Montville —
An area girl was arrested in reference to a 2018 hearth at her house that displaced three households, together with a number of kids and a child. She is being held at Knox County Jail in Rockland with bail set at $5,000 money.
Melissa Keller, 36, now of Montville, was charged Tuesday, Jan. 12. with arson and making an attempt to deceive her insurance coverage firm. Unrelated to the fireplace, she was additionally charged with forgery, two counts of negotiating a nugatory instrument and perjury.
The hearth broke out round 3 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018, at 234 Hunter Highway in Unity.
Senior Investigator Jeremy Damren of the State Fireplace Marshal’s Workplace mentioned in a courtroom affidavit that Unity Fireplace Chief Blaine Parsons had requested their investigation sources that day.
Keller owns the two-family home together with her ex-husband, Ricky Bagley, and rents the correct facet of the house to her brother-in-law, Dylan Keller. The basement can be rented to some who weren’t house on the time of the fireplace.
Parsons instructed Damren that Keller had introduced her 4 kids to Bangor that night to fulfill husband Derek Keller, whom she had married in 2017, at his work and to get one thing to eat.
She later returned house to Unity and put the kids to mattress. In some unspecified time in the future within the night, Parsons mentioned, Keller returned to Bangor and caught her husband with one other girl.
In accordance with courtroom paperwork, Keller instructed Derek he was going to see ”recklessness” in her conduct that night.
Keller instructed investigators that she went to mattress after 2 a.m. that evening and was awoken by her son who was coughing within the subsequent room. She mentioned she didn’t hear smoke detectors going off.
She opened her bed room door and was met by a “poof” of smoke, she mentioned. Then she received her kids out of the home. alongside together with her canine.
She instructed investigators the fireplace was coming from the realm of the dishwasher and prolonged up the wall within the kitchen. She additionally mentioned she was roughly eight months behind on the mortgage, however denied setting hearth to the home.
Keller’s husband, Derek, mentioned they had been having hassle of their relationship. He mentioned he had deliberate on transferring out that day. The dishwasher, he mentioned, that they had discovered on the facet of the street in Freedom three months previous to the fireplace. Melissa fastened it and it labored nice, he added.
He had returned to the fireplace scene later within the day to see what he might salvage. Trying on the wall in his and Melissa’s bed room, he seen two images had been taken down: one was of him and his grandfather when he was younger and the opposite was him in a basketball uniform.
Derek mentioned he started to interrupt down when Keller disappeared from the room and got here again with one of many images he had been in search of. The image was not stained in any respect, he mentioned.
The couple had talked about burning down the home, Derek mentioned. In the last few months, she had urged it a number of instances, he mentioned, however no plans had ever been made. Some particulars that had been mentioned included the thought of igniting rags on the furnace or lighting the insulation within the partitions on hearth within the basement, Derek mentioned.
Damren returned to the fireplace scene Sept. 8, 2018, and appeared in the master suite for protected areas on the wall. He famous that if images had been faraway from the wall after the fireplace, the wall would present an overview of the place the images had been hung.
He discovered two image hangers on the wall with no protected space. “Because of this two photos had been taken off from the wall previous to or in early levels of the fireplace,” he mentioned.
Keller’s former husband, Bagley, instructed Senior Investigator Mary MacMaster there was an analogous incident in 2014, after they had been nonetheless married.
Whereas Bagley was at work, he was notified his home was on hearth. Keller, the kids, and the canine had simply left the home when the neighbor found the fireplace, he mentioned. The trigger was undetermined, however the insurance coverage firm finally paid for the home.
MacMaster additionally interviewed the neighbors’ teenage son, who mentioned his bed room was adjoining to the Kellers’ home. Two months earlier than the fireplace, he mentioned, he heard a phone dialog between the couple the place Derek was on speakerphone.
The couple “had been speaking about burning down the home to get out of debt and mentioned they must do it when the youngsters had been there, so it did not look suspicious,” he mentioned, in accordance with the affidavit.
Tina White lived within the basement of the Hunter Highway house together with her boyfriend. On the evening of the fireplace, the couple was at Jap Maine Medical Middle, the place she delivered a child. White mentioned Keller by no means known as her to inform her of the fireplace.
Lower than every week earlier than the fireplace, White mentioned, Keller had acquired mail with insurance coverage paperwork. Upon opening the mail. White mentioned, Keller instructed her “that the home was insured, and he or she might burn the place down, accumulate the insurance coverage, and transfer someplace else,” in accordance with courtroom paperwork.
Cassandra Smith, who was having an affair with Keller’s husband, had her personal two kids spending the evening at a sleepover within the condominium subsequent door to the place the fireplace broke out that evening.
Smith instructed investigators she had heard Derek and his spouse arguing over the phone, as she was with Derek on the time. “Melissa acknowledged she was going to burn down the home,” she mentioned.
Damren mentioned within the affidavit that there was little question in Smith’s thoughts that Keller lit the home on hearth and Smith thought a part of the rationale is perhaps that her two kids had been spending the evening subsequent door.
Smith mentioned that after the fireplace she noticed Keller had two baggage of pet food within the trunk of her automotive, together with a field containing insurance coverage paperwork, and what gave the impression to be hair from a child in a plastic bag, a child’s tooth, and a photograph album.
In his report, Damren mentioned he was capable of decide the electronics of the dishwasher weren’t the reason for the fireplace. He was not capable of finding any “naturally current ignition sources,” although he did decide the fireplace began within the space of the dishwasher.
Damren famous that on the time of the fireplace, Keller was on probation for endangering the welfare of a kid from a 2017 incident in Waterville. In accordance with a Waterville police report, Keller had left two of her kids and three different kids she was babysitting in her operating automobile for at the very least 90 minutes whereas she was at a salon.
If Keller is discovered responsible of arson, she might face a sentence of as much as 30 years in jail and a nice of as a lot as $50,000.
The stays of the house at 234 Hunter Highway in Unity that was destroyed by hearth Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018.
(Photograph by: Fran Gonzalez)
