AUGUSTA, Maine — A woman charged with murder on Monday in connection with an Augusta homicide in November 2015 died Wednesday.
Zina Fritze, 27, of Augusta was found hanging by a bedsheet in her jail cell by correction officers about 2 p.m. at the Kennebec County Jail in Augusta, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said in a news release.
She died in an ambulance en route to MaineGeneral Hospital in Augusta, McCausland said.
Fritze’s body was taken to the state medical examiner’s office for autopsy, McCausland said.
As is standard with all deaths in Maine jails, state police and the Maine attorney general’s office will investigate. Detectives arrived at the jail shortly after the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office reported the incident.
Fritze and her boyfriend, Michael Sean McQuade, 45, were indicted last week by a Kennebec County grand jury on charges of intentional or knowing or depraved indifference murder, felony murder and robbery.
They appeared Tuesday at the Augusta Judicial Center.
Another man, Damik Davis, 25, of Queens, New York, was arrested and charged with murder the day Joseph Marceau’s body was found. Davis remains in Kennebec County Jail.
The body of Marceau, of 23 Winthrop St., Augusta, was found Nov. 23, 2015, in a fourth-floor apartment rented by Fritze and McQuade at 75 State St. in Augusta.
Police called the death a drug-related homicide, but Assistant Attorney General John Alsop, who is prosecuting the case, said after the arraignment that the felony murder charge results from the allegation of robbery and that neither Fritze nor McQuade were charged with any drug-related crimes.
Immediately after Davis’ arrest, police began searching for Fritze and McQuade. They were found, questioned and released by police two days after the homicide.
However, they were arrested by Augusta police Friday on unrelated charges and had been held in jail since then.
BDN writer Beth Brogan contributed to this report.