ELLSWORTH, Maine — Lawyers representing a man accused of murdering an acquaintance and then assuming his identity are trying to suppress evidence and statements gathered by police.
In a memorandum filed last week in Hancock County Unified Criminal Court, attorneys for William Morse, 45, argue that police improperly searched a vehicle their client had been driving and later improperly entered a house off Goose Cove in Trenton where Morse was staying. Both the car and the house belonged to murder victim Richard Bellittieri, whom police were trying to find in July 2013.
Bellittieri’s decayed corpse was found on the Goose Cove Road property on July 28, 2013, after police had searched the vehicle and, about two weeks later, entered the house and detained Morse for questioning. Bellittieri, 61, had not been seen alive for more than a year when his skeletal remains were located outside under a pile of potting soil, police have said.
Police have said Bellittieri had four gunshots wounds — two on the right side of his head — but have not released additional details about the circumstances of his death. Morse had done some carpentry work for Bellittieri prior to Bellittieri’s disappearance, they have said.
Morse’s defense attorneys, David Bate of Bangor and Jeffrey Toothaker of Ellsworth, claim Bar Harbor police should not have searched an Audi that Morse had been driving when he was arrested on July 9, 2013, on a charge of operating a separate motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants. At the time of Morse’s OUI arrest, which occurred as Morse was walking out of a bar, Bellittieri had not been reported missing and police were not yet trying to find him.
Police have said that the car was registered in Bellittieri’s name and that when Morse was arrested on the OUI charge he was in possession of Bellittieri’s driver’s license, Social Security card and two of Bellittieri’s credit cards. In a subsequent search of the car, they found a gym bag and a zipped computer attache case in the trunk.
According to police, they found Morse’s birth certificate and Social Security card inside the car and, in the attache case, “various documents and receipts” belonging to Bellittieri. Bate wrote in the memo that police lacked probable cause to believe the trunk and the bags in the trunk contained evidence pertinent to the OUI case, which stemmed from a July 2 high-speed motorcycle chase in Bar Harbor.
“The trunk is not a place a person reasonably would expect to find identification papers and, therefore, is outside the scope of a search incident to Mr. Morse’s [OUI] arrest,” Bate indicated.
In a response filed in court on Monday, Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber argued that because Morse had ID cards belonging to Bellittieri, who was the car’s registered owner, the police suspected it may have been stolen.
“These facts justified an automobile exception search of the trunk and its contents for evidence pertaining to the possible theft of the car,” Macomber wrote. “There only needs to be probable cause that evidence of a crime may be in the car and containers therein.”
On July 10, 2013, the day after Morse’s OUI arrest, Bar Harbor police contacted Maine State Police to ask for their assistance in locating Bellittieri.
Bate and Toothaker also are hoping to suppress statements Morse made to Maine State Police detectives about two weeks later when they entered Bellittieri’s house on Goose Cove Road to perform a “protective sweep” of the property, which they were monitoring and hoping to search. Bate suggested in the memo, without going into specifics, that Morse had a right to reside in and keep his things at the house.
Police did not have grounds to enter the house on July 25 without a warrant, Bate wrote, and so should not have detained and then questioned Morse after they found him in the dwelling.
Bate said that based on Morse’s statements, police subsequently obtained a search warrant and then executed it the following day. Without Morse’s “illegally obtained” statements, Bate wrote, police would not have had probable cause to search the property.
“The police broke into Morse’s [de facto] residence and forcibly removed him from his closet at gunpoint, then forced him to the floor while he was searched,” Bate wrote. “Eight or nine law enforcement personnel and a police dog were in and around his house. Mr. Morse was upset. The police ordered that he not return to his residence.”
According to an affidavit filed in court by Maine State Police, Morse told officers before he was allowed to leave that:
— He had seen Bellittieri about a month before.
— He did not know of anyone else who had seen or spoken with Bellittieri in the past year.
— He “may have” registered the Audi in Bellittieri’s name.
— Tenants at a Mount Desert Island house owned by Bellittieri would know him as Bellittieri rather than by his real name.
According to Macomber, the presence near the house of vehicles associated with Morse and an air conditioner being turned off in the house made police think Morse might be inside. This raised a concern that Morse might have been destroying evidence, Macomber wrote, which is grounds for performing the protective sweep. Police decided to obtain a search warrant, he added, after they discovered “hundreds of marijuana plants” growing on the property.
The prosecutor said that if police had waited for the search warrant to be issued before they entered the home, they still would have found Morse inside.
“Unquestionably then, the police would have been justified in detaining [Morse] while executing the warrant,” Macomber wrote.
Morse’s attorneys and the Attorney General’s office have declined to provide additional comment on the matter. The case is tentatively scheduled to go to trial on April 6.
