Mind of a Killer: Thayne Ormsby, Part One
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Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com. You're listening to Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small-town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Zebe.

You can connect with me and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. Nothing is more perfect than a summer in Maine. The small town of Amity, Maine is a Canadian border town with just 230 residents, where truly everyone knows everyone, despite the fact that the closest neighbor is at least a mile away through thick woods.

It was a town where people still slept with their doors unlocked, like simpler times in America's past. In 2010, everything changed for this idyllic little town. This is the story of how Amity lost its innocence to an outsider, and how three innocent people lost their lives. A triple homicide that shook the trust of the residents of Amity,

and made them question just exactly who was living with them. This is the story of a hunt for a killer, the fight for justice, and a search to answer the question of why.

On June 22, 2010, 63-year-old Robert Strout was sitting on his porch just off Route 1, Amity's only main road, enjoying the evening weather Mainers wait all year for, when a familiar truck pulled into the driveway. The truck was distinct and easily recognizable around town: a blue and silver 1989 Ford F-150 with white wheels in the front and silver in the back.

but one that rarely stopped by the Strout residence. It belonged to his neighbor four miles down and former son-in-law Jeff Ryan. Robert's daughter, Tamara, had a teenage daughter with Jeff. Robert sighed with disdain as he stood up to meet Jeff, who, because of his rocky relationship with his daughter Tamara, wasn't one of his favorite people.

Instead, a young man who was living with him, 20-year-old Thane Ormsby, stepped out of the vehicle. Without warning, he walked up to the porch and stood in front of Robert. Thane's shoes and clothes were drenched with blood. "I killed them. I killed them all," Thane said as calmly as one might state a breakfast order. Not giving Strout enough time to register fear, Thane then threatened him.

"I'll kill you and your family too if you don't help me." A day later, the horror of what had happened claimed the innocence of the tiny town of Amity. Around 9:00 PM on June 23, 2010, an anxious Robert DeHaan pulled into the driveway of Jeff Ryan's mobile home for the third time that day in search of his brother, Jason DeHaan.

The headlights of his vehicle illuminated the swing set and toys in the yard, and the towels on the deck railing, hanging to dry from a day of swimming. Jeff Ryan and Jason DeHaan were best friends, and Jeff's home that he shared with his 10-year-old son, Jesse, wasn't an uncommon place to find Jason.

But Jason's family hadn't seen him since yesterday afternoon when he took off on his four-wheeler to go see his parents. Jason spent a lot of time at the Ryan household, so it wasn't out of the question that maybe he'd gotten sidetracked and stopped there instead. What was odd, though, was that he hadn't returned home to his family more than 24 hours later.

The lights were off in the Ryan mobile home, which was peculiar considering that they usually stayed up later than that. So Robert pulled a flashlight out of his glove box and approached the house to peek inside. Panic flooded his stomach as the small circular ring of light hit the living room floor. It was covered with blood, and so was the couch.

He fumbled for his phone to call his father for help, hoping, praying that what he just saw was just an illusion of the darkness or an overactive imagination. But it was no illusion. And when Robert and his father switched the light on, a scene of horror was revealed. Pools of dried blood and an obvious sign of struggle.

It didn't take them long to find the body of Jeff's son, 10-year-old Jesse Ryan, curled up in the back bedroom and covered with blood from multiple stab wounds on his back. When police arrived on the scene, they found 55-year-old Jeff Ryan dead in the woodshed, also stabbed. And just up the driveway, off the road, lying in a ditch, was the body of Jason DeHaan. Robert's search for his brother had ended in tragedy.

It was then that the residents of Amity started locking their doors at night. Amity is a sleepy border town where not much happens, and that's exactly why the people who lived there chose it. And this wasn't just one violent murder, it was three. And one of the victims was a little boy who had just completed the fourth grade less than a month prior. Quote, you have to be pretty cold to stab a kid, end quote. Amity resident Larry Hamilton told the Bangor Daily News.

There were no signs of forced entry at Jeff's home, and none of the animals, including a cat and two Rottweilers, were harmed. Nothing appeared to be missing, either. In fact, the only major thing that seemed to be missing was Jeff's truck.

Police began collecting evidence from the Ryan household as townspeople and mourners gathered at the road, leaving flowers and toys as a memorial along the fence for the three victims. The police didn't have time to mourn with them. They had a job to do, to catch a killer who was still on the loose.

Police initially estimated that the murders had happened about 12 hours before Jason's brother discovered the crime scene. And because Amity is so close to two border crossings into Canada, the closest being only four miles away, they were concerned that the perpetrator could have fled to Canada before the investigation had even begun.

Local PD notified every police department in the state of the missing truck, as well as the National Crime Information Center and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They asked the public to keep a lookout for the easily identifiable truck, hoping it would be a key piece of evidence in their case. News vehicles and police descended on the small town, all eager to break the case. And as the evidence was being collected, police began knocking on doors in search of information.

They started with Jeff's closest relatives in the Amity area, the Strouts, who technically lived in the neighboring town of Orient.

Jeff was married to Robert's daughter, Tamara Strout, for nine years and had a daughter with him before filing for divorce. Though Tamara wasn't Jesse's mother, she said that she and her daughter, Mariah, were completely heartbroken over the news. Quote, Jesse was a good boy. He had his moments like every kid, but he was a good boy. My daughter is devastated. She loved her father, and she loved Jesse. End quote.

Robert answered what he knew, which he said wasn't much. And then police left. But the media didn't, and Robert shared with them his disbelief. Well, we were quite scared, to tell you the truth. This is really, you know, for something like this to happen in a small town like this, you just can't believe it.

Can't believe it. Jeff Ryan was a 55-year-old disabled Vietnam War veteran who'd lived in Amity for about 12 years. Jeff shared custody with his most recent ex-wife, Jamie Merrill, over their son, Jesse, and Jesse attended a local elementary school and mostly lived with his dad. The two had gone through a bitter divorce after seven years of marriage, but seemed to have figured out a pretty good system to take care of their son despite the fallout.

With three ex-wives, Jeff didn't seem to have much luck with marriage. He had multiple children from all three marriages, ranging from his oldest son, Shannon, at 35, to his youngest, Jesse, who was 10. But Jeff was a loving father who devoted everything he had to Jesse. Even his estranged ex-wife, Jamie, admitted that in the aftermath of his death, saying that, quote, Jeff was a great father to Jesse and good with kids in general, end quote.

Jeff loved taking Jesse hunting and fishing, something Jesse talked about often at school. Jeff did anything he could do to bring joy to his son's eyes, and made sure Jesse had the best of everything he loved. He even rented a plasma TV so that the two could watch NASCAR, something they'd recently started doing together. His oldest son from his first marriage, Shannon Ryan, who was 35 and lived in Texas, decided

described his dad as a practical joker who loved to hunt and fish and grow his own vegetables. He said that he spoke to his father every week or so on the phone, including that Wednesday before his murder. Jeff and 30-year-old Jason DeHaan were best friends, having known each other for over 11 years. Shannon told the Bangor Daily News that Jason was like a brother to his dad and visited him almost every day.

He and Jeff were just alike. Jason was an avid outdoorsman. He loved hunting and fishing and riding ATVs. Jason was also a family man. He loved his wife and their three children. Jen Lyons, a staff writer for the Bangor Daily, wrote, quote, In Jason DeHaan's world, his family was the sun that he orbited around. His life was interwoven tightly with those whom he cared about. End quote.

Jason was self-employed and worked with his father as a sheetrock construction worker, a family affair. He was described by his aunt as a, quote, very, very hard worker. He has worked ever since he was a teenager, and he really did everything with his family. He worked hand-in-hand with his brother and his dad. When you would see one, you would see the other two, end quote.

Despite feeling the gravity of the loss of Jason, his wife, Crystal, was thanking the stars for one saving grace, that their nine-year-old daughter, Skylar, didn't go with her father on June 22nd when he hopped on his ATV to go see Jeff and Jessie. She was good friends with Jessie, being around the same age, and almost went over to play with him that day. If she had gone, there could have been four victims instead of three.

But the hardest pill to swallow was that of Jesse Ryan. Jesse was only 10 years old. How could somebody be so cruel as to murder a child in cold blood?

Brenda Adams, one of Jesse's teachers, recalled the bright and funny young boy with a smile, saying he'd secretly undermined her classroom's pencil business at school by selling students a new pencil for five cents compared to her price of ten cents. At a school counseling session, students remembered Jesse as the class clown who always had the best snacks. Another student wrote that when you were sad or down, Jesse could always make you laugh.

It was in that counseling session that Brenda learned of Jesse's secret pencil business. No wonder sales were down.

Three days after the bodies were discovered on Saturday, June 26th, the burned-up remains of Jeff's truck were found. The interior was completely incinerated and the only thing left was the frame. The remains of the truck were taken to the crime lab for analysis, and at the scene, police photographed shoe prints and tire tracks from what they thought might have been an additional vehicle at the scene.

The son of the property owner where the truck was found had no idea of the statewide manhunt for it. Unfortunately, he'd recently removed a deer surveillance camera just a week prior that was focused on the very spot the truck was found, saying, quote, We probably would have had video of the entire thing if it hadn't have been taken down, end quote.

Detectives had somebody on their minds they weren't quite done with yet. Robert Strout. He claimed to know nothing, but police weren't sure that was true. As they went to question him a second time, they quietly made note of his tire treads and the shoes sitting in the doorway. Robert stuck to his story of not knowing anything until police asked where he went on June 25th, two days after the bodies were discovered.

I drove to Sanford by myself that day and returned on the 26th, he said. But Strout was unaware that police had just had a conversation with his daughter, Tamara, at her house, and she may have just accidentally blown his cover. If you were alone, then who is Thane Ormsby?

Thane Ormsby grew up in Ellsworth, a small town in coastal Maine. He was a young man still trying to find his home. He had a lot of potential: intelligent, articulate, charismatic. A good student, even. He would deliver impressive results through his short bursts of intense commitment.

But his lack of self-discipline and sustained effort always left him looking for his next project, as he wandered through life from one thing to another, burning bridges along the way.

In 2008, he impulsively volunteered as a campaign aide to help elect Republican candidate John Frary carry out a bid for Congress, and in exchange for his volunteer work, was offered free room and board in John's home. Frary, like most adults who knew Thayne for a short time, was impressed with his aptitude and his intense commitment. And Thayne's work on John's campaign gave him focus, even a renewed vigor for life.

a vigor that had waned at the end of his high school career when he stopped applying himself in his studies and partied instead. The once straight A student never got his diploma and dropped out weeks before he was set to graduate.

But he poured his energy tirelessly into guerrilla campaigning on foot for John, with a chameleon-like personality that fit in with just about any crowd. Like the talented Mr. Ripley who charmed his way from nothing all the way up the scale of affluence, Thane Ormsby knew how to transform himself to impress and endear the adults he met. Quote,

John told the Bangor Daily News, "...this personality that he developed may have been something he learned from childhood, something he developed to survive."

18-year-old Thane was an aimless drifter, bouncing from one couch to the next. Childhood Thane looked for an escape. The household Thane grew up in was abusive. His mother and her partner were alcoholics and often took to fighting and bringing Thane into the middle of their disputes.

Drugs and booze surrounded the young boy, and Thane often spent nights at friends' to escape the turmoil of home. When he was 12, one of those friends' parents called Child Protective Services, and they subsequently removed Thane from the home.

Thane longed for a stable father figure, and when his uncle took over guardianship, it gave him a second chance at a semi-normal life. Freire's campaign fizzled, losing him the election, and so too did Thane's sense of purpose. Freire said, quote, "During the campaign, he had tasks to do. He had a direction in life. After it ended, he had nothing." End quote.

Thane continued to live with John after the campaign, but he seemed to be depressed about his life and his future and constantly made plans that never came to fruition. When Thane was in high school, he told all of his classmates how he wanted to become an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.

He took an elective military history class that ignited a fire which left a strong impression on him. He devoured stories of military combat and hero assassins whose precision and skill proved their power and superiority. But like the other recurring patterns in his life,

Thane's own ideas and intentions were never followed through with action. Frary knew he wanted to join the Marines and, in an effort to try to get him on track, drove him down to the local recruiting office, but it was closed. After that, Thane didn't want to join anymore, perhaps because he knew that you can't actually join the Marines without a high school diploma.

After the campaign ended, a staff member who was particularly impressed with Thane offered him a place to stay for the winter, a mansion owned by his family that needed some odds and ends done, and a caretaker to keep a watchful eye over the property. Thane gladly accepted, but when he arrived he found himself quite alone in an expansive home left to nothing but his own demons.

He did some odd jobs around town, but he was still in search of something that would ignite a new passion in him. And that's when he met Cindy. He impressed Cindy with his big ideas and his dreams of the future. He gave her his full commitment, driving their relationship forward at a breakneck pace. In only a matter of weeks, he got down on one knee to propose, and she accepted.

After the winter was over, he moved again. He was taken in by Reverend Lewis Glidden from Oakland after he was introduced to him through Cindy. When the Reverend first got to know Thane, he seemed like a nice kid who was just in need of some extra guidance, perhaps a father figure. Not long after they met, Thane had earned his confidence and demonstrated his commitment to the church.

The Reverend dreamed of having his own antique shop and decided that now was the time. He appointed Thane to run it. But the business soon folded because Thane never showed up for work. And the Reverend soon began to see a different side of Thane that he wasn't expecting. One that was manipulative and disingenuous.

In January of 2010, the Reverend traveled to China to do some missionary work and Thane stayed behind, taking care of his pets and helping out around the church in his absence. But while he was there, he started receiving disturbing phone calls from the parishioners. Quote, "They told me that Thane was having mood swings."

He was going from one extreme to the other, and the ladies who came in contact with him were afraid of him and what he would do." He tried to convince him to return to school and finish his high school diploma, but unsolicited suggestions were only met with anger. The Reverend also noticed money started to go missing from his home and from the church, and he felt like Thane was possibly using drugs. "I was afraid of him.

He got angry over little things, like suggestions he didn't want to hear. His eyes would go cold as ice. It sent chills up my spine. I started to realize that he didn't have control over himself or his anger. Others in the church saw it too. But none of us could believe it when we found out what he was really capable of."

After July of 2010, Reverend Glidden believed that he had come in contact with a walking monster. On top of the fallout with the church, Thane faced one of the most devastating blows of his adult life. Cindy broke off her engagement with him. He thought he'd found his answer to life in Cindy, but she felt otherwise and left him without much explanation. In retrospect, she dodged a bullet on that one.

Robert Strout was caught in a lie, and he knew he had to tell police something. And he couldn't get out of answering their question about his road trip to New Hampshire with Thane.

He told them that Thane had been staying at his house with him and his wife since Memorial Day, and that Thane's mother, Maria, was a good friend of his daughter Tamara's. He had plans to help Tamara fix up her home and move in there with her and her daughter, Mariah, who Thane was allegedly dating at the time. The purpose of the drive was to take Thane down to live at his son's in Dover, New Hampshire for a while for a possible work opportunity, and that was the end of the story.

A story with a timeline that seems a little too coincidental if you ask me. And that coincidence didn't slip by police. So they headed down to Dover, New Hampshire to find Mr. Ormsby for themselves.

When Maine State Police showed up at Bobby's door in New Hampshire asking for Thane, Thane happily agreed to answer questions. The charm was turned on and he had purpose, even if only for this moment, to assist these men in any way he can and help them catch a killer he knew would never be caught. In his mind, there was no way that Thane Ormsby was a suspect.

Detectives led Thane to their undercover cruiser, where they let him sit in the front seat for a casual chat about what he knew. Thane spoke about living with the Strouts and said that he'd been introduced to Jeff Ryan about two weeks before the murders, and that was the only time he'd ever met Jeff. He'd never met Jason or Jesse. While he was there, they drank a bottle of beer, and that was about it. Pretty uneventful. He hadn't seen him since.

Thane gave off an air that was almost a little too casual and unaffected, and often went off on knowledgeable tangents about unrelated topics. His high school wrestling team, the days he used to run track in his best records, something he mentioned wasn't possible anymore because he was a smoker, he joked.

Detectives asked him about that habit and, again, Thane took the opportunity to opine, this time about the cigarettes he smoked, hand-rolled and unfiltered with a specific kind of tobacco. Police took written notes, and also mental ones, picking up on Thane's overly presentational and odd body language. Every time detectives would take a note, Thane's eyes would furtively shift to the page, hoping

hoping to catch a glimpse of what the detective was writing. The way he tried to conceal these glances drew the detectives' suspicions. What Thane didn't know was that detectives had collected beer bottles from the crime scene, two of which were matched to Jason and Jeff's DNA, and one with an unknown male profile. They also picked up a cigarette butt, one that was different from the rest, unique.

one that matched the unknown male's DNA from the bottle and looked an awful lot like the one Thane was showing detectives. When asked if he would submit DNA and fingerprints, he did so voluntarily, right there in the car. What did he have to lose? A good assassin always gets away with their crimes. Two days later, on July 1st, police brought Thane down to the station for another chat.

but this time they were armed with the evidence. The preliminary fingerprint comparison on the bottle matched the one that they'd taken from Thane. Police may have found their unknown male profile, but if Thane had only met Jeff once, two weeks before he was killed, then why was the beer bottle still sitting out on the table when police collected evidence? By the time the second interview came to an end, police had a full confession.

on video and paper, with gruesome detail about what happened to Jeff, Jason, and Jesse. What they didn't know was why. Thane said the reason for killing Jeff was because he was a drug dealer and a bad person. But why would somebody without a criminal past, who had just met Jeff, want to kill him in cold blood without any proof, and on that matter alone?

But without immediate answers to those questions, police still had enough for an arrest. And 20-year-old Thane Ormsby was arrested as a fugitive in Dover, New Hampshire, and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Detectives had found their guy. And in the words of Thane Ormsby himself, quote, the search for the killer is over, end quote. But this story is far from done.

Police pivoted their attention back to Robert Strout and told him that they knew he was involved with more than just innocently driving Thane to Dover for work. So Robert spilled his story and told police that out of the blue, Thane approached him the night of the murders, covered with blood and saying that he'd just killed Jeff Ryan.

He then said that Thane threatened him, saying that he would kill him and his family if Robert didn't help him discard the evidence. He said that he hopped in his truck and followed behind Thane, who drove Jeff's stolen truck, to his daughter Tamara's house, and watched as a bloodied Thane went inside the house. A short time later, Thane returned to Jeff's truck wearing only his underwear. His bloody clothes had been left to burn in Tamara's furnace.

After grabbing a change of clothes from Robert's house, Thane led Robert, who followed behind him, about 12 miles down the road before stopping at a small path that travels down a field just off Bancroft Road. Robert stopped at the edge of the road in his truck and watched Thane disappear deeper into the field and sat patient until Thane reemerged from the field on foot. Sitting in the back of Robert's maroon pickup was a container of gas.

Thane was careful not to spill it on himself as he walked it back to where Jeff's truck sat in its final moments of life. Some time later, an impatient Robert drove down the path where Thane had gone, stopping a short distance away from where massive flames swallowed the body of the truck. "It's done," Thane said as he hopped into the cab of the truck and sat next to Robert, smelling of smoke. But there was one final task: the weapon.

Robert said Thane revealed the killing tool, a K-bar knife often used in military combat, and he drove to a bog where Thane parted ways with his favorite knife, tossing it as far as he could into the depths of the murky water. Robert drove Thane back home, where they both retreated to their respective rooms, quietly thinking of a place to mentally hide their dirty secret.

Robert said he wasn't involved with anything beyond that, and he wouldn't have done it if he wasn't afraid for his life. But Thane denied forcing Robert to do anything. Thane said that he never threatened him, and that Robert willingly helped him hide the evidence.

Thane also said that the cover-up was the only thing that Strout was involved with, and that he himself had acted alone in the murders. The notion that Robert had been forced into all this under duress was something that the DeHaan family found hard to believe.

Jason's brother, Jake, said, quote, I think I have to agree with him on that one. And just as shocking was Thane's supposed motive behind the murder, the accusation that Jeff Ryan was a drug dealer.

Jeff did have a prescription for narcotic painkillers, something that stemmed from his back injury in Vietnam. But it wasn't believed that he was selling or using drugs inappropriately at the time of his death.

A criminal record check came up relatively clean in comparison to the accusations, revealing only a disorderly conduct conviction from 1992, for which he was fined $100, and an OUI from 2004, for which he spent a week in jail and a year on probation. His oldest son, Shannon Ryan, said the rumors were ridiculous. Quote,

"My father had a prescription for Vicodin, but he'd had that for years. He was not a drug dealer, and he wasn't selling drugs to anyone. There's no truth to that at all. My father had two things in his life: his home and his son." And if one were to walk around the Ryand household on any normal day, it was clear to see Jeff's devotion to Jesse. The toys and sports equipment in the yard, the swing set in the pool,

the trips he would go on. There were a few photos of his other children, Shannon and his sister, and Mariah Stroud, but nothing compared to the many framed photos of Jeff's outdoor adventures with his 10-year-old son. But not everyone fawned over Jeff's adoration of his little boy.

It was an open secret that Robert Strout wasn't a fan. The biggest problems he had with Jeff were over his rocky relationship with his daughter, Tamara Strout, and Jeff's neglect of their daughter, Mariah.

And much to Strout's dismay, Tamara was rekindling an on-and-off relationship with her ex-husband at the time of the murder. Strout complained that Jeff never did anything with Mariah. It was all about Jesse, and that he never treated Tamara well. He also believed that Jeff was responsible for a drug ring in the area, and not only was he ruining his family, he was ruining an innocent town.

Strout, of course, denied any beef between the two parties and, without any base to go on, publicly stated the reason for Jeff's death was a $10,000 drug debt with his father that Thane was sent to collect. After hearing the details from Thane's confession, Jesse's mother, Jamie, wasn't afraid to be vocal for her outrage over Robert, who still hadn't been arrested for his involvement. Two months after Thane's arrest, that would change.

On September 10, 2010, Robert Strout was finally arrested in connection to the triple homicide and indicted on separate charges of hindering apprehension and arson, both felony charges. Strout had a checkered history of criminal records dating back to 1966, including a felony for stealing a vehicle, several misdemeanors, and a number of hunting and criminal trespassing violations, several of which included reckless behavior with a gun,

shooting from a motor vehicle or boat, and discharging firearms near residences. He pled not guilty to both charges, but was released after meeting his $50,000 surety bail from the equity on his home, a bail that was lowered from $100,000. Unsurprisingly, the families of Jason DeHaan and Jeffrey and Jesse Ryan were crushed over the news of his release. Shannon Ryan expressed his frustration with the Bangor Daily News, saying, quote,

It took them more than two months to arrest this guy, and he sat in jail for only two days and his bail gets lowered, end quote. Jesse's aunt added that seeing Robert Strout around Orient was salt in a still painful wound, and that it was hard to be in the same town as him. She admitted that she couldn't help but think certain things when she saw him. Quote, what was Jesse thinking when this was happening? Was he begging for his mother? Was he begging for me?

I don't even want to know the answer to that. End quote. In August 2011, a year after his initial arrest and still awaiting trial, karma was about to slap him in the face. Hard.

Strout was arrested for furnishing 170 OxyContin pills to his grandson, who then attempted to sell the pills in the Bar Harbor area with his girlfriend. The same Strout who had publicly wailed against his woes of drug-dealing Jeff Ryan. The irony is not lost on me. Both were arrested for drug trafficking, and Robert was arrested as an accessory, which was a violation of his bail conditions.

Agents proved that Strout had provided them with more than 150 tablets of Oxy on at least five occasions. In October, Strout entered a new plea before the judge in the Aroostook County Superior Court for his roles in the murders as well as the drug offenses in August. He pled guilty to all charges against him with an agreement of serving two to four years in prison, admitting to helping Ormsby clean up and discard evidence.

Many speculated that Robert was involved with more than what he was saying, but there was no direct evidence at the crime scene for anyone other than Thane Ormsby and the victims being present. People brought into question his relationship with Thane. Why would somebody just move to the area and kill three people? Meanwhile, Thane's trial was far from being over.

There's only one superior court in Aroostook County and one court justice, which is why trials in that part of Maine take time to get scheduled. Jamie Merrill, mother of the 10-year-old victim, tried to be patient with the legal system, but said, quote, It's really hard. I've had to visit a crisis center. I am upset with the way that the case is going and a lot of other things. I am not happy that it's taking so long, but what

Making the process even slower was the fact that Thane's attorneys filed a motion to suppress the statements Thane made to police in the interviews in Dover, New Hampshire. Thane's lawyers claimed that his Miranda rights were violated, and if he waived his right to having an attorney, he did so involuntarily.

Bill Stokes, the assistant attorney general, denied this, saying, quote, End quote.

According to the affidavit filed, Thane didn't ask for a lawyer at any time. After he was initially interviewed by police, he even advised detectives where he would be staying just in case they needed to find him for additional information. Everything he told them was volunteered. Another thing holding the trial back was the results of Thane's psychiatric evaluation to factor his mental competence, or lack thereof, at the time of the murders.

In April of 2012, almost two years after the murders, the trial of the State of Maine v. Thane Ormsby finally began. The second phase of the trial would determine his sanity when he committed the crimes, but the first phase was to prove whether or not he committed the murders. And the courtroom wasn't prepared for the chilling first-hand account they were about to witness.

The detailed confession video from Thane's second interview with police and an intimate look inside the mind of a cold-blooded psychopath.

I want to thank you so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the conclusion of this story the minute it drops next Tuesday. Part two will dive into the trials and confession tapes of Thane Ormsby and answer the questions on everyone's mind. My

My sources for this episode include articles from the Bangor Daily News featuring the writing of Jen Linz and Nick Sambides Jr., and articles from the Press Herald and the Associated Press. Additional sources include the original affidavits and court files from the case, Sort and Scale podcast, and Investigation Discovery's Signs of a Psychopath and Unraveled. A very special thanks to Byron Willis for his research and writing support.

All links for sources and media can be found in the episode link in the show notes and on MurderSheTold.com. And a very special thanks to you for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. You can follow Murder She Told on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast for key photos from this episode and more. If you loved this episode, please consider sharing Murder She Told with a friend and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

If you are a friend or family member of the victims or anyone connected to this story, you are more than welcome to reach out to me at murdershetoldpod at gmail.com. If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've honored your stories in keeping the names of your family and friends alive. Murder She Told will be back next week with part two. Thank you for listening.

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