Sarah Richards, who was charged Friday in connection with the death by blunt force trauma of 83-year-old Helen Carver in Owls Head, has a long history of theft and drug convictions.
The 37-year-old from South Thomaston had been shoveling snow for Carver this winter, police said. On Saturday, Robert Carver of Bath told the Village Soup weekly newspaper that he had spoken with his mother Thursday morning and she told him she suspected Richards had stolen her debit card. Helen Carver, who was found covered in blood in her home Thursday afternoon, had told police about the theft, her son told the newspaper.
Richards is being held without bail at Knox County Jail in Rockland and is expected to make her first court appearance on Monday.
[Woman hired to shovel accused of killing Owls Head 83-year-old]
A Maine criminal history record for Richards obtained from the state over the weekend shows that her long string of adult convictions began with misdemeanor charges of theft and forgery in 2000, when she was 18. Her sentence was five days spent at Knox County Jail. Over the years, some of the charges, and sentences, became more significant.
In 2004, after being convicted of the illegal importation of drugs, Richards was sentenced to two years, with one year suspended, at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.
In 2014, she and then-husband Christopher Stalcup were convicted and sentenced for their role in heroin distribution in Knox County. Richards was sentenced to four years in jail with all but nine months suspended. At that time, Assistant Attorney General Katie Sibley said that Richards was an addict who was largely selling to feed her addiction. Her defense attorney, Eric “Rick” Morse, told the court that Richards had undergone an intensive outpatient drug treatment program and completed methadone treatment because she didn’t want to be a slave to the drug anymore, according to BDN archives.
In 2015, Richards and Stalcup pleaded guilty to the 2013 theft and resale of empty lobster crates from the Fox Island Lobster Co. Richards was sentenced to serve 10 months at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham and pay $1,605 for her role in that crime, according to her criminal record.