Murder by the Book: The Amy St. Laurent Case BY David KrajicekshareComments

A Night Out

Amy's St. LaurentOn a Saturday night in the fall of 2001, a pretty young woman named Amy St. Laurent took an out-of-town friend to sample the nightlife along the cobbled streets of the Old Port section of Portland, Maine. St. Laurent, 25, had met the friend, Eric Rubright, on a trip to Ft. Myers, Fla., a few weeks before. Rubright later said St. Laurent seemed like "a totally cool girl." He wanted to see her again, so he arranged the visit to Maine, hoping for romance.

Rubright's carRubright and St. Laurent spent Saturday in Boston, touring museums. They got along well enough, but by the time they reached Old Port at 10:30 that night, St. Laurent had made it clear that that the relationship was a non-starter. They stopped at Fore Play Sports Bar, where she played pool with other men while Rubright sipped a beer and watched. It was the same story when they moved on to Pavilion, a dance club. Rubright wasn't a hoofer, so he cooled his heels when St. Laurent hit the dance floorcoincidentally, with two of the same men from the pool game at Fore Play.

Rear view of St. Laurent's house

As the 1:00 a.m. closing time drew near, Rubright queued up to use the men's room. When he finally got out, St. Laurent and the men had vanished. This was odd because he was her ride home to South Berwick, a Maine-New Hampshire border town 40 miles south of Portland. Her coat, cell phone, purse and backpack remained in his rental car. "I came outside and waited right by the door until, like, everybody was out of the bar," Rubright later said. "And I didn't see her, so I figured, you know, she left, or whatever, without me."

Annoyed, he decided to drive back to her place alone, assuming she had gone home by some other means. He stopped for gas; then took the toll road south. At the Wells exit, he realized he had no cash, and he talked the toll-taker into letting him pass.

St. Laurent's living roomRubright found his way to St. Laurent's house, but she wasn't around. Her car was in the driveway, just as they had left it that morning when they went to Boston. He fished the house key out of St. Laurent's purse and thought about going inside. But that didn't seem right, so he slept in his rental car. The next morning, Rubright went into St. Laurent's tidy housefilled with family pictures and thriving potted plantsand took a shower.

He was not happy about the night before: being abandoned in a strange city. It was a casual date, but still. He decided to cut his losses and drive back to Portland, planning to spend a couple of days killing time before flying home to Florida on Tuesday. He put her belongings on the kitchen table and left an irate note to St. Laurent on her front door: "Where the f*** did you go?"

He had no idea what a good question that was.

Yankee Striver

Amy St. Laurent

Amy St. Laurent, 25, was a hardworking and independent-minded New Englandera good Yankee striver. "She didn't want the menial life," her friend Katie Darneille told the Portland Press Herald. "She wanted more."

She was an industrious teenager, working at Dunkin' Donuts on Broadway in South Portland throughout high school. She was bright, but school left her uninspired. When she graduated with honors in 1994, college seemed pointless. "High school was easy and kind of boring," her mother told the Portland paper. "I think she thought college was going to be more of the same."

A few years after high school, Amy was hired as a third-shift assembler at the Pratt & Whitney aerospace manufacturing plant in North Berwick, Maine. She and her boyfriend, Richard Sparrow, moved to South Berwick so she could be closer to work.

St. Laurent's initiative and professional bearing helped her stand out, and she soon advanced to a junior administrative position. She was proud of her work at Pratt & Whitney. Her favorite sweatshirt, the one she was wearing that night in Old Port, bore the firm's name across the front.

St. Laurent and Sparrow had talked about marriage. But by the summer of 2001 their five-year relationship was on the rocks. She imagined a fulfilling lifestimulating conversation, travel, visits to art museums. Sparrow turned out to be a couch potato. "I couldn't keep up with her," he said. They split up but remained friends.

Yankee Striver

Amy St. Laurent

Amy St. Laurent, 25, was a hardworking and independent-minded New Englandera good Yankee striver. "She didn't want the menial life," her friend Katie Darneille told the Portland Press Herald. "She wanted more."

She was an industrious teenager, working at Dunkin' Donuts on Broadway in South Portland throughout high school. She was bright, but school left her uninspired. When she graduated with honors in 1994, college seemed pointless. "High school was easy and kind of boring," her mother told the Portland paper. "I think she thought college was going to be more of the same."

A few years after high school, Amy was hired as a third-shift assembler at the Pratt & Whitney aerospace manufacturing plant in North Berwick, Maine. She and her boyfriend, Richard Sparrow, moved to South Berwick so she could be closer to work.

St. Laurent's initiative and professional bearing helped her stand out, and she soon advanced to a junior administrative position. She was proud of her work at Pratt & Whitney. Her favorite sweatshirt, the one she was wearing that night in Old Port, bore the firm's name across the front.

St. Laurent and Sparrow had talked about marriage. But by the summer of 2001 their five-year relationship was on the rocks. She imagined a fulfilling lifestimulating conversation, travel, visits to art museums. Sparrow turned out to be a couch potato. "I couldn't keep up with her," he said. They split up but remained friends.

Missing PersonSt. Laurent's mother, Diane Jenkins, grew concerned when her daughter did not show up at home on Sunday, after her visit to Old Port. It was not like her to absent herself without arranging caretaking for her cat, Alex. She called the county sheriff's department to inquire about making a missing person report, and a deputy called a friend who was an officer with the Portland Police Department.

Portland Police Department PatchThere was no immediate evidence of a crime. For all the authorities knew, Amy St. Laurent might have run off on a fling. But police made a few inquiries, tracked down Eric Rubright through his rental car and questioned him about the events of Saturday night.

Police Search for St. LaurentPolice thought the scenario described by the Floridian seemed suspicious: St. Laurent disappeared while Rubright was standing on line to the bathroom; he then left Old Port alone, found his way back to her home in the middle of the night, and then slept in his car. Rubright agreed to take a polygraph test. The results were inconclusive, but Rubright seemed extraordinarily nervous during the test.

Police Chief Joseph Loughlin Some investigators were certain that Rubright was a killer, according to the account by Joseph Loughlin and Kate Flora Clark in their book, Finding Amy (Loughlin, a Portland police officer, was involved in the investigation).

Book Cover: Finding AmyBut Rubright insisted his story of being dumped was odd but accurate. "It was weird," he said. "I didn't understand." He suggested cops should talk to the two men with whom Amy had been at both Fore Play and the Pavilion. He said one had long hair. The other, a stout 5-foot-9, had gelled hair that was streaked with blond highlights, Rubright said.

How would police find them? It turned out to be simple. One of the two was one of the first callers to the tip line set up to collect information about the missing young woman.

Portland PalsThe caller, the man with the gelled hairdo, was Jeffrey Gorman, known as Russ. Gorman, 21, had been raised in Troy, Ala., and Delray Beach, Fla. His parents split up when he was a newborn, and he had had a troubled childhood, bouncing back and forth between the care of his mother in Delray Beach and his paternal grandmother in Troy. Born Jan. 9, 1980, he had been of legal age for just 10 months on that October weekend.

Gorman's Prison RecordHe landed in the Portland area in 2000 when his mother, Tammy Westbrook, and her boyfriend, Rick Deveaux, moved to nearby Scarborough, Maine, to raise Golden Retriever puppies. Gorman worked part-time as a car detailer, and flopped with a group of friends and acquaintances at an apartment on Brighton Avenue in Portland, a short drive from Old Port.

Amy St. Laurent Missing PosterBy Monday, Oct. 22, Amy St. Laurent's sister and friends had begun posting missing person fliers in the Old Port area. Friends of Gorman�saw a poster, and recognized Amy from Gorman's�encounters Saturday night and Gorman phoned to tell police what he knew. Investigators invited him in for a chat.

Gorman said he and roommate, Kush Sharma, met Amy at Fore Play. He said they played pool while Rubright stood by, just as the Florida man had said. They hooked up again at the Pavilion. Gorman said Amy lost track of Rubright at closing time, so she agreed to go to the Brighton Avenue apartment for what the men promised would be an after-hours party.

The party failed to materialize, Gorman said, and Amy grew "uncomfortable" being at the house alone with the two men. So, Gorman said, he drove St. Laurent back to Old Port and dropped her off in front of the Pavilion nightclub at about 1:45 a.m. He said he then returned directly home. Sharma, Gorman's roommate, confirmed for police that Gorman was home and in bed at 2:00 a.m.

Mother's TearsOn Tuesday morning, less than 48 hours after the woman vanished, police officials held a press conference to say that the disappearance was likely a crime. "This is not a typical missing person," said Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood. "All investigative leads lead to the fact that there is something criminal happening here."

Portland Police Chief Michael ChitwoodHer loved ones, standing beside the chief, added heart-rending testimonials about Amy. Her mother, Diane Jenkins, said she had begun to fear the worst when Amy failed to show up at work Mondayan unfathomable act by her ambitious daughter. "Something happened to this girl," Jenkins said, "She did not just walk away." "This literally is my worst nightmare," Jenkins added, "I cannot believe that I might never see her again." Two days later, the family held another press conference at which they again pleaded for Amy's safe return and offered a $35,000 reward.

Reward poster offers $35,000 for St. Laurent's safe return.

In the meantime, police had been further able to confirm Eric Rubright's seemingly unlikely account of the events that Saturday night. A security camera had captured him buying gas at 1:38 a.m., and police were able to locate the toll-taker who allowed him to pass about 15 minutes later. As it became more evident that Rubright was telling the truth, investigators began to sharpen their focus on Russ Gorman.

Story UnravelsGorman struck investigators as curiously skittish for someone who phoned them as a volunteer witness in a missing person case. He put off a police officer's request to take a polygraph exam, saying he should see a lawyer first. He also said he was too busy to allow police forensic experts to inspect his car, the last place that Amy St. Laurent was known to have been.

Police decided to interview Gorman's roommates, seeking collaboration of his account of Amy St. Laurent's visit to their home. Gorman had added a couple of details to his alibi. He said roommate Jason Cook had been on the computer when he got home, sending an email message to Cook's aunt in Florida. Gorman also said he recalled making a phone call, but couldn't remember to whom. Police inspected the computers of both Cook and the aunt but found no such email. Nor could they find a record of Gorman's late-night phone call.

But an interview with another roommate, Dave Grazier, transformed Russ Gorman from a person of interest into the leading suspect. Grazier said he and his girlfriend, Dawn Shimrich, went out for an early breakfast after midnight on the Sunday morning when Amy St. Laurent had supposedly visited their apartment. When they got home between 3:00 and 3:15 a.m., Gorman wasn't thereeven though he had claimed to police that he had been home by 2:00 a.m. Grazier also said he had woken up at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. that morning to use the bathroom and found Gorman there, washing up. Gorman was fully clothed, as though he had just arrived home, Grazier said.

Police pressed roommate Kush Sharma to submit to a polygraph exam on his statement that Gorman had been back home by 2:00 a.m. after dropping off Amy. Facing the machine, Sharma changed his story. He now said he could only be certain that Gorman was home at 4:15 a.m.

These contradictions gave new urgency to investigators' desire to search Gorman's car, a red Pontiac sedan that was notoriously filthy inside and out. But there was a twist there, as well. Matt Despins, a friend of Gorman's roommates, called police with a tip that, out of the blue, within 36 hours of Amy St. Laurent's disappearance, Gorman had done a deluxe, bumper-to-bumper detail job on the car.

Gorman's Car Door with Fabric Removed

Gorman's TrunkGorman had undergone a personal makeover, as well. When first interviewed by police, he had maintained a wholesome look, with fashionably coiffed hair and a certain boyishness. Two weeks later, he had gone from All-American to looking like a roadie for a heavy metal band, with multiple piercings, a shaved head and�several new tattoos.

Gorman's Bumper

Corpus DelictiAbout a month after the Amy St. Laurent disappearance, Portland Police Detective Danny Young made a just-in-case inquiry to the National Crime Information Center to see if Gorman or his sedan had been stopped by law enforcement in recent months. He got back a stunning result: NCIC records showed that Gorman had been stopped by police for a headlight violation in the Portland suburb of Westbrook at 3:14 a.m. on the morning that St. Laurent went missingmore than an hour after he claimed that he had been home in bed.

Searchers on Unused Road Near the Crime Scene

At about the same time, police learned from Gorman's mother's boyfriend that the young man had borrowed a shovel from himtwo days after the night at Old Port. Investigators grew increasingly convinced that Gorman had killed St. Laurent and buried the body. But where?

Unused Road Near Crime Scene is Overgrown

In early December, six weeks after the disappearance, the police agencies involved held a sit-down to mull over locations at which the body might have been concealed. They came up with 19 likely sites, from Casco Bay to various wooded and remote locations in the Portland vicinity.

Police Prepare to Excavate the Grave

At dawn on Dec. 8, a force of more than 100 officers and search-and-rescue team members mounted what Portland's Capt. Loughlin called "our last-ditch effort to find Amy." One of the 19 sites was a wooded area dotted with ponds off busy Route 22 in Scarborough, a 10-minute drive from Old Port. It was regarded as a promising venue because it was just minutes from both Westbrook, where Gorman got the headlight violation, and Gorman's mother's home, where he had borrowed the shovel. Gorman knew the area well.

Police dig at the crime scene.

One team, using search dogs from the Maine Warden Service, spent most of the day combing the wooded expanse, which covered several hundred acres. At 2:30 p.m., after eight hours of work, the team was trudging along a long-abandoned, overgrown macadam road which cut through a swath of thick overgrowth.�A volunteer stepped on a patch of loose earth, so the Warden Service brought in�a�cadaver dog, who picked up a hit on a scent. The earth below had been disturbed in the recent past.

The Grave of Amy St. Laurent

Thirty minutes later, Detective Young was on his hands and knees at the site, carefully troweling the soil until he found was he was looking for: a bit of gray fleece, matching the Pratt & Whitney sweatshirt Amy St. Laurent had been wearing when she vanished. Police had found her body, and the missing person investigation became a homicide case.

Chat With Mom

Medical Examiner's Notes on the Examination of St. Laurent's Body

An autopsy showed that St. Laurent had been beaten, sexually assaulted, then shot in the head. Her panties were twisted around her ankles, and toxicology tests indicated traces of GHBgamma-hydroxybutyric acid, the "date rape" rave drug. Police had collected anecdotal accounts that Russ Gorman had used GHB to bed women, but they had nothing to tie the St. Laurent autopsy result directly to Gorman. In fact, the corpse didn't add much to the case against Gorman. It revealed no semen or other bodily fluids that could be tested for DNA. (The murder weapon, believed to be a 9mm Glock, would never be located.)

The Drug GHB

Just before the body was found, Gorman decided to get out of town. Police were watching their prime suspect carefully, and investigators debated whether to let him go. But, at the time, they felt they had insufficient evidence to charge him with murder, so they did not intervene when Gorman left for Troy, Ala.

Medical Examiner's Notes on the Examination of St. Laurent's Head

But back in his hometown, Gorman helped solve the problem of the dearth of evidence. At 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 9, Gorman called his mother, Tammy Westbrook. The two had had a difficult relationship, and Gorman apparently blamed his mother's distracted parenting for his problems with crime. But that day, he called her to make a confession. The truth was eating at him.

In a series of phone conversations over the previous six weeks, Westbrook had pressed her son to tell her the truth of his involvement in the St. Laurent case. He denied it alluntil that call, placed exactly 24 hours after the body was found. "Mom," Gorman said, "I did it. I killed that girl."

During the 22-minute conversation, he explained that he had been walking with St. Laurent in the woods near one of the lakes behind his mother's house. He claimed that St. Laurent had said something that irritated him, and he began beating her, ultimately shooting her in the head.

He then added a bizarre detail, which seemed designed to slough some of the blame off on his mother. He said that during the commission of the murder he had imagined that he had been killing his mother, not the young woman he had met in the Portland bars that night. He claimed that he had "snapped."

Forced to Testify

Re-enactment of the Police Confronting Gorman

After admitting the murder to his mother, Gorman began to come undone. On Dec. 11, he pulled a handgun on a man outside an Alabama gas station. Gorman claimed the man was staring, so he pulled the pistol and shouted, "What you lookin' at?" The victim reported the incident to police, and the next day officers cornered him at the home of a family friend. For nearly six hours, Gorman kept police at bay, threatening suicide with two guns he clutched in his hands. Ultimately, he gave uphe traded his guns for a cigarette and a soda popand was hauled back to Maine on a probation violation charge unrelated to the St. Laurent case.

Re-enactment of Gorman's Threatened Suicide

Meanwhile, Tammy Westbrook had phoned a friend in tears to say that her son had admitted the murder. The friend suggested Westbrook should call the police, but the woman said, "I can't. He's my baby." So the friend called instead.

Westbrook refused to tell police about her son's confession, so she was hauled in front of a grand jury under threat of criminal charges for contempt of court. On Feb. 8, 2002, she sat in the grand jury witness seat and gave a full account of the phone call from her son, breaking into sobs and tears on several occasions.

Cumberland County Courthouse. Portland, Maine

The grand jury indicted Gorman for murder, and his trial was docketed to begin Jan. 13, 2003, in Portland's Cumberland County Courthouse before Judge Nancy Mills. By then, Westbrook claimed to have developed amnesia about the confessional phone call from her son. She insisted that she did not even recall giving testimony to the grand jury.

This placed prosecutor William Stokes in a pinch since his case hinged on Westbrook's testimony. Unlike spouses, parents can be compelled to testify in criminal trials. But what good would the mother be on the witness stand if she were to insist that she had repressed all recollection of the phone call?

Stokes made a risky legal gambit. He asked Judge Mills to allow the prosecution to play a recording of Westbrook's grand jury testimonynormally a sealed secret heard only by the 20 grand jury members, a

judge and attorneys. Mills cautiously agreed, although she added, "I am not unmindful of the significance of the fact that it is grand jury testimony...and the effect, if I'm wrong, on appeal."

Guilty As Charged

Jeffrey "Russ" Gorman

The reluctant mother was called to the witness stand by prosecutor Stokes on the third day of the trial. It was a painful performance. The jury listened to the recording of Westbrook admitting through tears that her flesh and blood was a killer. "He said, 'OK, Mom, I will tell you what happened. I did it,'" Westbrook said. Sobbing, the woman went on to explain that her son said he imagined that he was killing her, not Amy St. Laurent, was he "snapped" that morning.

Re-enactment of Trial Testimony

"I said, why, why, I love you?" Westbrook said on the recording. "I've always loved you. He said, 'I love you too, mom.' Then she added, "I'll never forget it as long as I live." Yet somehow she had, between the grand jury testimony on Feb. 8, 2002, and her trial appearance that day, Jan. 15, 2003.

Stokes was incredulous, and the jurorscommon sense New Englandersappeared to agree. The trial was efficiently brief, and Gorman did not testify. The jury returned a guilty verdict. Judge Mills handed down a sentence of 60 years in prison; Maine does not have the death penalty.

A year later, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court considered Gorman's appeal, based on the playing of his mother's recorded grand jury testimony. Tammy Westbrook sat in the gallery, reading the Bible. She told a reporter, "My son is innocent. In my heart, he is a good boy. This is in the Lord's hands now."

Her prayers were not answered. The high court justices let the conviction stand.

The Killer's PerspectiveMoments after he was convicted, Russ Gorman turned toward Amy St. Laurent's loved ones in the courtroom and mouthed the words, "I'm sorry." Many who witnessed the incident assumed that it was an admission of guilt. But just hours later, in an interview with Gregory Kesich of the Portland Press-Herald, Gorman denied that. He claimed the gesture implied no guilt. He maintained that he was commiserating with them for what they had been through.

Amy St. Laurent

He added, "If I was in their places and I thought someone killed my daughter, I would hate that person and want to see that person put away for a long time." He said that he was aware of his public image. "People think I'm a monster," he said.

It was a telling interview, and Gorman was by turns smug, defiant and defensive. He insisted that the use of his mother's taped testimony "violates every right, every rule." Gorman said he had not confessed to his mother, and he could not explain why she told the grand jury what she did. But he acknowledged that the two had had a troubled relationship.

"I love my mother a lot," he told Kesich. "We have had difficulties when I was growing up, but doesn't every family? It wasn't like she was chasing me around the house with a butcher knife.

"I was a bastard growing up...completely resentful. I didn't go to school. I caused my mom a lot of problems. I guess when I got older she got tired of it, me staying home from school, drinking and smoking weed and breaking things around the home.

"I'd scream at her and tell her 'I'm not going anywhere. What are you going to do about it?'...I have matured a lot since I've been in here. I'm not a kid any more. This is serious."

When Kesich pressed Gorman about the lies he told police about his movements on the night St. Laurent disappeared, the convicted killer blamed his drugs-and-alcohol lifestyle. "So many nights, so many beers," he said. "They run into each other."

He'll have 60 years to think about that one night in October, 2001.

Resources

Finding Amy, Joseph K. Loughlin and Kate Clark Flora, University Press of New England, 2006

Archives of the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald.