By Judy Harrison
BDN Staff Writer
BANGOR — A spelling mistake on a warrant allegedly allowed a man who escaped from the Aroostook County Jail in 1981 while awaiting trial on a theft charge to remain on the lam for more than 30 years.
Albert C. Marcheterre, 56, of Eden, Vermont, was arrested Sunday in Vermont on one count of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
He was charged in U.S. District Court in Bangor on Oct. 29 but the case was sealed until Monday.
The circumstances surrounding Marcheterre’s arrest were not outlined in court documents. His first court appearance in Maine has not been set.
Marcheterre was 23 years old when he escaped on April 21, 1981, from the outside pen of the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton, according to the complaint signed by FBI Special Agent James McCarty. Marcheterre was being held in connection with an Oct. 2, 1980, theft but information about that theft was not available late Monday.
The six-year statute of limitations on the theft charge was suspended when Marcheterre left Maine.
The warrant issued after his escape, misspelled his last name as “Maschererre” but the complaint said that identifiers on the 1981 warrant, including date of birth, scars, marks, tattoos and a glass left eye, match those of a man using the named Albert Michael Dumais.
Dumais was the alias Marcheterre was using when he was arrested several times in Vermont between 1992 and 2002, according to the complaint.
His real identity appears to have been uncovered in 2004 when he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. It is not clear from federal court documents when the FBI concluded Marcheterre was the person listed on the 1981 warrant.
“Because of the misspelling on the 1981 complaint [for the arrest warrant], the outstanding arrest warrant had not been previously associated with Marcheterre’s FBI number and criminal records,” McCarty wrote in the federal complaint.
If convicted on the federal charge, Marcheterre may serve up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
