A Texas man could spend up to five years in jail for terrorizing his ex-wife from Aroostook County.
Donald Cain, 49, of Conroe, Texas, and formerly of Columbia, South Carolina, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to interstate stalking, according to U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank.
Prosecutors said that Cain was married in August 2014 to a resident of Aroostook County. When they met, he worked in Calais, Maine, but soon relocated to San Antonio, Texas. His wife, whom officials did not publicly identify, remained in Maine. Between November 2014 and December 2015, the defendant used a telephone to call and send threatening text messages which caused substantial emotional distress to his then wife.
During some of these communications, the defendant threatened to harm the woman and members of her immediate family, according to court documents. The documents indicate the two are no longer married but do not state when they were divorced.
Cain reportedly called the victim multiple times a day and some of the calls were recorded by the victim. Prosecutors said that during a recorded telephone call the defendant made to the victim on Dec. 13, 2014, he threatened to “get rid of” her mother by shooting a bullet in her head. He also said, “I’m going to get rid of your mother … if I have to drive ….all the way over there and shoot her in the….head. myself, I’m going to get rid of her.”
The same day, Cain sent the victim a text message containing a video that depicted him sitting in a vehicle holding a handgun to his head and threatening to kill himself, according to the court documents. The victim showed the video on her phone to Houlton Police Officer Matthew Quint.
The video then was forwarded to the San Antonio, Texas, Police Department. In response, after personally viewing the video, SAPD Patrol Officer David Richards checked on the defendant at his residence and ultimately took him into protective custody. When interviewed, the defendant told Richards that he sent the video to the victim “to get a rise out of her” because he was depressed that she would not move to be with him in Texas, according to court documents.
Prosecutors said that Cain admitted he told the victim he would kill himself, but only in hopes that she would respond and visit him. At the time, he also told Officer Richards that he previously made similar threats to the victim, including having sent a similar video to her two to three weeks prior, court documents said.
Cain harassed the victim even after she filed a protection order against him and police told him to stop harassing her, according to court documents, and he even argued with a Houlton police officer over the issue. On one day in 2015, the defendant sent the victim 122 text messages and called her approximately 100 times.
The defendant was arrested on a federal criminal complaint on Jan. 21, 2016, in
Columbia, South Carolina. The iPhone from which the defendant was placing the telephone calls and sending the text messages also was seized. The defendant waived his Miranda rights and admitted to FBI Special Agent Douglas Collier that in communicating with the victim he had “used vulgar terms,” that he “could be an idiot or a jerk with her,” and that he had sent her “ugly” messages over the phone.
Now that he has pleaded guilty to interstate stalking, Cain faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He will be sentenced after completion of a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office.
