A 70-year-old man on Friday was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to rob Shaw’s Supermarket in Bangor in July.
George Frederick Gatcomb Jr., who has spent the past 42 years in prison, admitted he committed the robbery.
“I’m guilty, your honor, there’s no two ways about it,” Gatcomb told District Court Judge Gregory Campbell.
Gatcomb also apologized for his actions.
The judge said that because of Gatcomb’s long and serious criminal history, the long sentence without probations was warranted.
Alice Clifford, assistant district attorney for Penobscot County, recommended Gatcomb be sentenced to eight years in prison for the robbery. She said that Gatcomb’s criminal history dates back to the 1970s and includes convictions for robbery, burglary, theft, sexual assault and threatening federal officials.
Defense attorney Martha Harris of Bangor urged the judge to send Gatcomb to prison for 2½ to four years.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock revoked Gatcomb’s supervised release for threats made in the 1990s and sentenced him to two years in prison, the maximum allowed. The state and federal sentences will be served at the same time. Gatcomb will serve the federal sentence first, then be returned to Maine to complete his sentence.
Harris also said Friday that Gatcomb was anxious to be returned the federal system. While waiting to be sentenced, he has been held at the Penobscot County and Somerset County jails while awaiting sentencing.
Gatcomb was on federal probation at a re-entry center in Bangor on June 12 when he left without permission, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Bangor. The federal re-entry center for men is located on the campus of the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center.
On the morning of July 6, Gatcomb entered the Main Street supermarket and gave an employee a note demanding money, Clifford said Friday. The service desk employee who received the note told him she could not open the register, turned around, walked into the back room and called police.
Gatcomb claimed to have a gun but no weapon was displayed.
Gatcomb, who told investigators that he had been living at a homeless shelter, left the store and met Bangor police when they arrived outside at the supermarket.
He had been held at the jail since then unable to post $10,000 cash bail.
He was sentenced more than two decades ago in federal court in Bangor to five years in federal prison after he admitted to threatening federal and state judges three years earlier, according to the Bangor Daily News archives. He also threatened to blow up the U.S. Marshal’s Office, located in the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building on Harlow Street.
Gatcomb was ordered to serve the federal sentence after he completed a 15-year sentence on state charges for a sexual assault on a cellmate at the Maine State Prison, then located in Thomaston. Gatcomb also was ordered to serve eight years in Maine for an assault on a corrections officer once he completed the sentence for the sexual assault.
A Vietnam veteran, Gatcomb gained notoriety in the 1970s when he was committed to what is now the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor. He escaped from there 21 times, according to Bangor Daily News archives.
Gatcomb faced up to 10 years in a Maine prison and a fine of up to $20,000 on the robbery charge.