AUBURN — Two days into deliberations, a jury was sent home Friday after failing to reach a verdict in the murder trial of Michael McNaughton.

The seven women and five men are expected to return to Androscoggin County Superior Court at 9 a.m. Monday to resume the task.

McNaughton, 26, of Lewiston is charged in the April 9, 2013, strangulation death of Romeo Parent, 20, of Lewiston.

The jury sent a note to Justice MaryGay Kennedy on Friday morning, half an hour into its deliberations, asking to watch a roughly hourlong video recording of police detectives interrogating McNaughton at the Lewiston police station early in the morning of April 12, 2013, that had been shown at trial. The jury foreman also asked Kennedy if the jury could watch an 8-minute surveillance video — with no sound — of McNaughton and two police detectives standing outside the building during a break in their interrogation.

McNaughton made incriminating statements to one of the detectives after returning from the break. That detective testified at trial that during the break outside the station, McNaughton had confessed to killing Parent with a makeshift garrote fashioned from a bicycle cable and to stabbing him in the back of the neck with a screwdriver. He told the detectives Parent wouldn’t die easily.

The video of the second part of McNaughton’s interrogation, in the interview room at the police station, includes incriminating statements to Maine State Police Detective John Hainey, such as, “I really didn’t mean to do it.”

McNaughton also said he wouldn’t hurt anyone “except for, obviously, this one f—— incident.”

Asked whether police would find the garrote at the crime scene in the woods in Greene, McNaughton said they wouldn’t.

He said it “poofed,” meaning “it was handed to someone else random and told to dispose of it.”

Police found at the crime scene the screwdriver identified by several witnesses as belonging to McNaughton. It contained Parent’s DNA, but neither McNaughton’s DNA nor fingerprints were found on the tool. No other physical evidence linked McNaughton to Parent.

During the trial, defense attorney Verne Paradie Jr. called to the stand an expert witness in false confessions to suggest McNaughton’s incriminating statements were coerced by police and not freely offered.

Jurors also asked the court to read back testimony by witness Jessica Gaudet of Auburn, who said she had been friends with McNaughton last year.

Gaudet said another friend, Felicia Cadman of Mechanic Falls, had told her shortly after Parent was slain that McNaughton was the one who had killed Parent by strangling him seven times “because he wouldn’t die.”

She said McNaughton had killed Parent because he had implicated William True, 20, of Lewiston a week earlier in a burglary True and Parent had committed. Cadman was True’s girlfriend. True was charged two weeks ago with Parent’s murder.

The jury also listened as the court stenographer read back Gaudet’s testimony about how McNaughton showed her a screwdriver he carried that he called “Pokie.” He explained how he could paralyze a person by stabbing him in the neck with the tool, just days before Parent was killed.

Gaudet also testified that she had lied to police in an effort to protect True.

The trial is entering its fourth week.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com