BANGOR, Maine — The Orono man accused of using Facebook to lure 15-year-old Nichole Cable to her death was offered a plea deal by the state, it was revealed Friday as potential jurors began filling out questionnaires before his murder trial.
Members of the jury pool were asked about their use of social media before the trial of Kyle Dube, 21, who has pleaded not guilty to one count each of kidnapping and murder in the May 12, 2013, death of the Old Town High School student. He created a phony page on an online social network using someone else’s identity to convince Cable to leave her Glenburn home and meet him, according to police.
Before Superior Court Justice Ann Murray gave the jury pool instructions, she asked Dube if he had been offered a plea agreement from the state.
“Yes, I have,” he said, standing beside his defense attorney in a suit.
Murray asked Dube if he understood the offer and if he talked to his attorneys about the state’s offer, to which he answered, “Yes, your honor.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed in court.
The judge then asked Dube if he understood the maximum penalty if convicted of murder in his jury-requested trial.
“Life,” answered the accused.
“You understand it’s life — your whole life,” Murray reiterated.
“Yes,” Dube said.
If found guilty of murder, Dube would face between 25 years and life in prison on the murder charge alone. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the kidnapping charge.
The 16-page jury questionnaire for Dube’s trial is similar to other jury surveys, except it asks two questions about social media use, a court official said. Questions were submitted by the defense team, and prosecutors and the judge made the final decision about what to include on the questionnaire.
“Do you regularly use Facebook or other social media,” and if so, for how many hours, it asked potential jurors.
The written questionnaire was given to half of the 100 or so people called for jury duty, who arrived Friday at the Penobscot Judicial Center. The other half of the jury pool received a survey for a separate drunken driving case.
“This is long. Please be very careful,” Murray said of the murder trial questionnaire when giving instructions to the entire jury pool.
Murray’s interaction with the jury pool was shown by videoconference in another courtroom where Dube watched along with one of his attorneys, Wendy Hatch of Bangor, and Assistant Attorney General Leane Zainea, one of the prosecutors in the case.
After entering the courtroom where Dube and the attorneys were seated, Murray said she expected to start reviewing the juror surveys with the prosecution and defense attorney later Friday.
“As soon as the jurors complete the questionnaires, we’ll go through them,” the judge said to Hatch, who is representing Dube with attorney Stephen Smith of Augusta, and Zainea, who is prosecuting the case with Donald Macomber.
Jury selection is set for next week, with testimony scheduled to begin Feb. 23. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
According to the affidavit released after the Penobscot County grand jury indicted Dube in 2013, Dube created a fake Facebook page using an alias to communicate with Cable. Police reviewed Cable’s Facebook account and found she had frequent online contact with the alias Dube allegedly used. One of Cable’s friends told police the teen sent a text on May 12, 2013, stating she was meeting the man using that name.
Investigators traced the IP address for the fake Facebook page to the Orono home where Dube lived with his parents, the affidavit said.
Dube allegedly planned to kidnap the girl, hide her, then find her and play the hero, according to the affidavit.
Dube’s brother told police that Kyle Dube said he had Cable “meet him down the road [from her house]; that he waited in the woods wearing a ski mask; that he had duct tape; that he jumped out of the bushes and took Nichole; that he duct taped her; that he put Nichole in his father’s pickup truck; that when he removed Nichole from the truck she was dead; and that he dumped Nichole’s body in the woods near the Dysart’s gas station in Old Town.”
Dube’s girlfriend told police he had told her a similar story and also said he had thrown Cable’s clothes out the window of the truck on his way back, the affidavit said. Cable’s clothing was found along the roadway. Investigators also were able to link Cable to Dube through DNA evidence, the affidavit states.
Cable went missing on May 12, 2013, and her body was found eight days later in a wooded area of Old Town. The 90-pound teenager died of “ asphyxia due to compression of the neck,” according to Dr. Margaret Greenwald of the state medical examiner’s office.
The defense team filed a motion at the end of January to move the trial to a different county because of pretrial publicity and to suppress statements Dube allegedly made to Maine State Police detectives. Prosecutors oppose both motions.
Murray, who last month took over the case from Superior Court Justice William Anderson, had not issued her decision on either motion as of Friday. Change-of-venue motions rarely are granted unless a judge is unable to seat a jury once selection begins.
Dube is being held at Penobscot County Jail until his trial with no bail, a jail official said.
BDN writer Judy Harrison contributed to this report.
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