SOUTH PARIS, Maine (AP) — A man accused of a double killing on New Year’s night in 2019 was convicted of two counts of murder.
Mark Penley, 51, of Peru, killed of his ex-girlfriend, Heather Bickford, 31, of Canton, and her boyfriend, Dana Hill, 31, of Paris, in a jealous rage because she left him for another man, prosecutors said.
Jurors delivered the guilty verdicts Tuesday in Oxford County Superior Court. No sentencing date was set.
Tammy Guertin, Heather Bickford’s mother, was relieved by the outcome. “I’m just so glad for my daughter that she got the only kind of justice that we can get,” she told the Sun Journal.
Surveillance video showed Penley arriving and departing from Hill’s apartment, and he left behind bloody fingerprint was found on Bickford’s cellphone in the apartment, prosecutors said. His DNA also was found on a gun recovered at the crime scene, prosecutors said.
Penley later returned to the scene, saying he was there to visit Bickford’s children, and made a 911 call to report that he’d discovered the bodies. Bickford’s infant and her 8-year-old were unharmed.
Police say they found a bloody baseball bat at the scene, but the autopsy confirms the fatal wounds were gunshots.
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