John Williams charged with murder and held without bail

Suspected police-killer John Williams is led by Maine State Police detectives into a cruiser at 807 Route 139, also known as Norridgewock Road, in Fairfield after he was apprehended during Saturday afternoon following a massive four-day manhunt. Williams is believed to be the shooter who killed Somerset County Sheriff’s Cpl. Eugene Cole on Wednesday. (David Leaming/Morning Sentinel)

AUGUSTA — Suspected police-killer John D. Williams, in his initial court appearance this afternoon at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta, was ordered held without bail and his case will be handled in Cumberland County.

Williams is charged with intentional or knowing murder in the death of Cpl. Eugene Cole of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office.

Cole was killed by a gunshot wound to the neck that perforated his spinal cord, according to the Maine Medical Examiner.

Williams, 29, of Madison was arrested Saturday afternoon following a four-day manhunt that involved more than 200 law enforcement officials from local, state and federal agencies.

According to the arrest affidavit, Williams kept a bullet-proof vest with him after the slaying and Cole’s last phone call ended abruptly at 1 a.m. April 25.

Police say Williams shot and killed Somerset County Sheriff’s Office Cpl. Eugene Cole in the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 25, then stole his cruiser and tried to rob a convenience store. Cole, a 13-year police veteran, was the first Maine police officer to die in a shooting in nearly 30 years.

What followed over the next four days was a sprawling, frantic manhunt involving armed police officers, sheriff’s deputies and game wardens from all over Maine and from New Hampshire and Massachusetts as well as federal authorities from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Border Patrol and the U.S. Marshals Service. It ended with Williams’ arrest Saturday on Norridgewock Road in Fairfield, not far from the search grid, marking a wide area around Martin Stream Road.

Chief Deputy James F. Ross of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday morning that “unscrupulous people” may be soliciting money in the name of Cole’s family.

“I would like to get the word out to everyone that the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office will NEVER attempt to solicit funds by any means,” Ross said in an email to the Morning Sentinel.

The only legitimate fund is one set up privately by the family of Cpl. Cole. It is called the Cpl. Eugene Cole Memorial fund, administered by the Bangor Savings Bank.

In a Facebook post Monday morning, Cole’s wife of 41 years, Sheryl, described in newly-disclosed detail her husband’s final hours. She wrote that Cole got up from his recliner around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, saying he had to get ready for work and would be on duty at 4 p.m.

He started using an electric razor to shave his face, sitting back in his chair.

“He knows how much it annoyed me when he did this — and he did it every single day,” Sheryl Cole wrote. “Yet, he would look at me with an expression of fake shock on his face while I was glaring at him, and say ‘What?’, as if he didn’t know. Then he’d continue to shave, and place the razor on the end table beside his chair. (something else that really annoyed me.) In a few minutes, he’d headed back to the bathroom to shower.

“He then continued to get ready, putting on his vest, putting on his uniform, making sure all his brass was just so, and pulling on his ever-so-shiny boots. He’d check himself in the mirror several times before telling me, ‘Okay, Hon. I gotta go.’ He gave miss a hug and kiss goodbye, and said, ‘I love you.’ I said, ‘Really? You’re just gonna leave that razor sitting on the stand in the living room?! That’s gross!’ He would just tell me he’d put it away later. I told him I loved him and to be safe, as I did everyday, and his response, as it is everyday — ‘Absolutely.’”

Sheryl Cole wrote that she watched and waved as he drove away.

Between 6 and 6:30 p.m., her husband returned home for a few minutes.

“He talked about the full moon and how it brought all the ‘crazies’ out. We talked a little, and abruptly he’d give me a hurried kiss and say he had to go,” she wrote. “On his way out, he spotted the razor still sitting where he left it, and gave me a look like he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Anyway, we said our ritual goodbye, ending with me saying (or yelling) ‘Be safe’ and him responding, ‘Absolutely.’

“The next time I saw my husband, he was laying in a casket.”

“The last five days have been the purest form of hell and torture,” she wrote. “The waiting when they couldn’t find his body, the finality when they did, and the uncertainty of the days that followed.”

Kimberly Sirois, who lives at 16 Mercer Road in Norridgewock and found Cole’s body outside her house last Wednesday, said she wasn’t aware Williams was planning to come to her house Tuesday night and didn’t know what brought him or Cole there.

“I know nothing,” she said when reached by phone Monday. “We were asleep all night.”

Meanwhile, Williams’ girlfriend, Kristina Pomerleau, 32, of Norridgewock, was still incarcerated Monday at the Somerset County Jail in East Madison. Pomerleau was arrested in Norridgewock on Saturday, April 21 — four days before the shooting of Cole — on charges of unlawful furnishing of scheduled drugs, possession of scheduled drugs, operating after suspension and possession of a suspended license. Her arrest followed a traffic stop Saturday at 5:13 p.m. on Skowhegan Road in Norridgewock, in which Cpl. Cole was listed as among three responding officers in a sheriff’s department police log.

A police affidavit detailing what happened with Pomerleau’s arrest has not been available because a judge had impounded it Thursday morning, at the request of the district attorney’s office.

In a separate incident, Williams was arrested in Massachusetts last month on firearm and driving-related charges following a traffic stop, and was scheduled to appear Wednesday last week — the same day as the Norridgewock shooting took place — in a Massachusetts courtroom. Pomerleau was a passenger in the vehicle during that traffic stop and was issued a summons for possession of Percocet.