i AUGUSTA State: Give killer 40 years
AUGUSTA State: Give killer 40 years
BY BETTY ADAMS
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 03/03/2009

AUGUSTA -- Prosecutors want 36-year-old Raymond Leslie Clark to spend 40 years behind bars for the beating and strangulation death of Audrey Lou Benn, his downstairs neighbor.

Clark is to be sentenced Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. in Kennebec County Superior Court.

The two lived in an apartment building on State Street in Augusta.

Benn, 72, was killed on Feb. 22, 2008, after she confronted Clark about being listed on the sex offender registry, Clark told police.

The Augusta Police Department had put out notices on Feb. 8, 2008, advising neighbors that Clark was a convicted sex offender.

Clark and Benn had been good neighbors from the time Clark and his girlfriend moved into the house, Clark said. He told a reporter he regretted killing the woman who let him use her phone and allowed him to bum cigarettes from her.

"I wish I could change it in some way and change places with her," he said in an interview shortly before pleading guilty to her murder.

The day of the slaying, he said, he got a glass of water in her kitchen and then she came at him with a knife, backing him into her bedroom. He said she threatened to have him returned to jail. He said he acted in self-defense.

Clark beat her, then strangled her with the tie to her bathrobe. Over the next several days, he cashed a number of checks from her checking account.

The petite, frail woman who had been a French teacher in New York and Guinea years ago, most recently used a cane and then a small snow shovel to keep her balance as she walked.

Assistant Attorney General Leane Zainea, in a presentencing report, called the crime "an extremely vicious attack upon a 72-year-old woman who was, because of health issues, incapable of protecting herself."

An agreement between the prosecutors and Clark's defense attorney, James Billings, capped Clark's prison time at 40 years.

Billings said Monday he was still working on his presentencing report to the court.

"I am arguing for something in the range of 30 to 35," Billings said. "I am not putting a concrete number on it."

Conviction for "knowing and intentional murder" carries a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. Justice John Nivison accepted Clark's guilty plea at a hearing on Jan. 26.

Clark was convicted in Portland in 1999 of sexual abuse of a minor after a 14-year-old girl told police he forced her to have sex in a rail car at the base of Munjoy Hill.

He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Zainea's report listed Clark's previous felony convictions, beginning with robbery in 1990, the sexual abuse charge in 1999 and an Augusta theft in 2006. Clark was on probation for the theft when he murdered Benn.

Clark also had a series of misdemeanor convictions for offenses in Cumberland, Androscoggin and Kennebec counties.

Clark said his problems resulted from a failure of the state's mental health system.

He said he first entered the state system at age 5, after his mother gave custody of him to the state. He said he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed such medications as Seroquel, Vistaril and Clonopin.

Because he spent time at the Augusta Mental Health Institute, parameters of his treatment were governed by the AMHI consent decree.

He said not enough treatment was available, though.

Two weeks before Benn's murder, Clark said, mental-health workers tried to get him to enter an inpatient crisis treatment facility. He refused, worried that his girlfriend would try to break into his apartment.

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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