for several years in Culdesac, Idaho, with his father.

Police say Marshall took three guns and a pickup truck from his father, now living in Houlton, Maine, before driving to central Maine and killing Joseph Gray, 57, through Gray’s living room window and William Elliott, 24, when he answered his door.

Marshall fatally shot himself later that day when he was confronted by police on a bus in Boston.

Gray and Elliott appeared on Marshall’s computer list, Poulin told the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. A program on his laptop shows that he drove by the homes of four other convicted sex offenders in the area, but police can’t determine whether he stopped at them.

Investigators determined that Marshall viewed the Maine registry April 11 and then shortly before the killings after he arrived at his father’s home.