SILVER RIDGE TOWNSHIP, Maine — Norma Winchenbach was still asleep about 5 a.m. Friday, July 17, waiting for a new day to dawn, when she was awakened by a rapid-fire knocking at her door.
When she and her husband opened it, they found their bloody, terror-stricken neighbor, Kary Mayo, who had allegedly been beaten repeatedly by accused murderer Anthony Lord and then robbed and barricaded in his basement.
“It was awful,” the 69-year-old Winchenbach said Monday, after asking whether Lord had pleaded guilty to the crimes at his initial court appearance. “I just could not believe what I was seeing.”
Lord, 35, is accused of fatally shooting two people and injuring four others during a crime spree that began on July 16 in Benedicta and ended when he surrendered on July 17 at his uncle’s house in Houlton.
He admitted to the killings, according to court documents released Monday. One of the victims of the crimes was Mayo, who police say was tied to a chair and beaten.
Winchenbach said that Mayo told her as they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive that Lord had knocked on his door with the excuse that he was out of gas or looking for gasoline for a pickup truck. Mayo, who knew Lord, told Winchenbach that he let him onto his front porch, where Lord grabbed a hammer and began beating him over the head, according to Winchenbach.
“He said that Lord made him crawl into his house and then made him open his safe where Lord took two guns out of it,” she said. “He also took his debit card and then took the keys to his truck and tried to find something to tie him up with. He couldn’t, so he had to put him in his basement and put something in front of the door so he could not get out.”
She said that Mayo told her he was pleading for his life at that moment, because he really felt that Lord was going to kill him.
“Kary is a wonderful man, a very hard worker, he would do anything for anybody,” she said. “So it is very difficult for me to understand why anyone would do something like that to him. He is a wonderful guy.”
Winchenbach said that Mayo escaped out his basement window to get to her house so that she could call police.
On Monday, she was left wondering about the victims, the families and her community.
“Why did it happen here?” she said. “We used to be able to leave our doors unlocked.”
She said Mayo also told her that Lord first had stopped at her neighbor Katie Sell’s house but may have been scared off because of Sell’s dogs.
Winchenbach wondered what would have happened if Mayo had not been home that night and Lord had knocked on her door.
“My husband and I were just talking about that, and he said that if Lord had come to our door [looking for help], he probably would have opened it,” she said Monday. “That is what people do here. We open our doors.”