HOULTON Maine — A Vermont man who escaped from the Aroostook County Jail more than 30 years ago after a spelling mistake on a warrant reportedly allowed him to walk free while awaiting trial on a theft charge finally saw the inside of a courtroom Monday.
Albert C. Marcheterre, 56, of Eden, Vermont, who was arrested on Nov. 2 in Vermont on one count of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, made his first court appearance at 1 p.m. in Presque Isle District Court via videoconference from the jail in Houlton.
He was charged in U.S. District Court in Bangor on Oct. 29 but the case was sealed until Nov. 2. The circumstances surrounding Marcheterre’s arrest were not outlined in court documents.
Judge Bernard O’ Mara presided over the courtroom on Monday, and Deputy District Attorney Carrie Linthicum represented the state, standing in for Assistant District Attorney Kurt Kafferlin, the lead prosecutor, who was unavailable.
Bail was set at $100,000 with no third party allowed, with the case to be reviewed on Nov. 20, a court clerk said Monday. The bail provision means that the cash for the bail must come solely from Marcheterre and no one else.
Sheriff-Elect Darrell Crandall of the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department said Monday that Marcheterre waived extradition after his arrest in Vermont and two deputies were sent to retrieve the prisoner and escort him back to Maine. The suspect arrived at the county jail here on Thursday, Nov. 7.
Marcheterre was 23 when he escaped on April 21, 1981, from the outside pen of the jail in Houlton, according to a complaint signed by FBI Special Agent James McCarty. Marcheterre was being held in connection with an Oct. 2, 1980, theft, but details of that incident have not yet been released.
The six-year statute of limitations on the theft charge was suspended when Marcheterre left Maine.
The warrant issued after his escape misspelled his last name as “Maschererre” but the complaint said that identifiers on the 1981 warrant, including date of birth, scars, marks, tattoos and a glass left eye, match those of a man using the name Albert Michael Dumais.
Dumais was the alias Marcheterre was using when he was arrested several times in Vermont between 1992 and 2002, according to the federal complaint.
His real identity appears to have been uncovered in 2004 when he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. It is not clear from federal court documents when the FBI concluded Marcheterre was the person listed on the 1981 warrant.
“Because of the misspelling on the 1981 complaint [for the arrest warrant], the outstanding arrest warrant had not been previously associated with Marcheterre’s FBI number and criminal records,” McCarty wrote in the federal complaint.
Once officials learned there was an outstanding escape charge on Marcheterre out of Maine, a federal warrant was secured to help find and apprehend him. Vermont State Police arrested him on Nov. 2 and notified the FBI, who had been working with the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office. After Marcheterre was back in custody in Maine, the federal escape complaint was dismissed so Maine could pursue the state charge of escape.
The theft charge will not be prosecuted because of a lack of witnesses in the 33-year-old case, according to Crandall.
If convicted on the escape charge, Marcheterre faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Crandall said he called retired Chief Deputy Sheriff Shirley Cleary, a captain at the jail in 1981 when Marcheterre escaped, to tell him about the arrest.
Cleary, now in his 80s, said he was happy to hear of the capture, “but declined a tongue-in-cheek offer to be part of the extradition team,” Crandall said. “He told me, ‘Try to keep him in there this time.’”