- 8 hours ago
True Crime Story It Couldnt Happen Here S02E06 Vinalhaven Maine
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00:02Vinyl Haven Rescue 3 to knock.
00:05Vinyl Haven Rescue 3, go ahead.
00:10You need help here.
00:13We've gotten a remote phone call, and we're being told that somebody's got hit with an
00:17ass.
00:19I'm bleeding out, I need you!
00:24Somebody's dying on Vinyl Haven.
00:49Vinyl Haven is an island off the coast of Rockland, in Maine.
00:53It primarily is a lobster town.
00:58You can get mussels and clams, fish, crab meat year-round, lobsters if you're fishermen,
01:05so we fight for a good steak, but we don't get it here.
01:11The island of Vinyl Haven is like 15 miles off the coast of Maine, and it's a very small
01:19population.
01:20It's only like 1,200 people.
01:22In this community, everybody kind of sticks together, you know, and does their own thing,
01:28help each other out as much as they can, and we're just like one big family out here, I
01:35guess.
01:36Everybody knows everybody.
01:38Yep.
01:40While it's very beautiful, it's also very isolated.
01:45The last boat leaves at 430, and sometimes the boat don't run.
01:53If there's weather, you're stuck, and you just need to figure out how to get by.
02:00It's a hard place to get in or out of, but this is an island of people who are proud
02:07to be independent.
02:08They are proud to live their life on the water.
02:12My favorite thing about the island is the people and its community.
02:15They're an odd bunch, but hey, who is an odd database?
02:20Most everybody is welcome.
02:23Just don't be a pain in the ass, because you can make enemies fast.
02:29In June of 2020, in Vinalhaven, Maine, there was a physical altercation that led to the
02:37death of 28-year-old Roger Feltes.
02:40And the details of his death and all the events leading up to it, to this day, are still in
02:47dispute.
02:48There's a headline in Esquire called Death of a Lobsterman.
02:52It says, a remote island in Maine, a group of friends thought they witnessed one man killing
02:57another with an axe.
02:59Another article from the Bangor Daily News says, what happened in the frantic minutes
03:03before a Vinalhaven man was stabbed to death?
03:07So even between these two articles, we don't know if it was an axe or a stabbing.
03:14Now, while people on the island demanded answers, the officials, all the way up to the
03:19attorney general of the state, suppressed the details of the investigation.
03:24This article says, islanders want answers from police following a man's death on Vinalhaven.
03:31And I don't know that they've ever received any of those answers.
03:36Roger Feltes' mother, Ivy, lives on the mainland.
03:40And she has agreed to talk with us about what she believes happened to her son.
03:45Hi, Ivy.
03:48Hi.
03:48Are you originally from Maine?
03:50I've lived in Maine my whole life.
03:52Yeah.
03:53Tell me about Roger.
03:54What was some of the stuff that he was drawn to?
03:58Anything mechanical.
04:00Yeah.
04:01Fishing.
04:03Riding bikes.
04:05He always wanted to be around the water.
04:08And so what was the catalyst from Roger going where you guys were living out to Vinalhaven?
04:13He had broken up with Paige's mom.
04:19And Paige is Roger's daughter.
04:22Yeah.
04:22Paige is his princess.
04:25I have pictures of him letting Paige put fingernail polish on him.
04:30Yeah.
04:31And dressing up for tea parties and stuff.
04:33If she asked, he would do it.
04:36So how were things going with this move to Vinalhaven?
04:40Once he got out to Vinalhaven, he loved it and didn't want to leave.
04:44So he had met a lot of new people.
04:46And he had met Jenny.
04:48And Jenny's his new girlfriend?
04:50Yeah.
04:51He felt like that was his soulmate.
04:54But he ended up getting a job going out sternman.
04:57That's like the hard one, the responsible job.
05:00And he was.
05:02He had a really good name.
05:04A lot of people wanted him to work with them.
05:07Jenny and him, they were getting Paige one day a week.
05:10And they were going to start being able to take her out to the island for the weekend with them.
05:14That must have been really exciting.
05:17He was so happy.
05:23Hello?
05:24Hello, this is 911.
05:25What's the address for the emergency?
05:28I'm on Vinalhaven, Maine.
05:30Yeah.
05:32911 just got hit with an axe.
05:34They're bleeding really bad.
05:35We're on our way to the medical center right now.
05:38It was a Sunday night shortly after 10.
05:41He said John was hit with an axe?
05:44Yes.
05:44He's bleeding really bad.
05:46He's bleeding really bad.
05:48Multiple people were calling 911 at the same time.
05:51We have a serious situation going on.
05:53I'm violating right now.
05:54Someone is kind of shot.
05:56There's some calls saying somebody's been shot.
05:59But then more and more calls about an axe.
06:03And then a woman calls and says she's been stabbed.
06:14The 911 operators are clearly getting overwhelmed.
06:18Someone is dying on Vinalhaven.
06:21I have an ambulance started to the medical center right now.
06:24I have other people on hold.
06:26I have to get back to them, okay?
06:27There are other people on hold.
06:28I have to get back to them, okay?
06:28There are other people on show neck.
06:30It was chaos.
06:32My name is Jessie Ellison.
06:34I'm from Camden, Maine.
06:35Born and raised here.
06:36I wrote an investigative feature story for Esquire magazine
06:40about Roger Feltis' death
06:41and the state's investigation of his death.
06:44My objective was to figure out what had happened.
06:48That night, Deputy Dan, the officer at the time,
06:51arrives at the medical center.
06:54Vinalhaven pays for their one sheriff's deputy
06:57from Knox County.
06:58So the one cop is sort of out there on their own.
07:02Deputy Dan finds two people injured.
07:05One is Roger Feltis.
07:07The other is Brianna Ames.
07:10Roger has two very deep, large incisions on his shoulder.
07:16And he's not conscious.
07:19Brianna has a really serious gash in her hand.
07:24Roger's friends immediately start telling Dan
07:27that Brianna's husband Dorian hit Roger with an axe.
07:32Brianna is saying,
07:33Roger Feltis just stabbed me.
07:35And it's unclear initially what had happened.
07:41I had just settled in the VAD.
07:44Brandon, my second to the oldest son, had called me
07:47and said that there was an incident with Roger.
07:51I'm calling everybody, trying to find out what's going on.
07:56And that's when I got the call that he wasn't coming home.
08:04I ended up dropping the phone and screaming.
08:11But we still really didn't even know what had happened.
08:19Eventually, there was over two dozen law enforcement officers.
08:24There were a lot of Knox County deputies, sheriffs,
08:27and then there were Maine State Police who showed up.
08:31I'm Amy Fairfield. I'm a defense attorney.
08:34I practice law in the southern part of the state of Maine.
08:37Brianna Ames was airlifted to Penn Bay Hospital, a nearby hospital.
08:42While in the hospital, she was interviewed by state police.
08:46Many people were hollering that Dorian had hit Roger with an axe.
08:51And so Dan Landers leaves the medical center and is off to look for Dorian.
08:57Dorian was housed at the fire department and ultimately interviewed by Maine State Police.
09:04Both of them claimed that earlier in the evening they came home to find that their front door had been
09:10kicked in.
09:11Brianna was able to call Deputy Landers, who came over and took a report.
09:16At that point in time, nobody knew who may have kicked in the door.
09:21Brianna reported that later in the evening, she was in the shower.
09:26Roger entered their home without permission, yelling and screaming at Dorian.
09:31As she's hearing these raised voices, she then Facebook messages Dan Landers saying, where the heck are you?
09:41I need you. Brianna was calling.
09:45She's Facebook messaging him.
09:48There's somebody at my house.
09:50Cell service is not super reliable in Final Haven.
09:53Facebook is a way that people communicate out there.
09:58When she is unable to reach Deputy Dan, she goes into the living room.
10:03She then claims that Roger Feltes charges her.
10:06Brianna says that she and Roger were physically fighting, like wrestling and punching each other.
10:12She reached up to like pull his hand off of her and like felt a knife on him.
10:17And she like cut her hand that way.
10:20Dorian and Roger moved outside of the porch.
10:22Brianna grabbed the fillet knife from the dish rack and followed him out to the porch.
10:29Dorian then claims that he grabs an axe to de-escalate the situation.
10:35Dorian indicated that Brianna is egging him on, calling him a and a because he will not hit Roger with
10:44the axe.
10:46Dorian says he raised it above his head.
10:48He swung it, but that he did not hit anybody.
10:52He says really it was Brianna who stabbed Roger with a knife that ultimately caused his death.
10:59Their claim is that it was self-defense.
11:02It was a knife, not an axe.
11:05That is a crock of .
11:07To this day, I am very dead set on that it was an axe.
11:12I witnessed it in my own eyes.
11:20The first time I met Roger was with a few of my other buddies.
11:25Me and him just started working on trucks.
11:28Roger was the first person I changed a rear end in a truck with.
11:32I'm Iles Blackington and I'm from Vinyl Haven, Maine.
11:36Born and raised there.
11:38Not everybody can move out to Vinyl Haven.
11:40You have to kind of know how things run and how to treat people.
11:45Roger, he'd been living on Vinyl Haven like eight months.
11:48He was pretty much right with all of us Vinyl Haven locals.
11:55The only enemies that Roger had was Dorian and Brianna.
11:59Everybody liked him other than those two.
12:03Dorian and Brianna Ames are a young couple.
12:07They had been living on Vinyl Haven for a couple of years.
12:12Dorian did tattoos for money and worked occasionally on fishing boats.
12:19They both had lengthy records.
12:22Lots of run-ins with the law.
12:25Dorian is at the time facing charges for shooting at an occupied vehicle.
12:31And that was a case that was sort of winding its way very slowly through the system.
12:38Roger knew Brianna from the mainland.
12:41They grew up together in Waldeburg.
12:43Everybody in Waldeburg knows everybody.
12:45And that's how their problems arise.
12:48Small, petty, stupid stuff that just came on to Vinyl Haven.
12:51And that's how Brianna was.
12:55Brianna would go on social media and just run people into the ground
12:59thinking she was some hot .
13:01She'd run her mouth on there and call Roger all kinds of names and lies about Roger.
13:08There was this sort of brewing beef and antagonism.
13:13Brianna was posting things to Facebook saying that Roger was a pedophile.
13:17And he was trying to figure out how to deal with that.
13:21So at what point does your son start to mention that there's any kind of trouble on the island?
13:29It was like maybe a month before he started saying that he was being harassed on Facebook and stuff.
13:36He put it on the family chat to all of us.
13:39And did he know her husband Dorian at all? Or Dorian just got dragged into it?
13:44I don't think so.
13:45Dorian wanted the job that was on the fishing boat.
13:48And Roger ended up moving out there and getting the job.
13:51Brianna was jealous because Roger got that job that Dorian wanted.
13:58So when this harassment kicks up, how often is he mentioning it to you guys on the family thread?
14:05Oh, it was daily.
14:07What is his course of action?
14:10He said he had talked to Dan Landers a couple of times about the Ames and Dan Landers blew him
14:15off.
14:15And so nothing was done about the harassment?
14:18No.
14:20One day he went for a ride and he had no brakes.
14:24And it's a good thing Roger knows how to drive good.
14:27And he was able to avoid getting into an accident.
14:33And then when they went to repair him, they saw that the brake lines had been cut.
14:38That's a scary threat.
14:40Yeah.
14:42Did he know right away how that happened?
14:46He said he had asked around.
14:48Okay.
14:50And had found out that they had been bragging that they had done it.
14:53Who said they had-
14:54Brianna and Dorian Ames.
14:56He was very upset.
14:57He didn't want to have his daughter out there and be in an unsafe situation.
15:01You said he had already reported the harassment, but this is clearly an escalation.
15:06He said he was going back to talk to Dan Landers with the pictures.
15:11Roger said that he and Landers said that he didn't want to stir the pot.
15:17We'd actually fixed Roger's brake lines and then Roger let it go.
15:21He thought everything was done.
15:23And then a week later they were cut again.
15:26That's when he'd had enough.
15:29On June 14th, Roger was at the bar having a couple drinks.
15:33And a friend was saying, like, what are you going to do about the Ames?
15:37Like, you know, Dan's not doing anything.
15:40You need to handle this yourself.
15:43Roger starts sort of feeling like he needs to go to their house and just, like, deal with it face
15:49to face.
15:50He was just pissed about the brake lines.
15:52He was pissed about Knox County not doing anything.
15:55The accusations about him.
15:57Just the whole works.
15:59And how they were getting away with it.
16:01On the island, they're a small community.
16:05And they have their own set of rules.
16:08Most of the time, if somebody disrespects you, you call them out on it and it's a fist fight.
16:14Roger text us that he was going to call Dorian out on cutting his brakes.
16:22When he said that he was going to call them out on it, he thought he was going to get
16:25in a fist fight with Dorian.
16:27And they're going to settle it.
16:29I mean, I was worried, thinking you're going to end up in trouble, in jail.
16:33But I never thought that this would happen.
16:38So, eventually, Roger leaves the bar.
16:40He disappears for a little bit.
16:44And comes back in.
16:45Jenny's there and he says, I kicked their door down.
16:48But they were not there.
16:50He's a little drunk.
16:52It's a little late.
16:53He's still getting kind of, like, riled up.
16:56Jenny wants to call it a night.
16:59She's like, Roger, you're being a hothead.
17:01But Roger decides to go back to the Ames' house and he gets in his girlfriend Jenny's car and takes
17:07off.
17:14The day that all this happened, we saw Roger.
17:18He was in Jenny's car, driving around Vinyl Haven.
17:21We actually had Jenny with us in the car.
17:25Isles and his passengers saw Roger going at crazy high speeds and so they turned around and met in this
17:33parking lot.
17:36We pulled in.
17:37He pulled in behind us.
17:39He jumped out, screaming, said he's had enough.
17:42I'm going down there.
17:45He wanted to fight Dorian.
17:46He wanted to fight him.
17:47There's no hiding that.
17:49They're all begging him not to go.
17:52Everybody is like, you don't want to mess with them.
17:54Like, they're dangerous people.
17:55And Roger was angry and gunning for a fight.
17:58So Jenny is like, well, I'm driving then.
18:01So Jenny drives him to Dorian's.
18:04Isles and his four passengers follow right behind him because they don't want Jenny and Roger to be alone at
18:11the house.
18:12I knew something was going to happen.
18:17So we drove down.
18:19Pulled in front of the house.
18:22Roger gets out.
18:23We're right behind him, just sitting in the car.
18:26And Roger went up onto the porch.
18:30He pounded on the door.
18:32Opened the door up.
18:33Stuck his head in.
18:35Told Dorian to come outside and fight him.
18:38Man to man.
18:39Like any other man would.
18:40He literally stepped in.
18:42Told him to come outside.
18:43And stepped back out.
18:45And that's when Brianna come out.
18:48She immediately punched Roger in the face.
18:50So she come out.
18:50You want to fight?
18:51Bam.
18:52Hit him right in the face.
18:54Dorian grabs an axe behind the door and comes out.
18:58And told Roger if he didn't leave he was going to hit him with that axe.
19:03Roger didn't have any knife.
19:04No weapons.
19:05No anything.
19:07Brianna was telling Dorian to hit him with the axe the whole time.
19:11She kept telling Dorian to hit him.
19:13Hit him.
19:15He swung and hit him with an axe.
19:17And it sounded like if you were to dump like a five gallon bucket of water over somebody's shoulder as
19:23it hit the pavement.
19:25Which was his blood.
19:27Hit a main artery right here that runs from your heart down your arm.
19:31We put him in the back of the car and went just as fast as possible up to the medical
19:35center.
19:40And we were kind of just in shock.
19:42We just watched our buddy get killed.
19:50The day after, word spreads as it does out there.
19:54Everybody thinks that Dorian is in custody.
19:57Instead they see Dorian walking by Jenny's mother's house in broad daylight with his dogs.
20:03Devil may care.
20:07People were scared and furious.
20:11And then it didn't get any better from there.
20:20After Archer was killed, people started protesting against having Dorian on the island. They wanted him gone.
20:27The investigation didn't go as well as the island as it hoped.
20:32And the island community was very disappointed.
20:37There's a unitedness out here when all hell breaks loose.
20:43The police were telling Dorian, you have to get out of here because something bad is going to happen to
20:48you.
20:49Finally, he leaves for his own safety.
20:53And then a couple of days later, he comes back to get some of his stuff from the house.
20:58We're all pretty pissed off that he was not arrested yet, but then flaunting himself around town the next morning.
21:04And now he's back to get his stuff.
21:07It was kind of like a slap to the face.
21:10So word spreads that he's on the ferry coming back to the island.
21:13By all accounts, he's killed a young man with an axe.
21:19And there he is, just showing up in a U-Haul.
21:21I went down there.
21:23I'm running my mouth, calling him a murderer, everything else.
21:27I actually had about 30 Vinyl Haven residents show up to back me up.
21:42We thought, you're all done. You're done with the Vinyl Haven. You can forget about your stuff and just leave.
21:48This is where the Vinyl Haven is.
21:50Got to come his way.
21:52Once you have 30, 40 Vinyl Haven people like that, there's not much law enforcement can do.
21:57Justice Roger! Murderer!
22:02It's very tense.
22:04And he gets a police escort back to the mainland because they realize it's not actually safe for him to
22:09spend any more time on the island.
22:12He murdered someone. You guys give him a ride to the mainland.
22:15People are just like shouting at the boat as it takes off and heads back to land.
22:19And this one guy is like, these are my tax dollars. This is an outrage.
22:22My tax money is paying for you guys to protect him.
22:26The bodies are useless. That's why vigilantes and Vinyl Haven...
22:32His life was probably at risk, staying on Vinyl Haven.
22:45We heard that there was a murder.
22:49And all we wanted was more information on what exactly happened.
22:54Nobody wants trouble on a small island.
22:58When Roger died, it was shocking.
23:02Things were just not good after that.
23:08From the get-go, the locals in Vinyl Haven could not understand why Dorian wasn't being held in custody after
23:14Roger was killed.
23:15And they were quickly losing faith in law enforcement.
23:18And so I'm going to go speak with local Maine attorney, Amy Fairfield, who has done more than anyone else
23:23to press officials for answers.
23:27Amy?
23:28Hi.
23:28Hi.
23:29I'm so happy to meet you.
23:31You as well.
23:31Yeah, this is beautiful.
23:33Amy, are you from Maine?
23:35I am.
23:36Yeah.
23:36Born and bred.
23:37Yeah, yeah.
23:38So tell me, what stands out to you about this case?
23:41I've handled dozens of homicide cases in this state, and I've never seen the likes of this.
23:48I mean, there was not an investigation.
23:51Tell me about that.
23:52This homicide happened the night of June 14, 2020.
23:57Somehow, out of the clear blue sky, in July of 2020, Knox County convenes a grand jury.
24:03In your professional opinion, is that a fast turnaround?
24:07This was unbelievably fast.
24:11The most basic of cases usually take longer than that.
24:15What is the purpose of a grand jury?
24:17So the ultimate purpose of a grand jury is so the state can test their case.
24:23The prosecutor will assemble their witnesses and present evidence to 13 to 23 citizens.
24:28And they will determine whether the state has met its burden in proving that there's probable cause to believe a
24:36crime has been committed.
24:39Notoriously, grand juries just are sort of the rubber stamp of what the authorities already want to do.
24:44The famous saying is that the grand jury will indict a ham sandwich.
24:49So, in this particular situation, you've got multiple people, first-hand accounts.
24:55This seems like a very easy slam dunk for the prosecutor to get a grand jury to say, like, yes,
25:02bring this to trial.
25:02This absolutely should have been a slam dunk.
25:11As I understand it, Assistant Attorney General Megan Elam presented two witnesses.
25:17Two witnesses.
25:18She presented one police officer and Roger's girlfriend, Jenny Candidge.
25:23There was five eyewitnesses aside from Dorian and Brianna who were not called upon to testify.
25:37When Jenny talks about her time in the grand jury, she was asked her name and where she lived by
25:42Miss Elam.
25:43As Jenny tells it, the grand jurors asked one or two questions, but she was not asked a single meaningful
25:50question by the government.
25:57The fact that they couldn't secure an indictment is bull****, quite frankly, sorry.
26:02Well, it's the illusion of protocol because now the Attorney General can say to the public,
26:07look, we went through the motions.
26:10Yeah, that's exactly right.
26:12Family and friends were invited to the Knox County Sheriff's Department where they told them that we couldn't secure an
26:20indictment.
26:22Ironically, many of the people there indicated Assistant Attorney General Megan Elam already had a self-defense PowerPoint presentation to
26:32show to the family,
26:33to show why this couldn't possibly be prosecuted for murder.
26:37What?
26:37The prosecutor presented a defense instead of a prosecution.
26:43As the family tells it.
26:44Yes.
26:48I figured that Brianna and Dorian were going to be arrested and there would be a trial.
26:56That there would be consequences.
26:59That my son mattered.
27:01That his life mattered.
27:04And then to find out that it didn't.
27:09He deserved more than this.
27:10He deserved better than this.
27:14And that was right before this horrible video came out.
27:21On Facebook of Brianna putting on makeup and talking about the murder of my son.
27:32Bottom line.
27:33There was no foul play.
27:34There was no bad intention.
27:35There was nothing.
27:36Besides some dude coming into my house and trying to f***ing kill me.
27:40And I weren't f***ing dying that night.
27:44And I ain't gonna be anytime soon either.
27:46So y'all are gonna have to get the f*** over it.
27:50The very night that the grand jury said we don't have probable cause to indict you for murder.
27:56There's a Facebook live show that Brianna and Dorian do.
28:02We aren't being indicted.
28:04Because we didn't do anything wrong.
28:07They are fielding questions from the audience in real time about what went down with Roger Feltis' death.
28:15We were in our own home.
28:17I don't get what people don't f***ing get about that.
28:20There's a distinct lack of accountability.
28:24I mean they are blaming Roger himself.
28:26This started out with Roger committing felonies.
28:29As soon as he kicked my door in with a knife in his hand.
28:33That's home invasion with a dangerous weapon.
28:35She's putting on makeup.
28:37Like she's got powdered makeup and got a brush.
28:39And then Brianna goes into more detail about what happened.
28:44And nobody was hit with a f***ing axe.
28:47Nobody had their f***ing hands around Roger's throat.
28:50I didn't even have a f***ing chance to do anything.
28:52Like hello?
28:53How many people can kill somebody and then do a nonchalant video of putting on makeup after?
29:08If we ain't the victims, I don't know what the f*** we are.
29:11Like what?
29:12I mean it's just totally disgusting.
29:19Dorian and Brianna went on Facebook and posted this video.
29:23And a lot of people out there really felt like that video was sort of gloating.
29:27It was like we got off and like you can't do anything about it.
29:31And that I think really tipped the balance into people just being furious.
29:44I went to the island that night.
29:46We had friends in town from New York and we went to stay at this very nice little motel that's
29:52right in town.
29:54We were sitting on the deck looking at the sunset having some wine and realized that there was like this
30:00commotion happening in the parking lot like right next to where the deck was.
30:05And Deputy Dan was parked in his sheriff's deputy vehicle in the parking lot and cars were just coming in
30:12and flipping him off and like yelling.
30:14You could feel the tension even from where we were on the deck.
30:20And at least one person like peed near his car.
30:24It was like shockingly disrespectful of law enforcement.
30:30Personally myself, I've pissed on Dan Leigh's car.
30:35He was a cardboard cop.
30:37He wanted to do the least amount of work as possible.
30:40That's what happens when you don't take your job seriously.
30:41I mean, it's going to bite you in the ass.
30:46Everybody is so pissed because of Roger Feltis and because Deputy Dan didn't do anything about it.
30:55So then what happens to Dan Landers?
30:57Vinyl Haven held a meeting and voted to kill the contract that it had with the county of Knox.
31:04They no longer wanted Knox County Sheriff's Department to provide them with any law enforcement.
31:10So they just say, you know what?
31:12If law enforcement isn't going to do anything here, we're not paying them anymore.
31:16You can leave?
31:17Yes.
31:18There was an emergency meeting called and it was a resounding get out.
31:23We don't want you anymore.
31:24Loud and clear.
31:25Loud and clear.
31:29The AG's office was telling us that they believed that it was self-defense.
31:34We didn't know what to do.
31:36That's when Jeff Evangelos, the legislator, contacted us.
31:41I'm Jeffrey Evangelos.
31:43I served in the Maine House of Representatives for a decade.
31:46I have a real passion for fighting injustice.
31:51With Jeff Evangelos, we were hoping that he could help us put pressure on to get something done.
31:59That there had to be some ways that this could go.
32:01This couldn't just be the end of it.
32:05That there needed to be justice.
32:09My initial reaction was that there was a terrible injustice here.
32:13So I petitioned the Attorney General's office and the local prosecutors in Knox County to reopen an investigation.
32:24State Representative Jeff Evangelos of Friendship says the grand jury didn't solicit input from enough people, including many witnesses, and
32:31the case was shut down too quickly.
32:34The Attorney General met the Feltis family and our team, and I brought all the eyewitnesses, and we all were
32:42demanding why hadn't they brought charges.
32:47You're talking about two people, these are career criminals with no remorse, who had been out on bail repeatedly.
32:56Attorney General's office would not deviate from the findings that it was a justifiable use of self-defense.
33:04Once a defendant raises the claim of self-defense, then the state has to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable
33:13doubt.
33:14It's a lot of work.
33:17They told us that they weren't going to do anything, that they were completely closing everything.
33:22I mean, this is an AG that was telling us this, and I think that's when we lost all faith.
33:30So tell me how you got involved in this situation.
33:33I was well known for kind of taking on the establishment.
33:38When Roger's family came to me, I told them that they could ask for crime lab reports and data.
33:44And so they just started asking for these things.
33:47And then the Attorney General's office offered that they could come to their office and view their internal file.
33:55It was really hard seeing a lot of it, a lot of it I still don't want in my head.
34:01But what we saw, we knew that this shouldn't have happened the way it happened.
34:09During the process of us going through everything, they said we could write down what we wanted copies of.
34:14We told them we wanted copies of everything.
34:19And the next day, we got this long contract they wanted us to sign that more or less said,
34:26you can have everything you want, but you can't use it, and you can't never talk about it.
34:32And I am sorry.
34:35I am going to keep running my mouth until everybody knows what happened.
34:39And I said, I am not signing this.
34:42I am not shutting up.
34:48Doesn't that look bad for the state?
34:50To be like, sure, you can see it, but you're sworn to secrecy.
34:54You can't tell anybody what you saw.
34:55I think that it's a big problem for the state.
34:59I mean, but, I mean, this is the way it's done here.
35:02So we sued for the investigative file under the freedom of access law in Maine.
35:08You sued the Attorney General?
35:09We sued the Attorney General because a fundamental tenet of a democracy and the free world is the ability to
35:18know what your government is doing and to hold them to account.
35:28So for all the secrecy surrounding these files, did you find any evidence that shocked you?
35:34Oh, yeah.
35:35The one thing that was really earth-changing was that reenactment video with Dorian.
35:43Mid-morning on the 15th, police asked Dorian if they could videotape a walkthrough, a reenactment.
35:50Okay.
35:51In this video, they're in the door jam. They're in the threshold from the porch to the kitchen.
35:56And the police asked Dorian,
35:58How far did Roger Feltis make it into your home? Please show me.
36:03Dorian points with his steel-toed boot to the outside of the door jam threshold.
36:11And Dorian is crystal clear, Roger never entered his home.
36:18To meet the standards for self-defense in the state of Maine, Roger would have either had to have a
36:24weapon or actually stayed in the house.
36:27If Roger was not in the house, if they were fighting on the porch, that's still not self-defense.
36:32They're not in the house. He's left.
36:34That's the standard in the state of Maine.
36:38So is there any forensic evidence that would indicate whether Roger was in the house or not?
36:44There's a lot of blood on the porch where witnesses said Roger's blood would be.
36:50But there is a distinct absence of evidence within the home.
36:56There is absolutely zero blood in the kitchen, in the hallway, in the door jam.
37:01These two said they were acting in self-defense.
37:04So the physical evidence is paramount here.
37:09The first item collected was the hatchet.
37:14There was also a white-handled fishing knife.
37:18We hired a pathologist to kind of give an assessment based on the autopsy photos.
37:24The doctor could not conclusively say, but based on what he was seeing,
37:28he thought it incredibly unlikely that a knife would have caused those wounds.
37:33It is much more likely that it was an axe.
37:38Testing these two things would kind of help clear up...
37:42Was it the knife? Was it the axe that hit Roger?
37:46You're absolutely correct.
37:47But according to the report, there was zero forensic testing.
37:51And so what about the knife that Roger supposedly had?
37:54There was six independent eyewitnesses who saw the engagement.
37:59None of them said that Roger had a knife.
38:01In fact, they said the opposite.
38:02He did not have a knife.
38:05Let's talk about Brianna.
38:06How did she get cut?
38:08It's learned through later questioning by police of Brianna
38:12that she may have been hit by the axe that Dorian is wielding and swinging on Roger.
38:21It was surreal.
38:22It really was that it was this messed up.
38:28All this evidence is here.
38:32And why didn't our system use this?
38:34How is this possible?
38:38Zero is the operative number in Maine.
38:40New England Innocence Project testified to the state of Maine
38:45that Maine is the only state in the Union never to have a felony exoneration.
38:50Can you imagine that?
38:51We've never once admitted that we put the wrong person in prison.
38:54Not once.
38:55They dig in every time.
38:56One thing that we do not do in Maine is we do not say the words,
39:01the police got it wrong.
39:02I mean, this seems to be a systemic problem.
39:04As soon as you start unearthing all of the skeletons that are in all of the closets,
39:13I mean, you're talking about undoing a lot of court cases.
39:16And what can people in Maine do?
39:17I seek remedy in the courts, but by and large, it's just step by step.
39:24You know, case by case, and you just fight the good fight, all that you can do.
39:32One day a year on Roger's death date, people come by all day long.
39:36We've got signs out on painted, spray painted on hoods and fenders and everything else.
39:40Burnouts for Rog.
39:43So that's what Roger loved to do.
39:45It's a celebration and a protest and a reminder that nothing has been done.
39:52Until something is done, I'll go out there every year.
39:58I don't know what we can do because Dorian and Brianna got a no bill.
40:04It's going to be a lot to open that up.
40:06But if we can bring any change to help somebody out so that they don't go through what we went
40:12through,
40:13or something to show Roger's little girl when we have to tell her what happened,
40:18that we fought for her dad, that's what we want.
40:24There's one fact here, and it's that a young father was killed.
40:31And outside of that, so many elements of this case are murky.
40:36A lot of parties had responsibility in this story, but it seems every level of the judicial system in Maine
40:44passes the buck.
40:46And so the thing that Roger's family is asking for is that people shine a light on this situation so
40:53that it doesn't happen again.
40:54It's the
40:56hmmm
41:05edit
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