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CNN Live At Daybreak
More Than One Person May Have Been Involved in Poisonings at Church
Aired May 06, 2003 - 05:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators in the northern Maine town of New Sweden believe more than one person may have been involved in last week's poisonings at a church.
As CNN's Jamie Colby reports, more church members are coming forward with information.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERRY NELSON, FRIEND: He'd help me if I needed help. He was always helping someone.
JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): That is how many of the people in New Sweden, a northern Maine town, population 621, remember Daniel Bondeson, the man now linked to the poisoning of 16 people at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church, who himself died Friday of a single gunshot wound at home. Fifty-three-year-old Bondeson, born and raised here, wasn't at church a week ago when coffee tainted with arsenic was served. Though not a regular churchgoer, he'd been to a bake sale there the day before.
LT. DENNIS APPLETON, MAINE STATE POLICE: We feel Mr. Bondeson is linked to the poisonings.
COLBY: Lieutenant Dennis Appleton, the lead investigator in the church poisoning, says he now believes Bondeson's motive may be church related.
APPLETON: We're considering motive. We know some of the dynamics of what was going on within that church community and so we're looking at those as motive.
COLBY (on camera): Though investigators have confirmed Bondeson is connected to the poisoning, they have not yet determined whether or not he acted alone, and until they can, they say theyll continue to question parishioners, take fingerprints and DNA samples. And they say parishioners now, realizing this is a homicide investigation, are being more forthcoming, giving information they might have previously thought was unimportant that might now help solve this crime.
APPLETON: People didn't want to believe it, but they began to say wow, I guess we'd just better bare our souls.
COLBY (voice-over): An expected autopsy report on Bondeson was not released Monday. It would have ruled his death either a suicide or murder, perhaps a clue if anyone else was involved. APPLETON: We feel that there's a potential for more than one person to be involved. We haven't ruled that in or out.
COLBY: This is a community with few secrets, except perhaps one, the one that still troubles Bondeson's friend and fellow school teacher, Brenda Jepson.
BRENDA JEPSON, FRIEND: Here everybody knows everybody else. Everyone's related or somehow interconnected. And if it were possible to know ahead of time that somebody was tormented, that somebody was feeling, you know, very unhappy, we would have known it here. And we didn't. We obviously didn't know that.
COLBY: Jamie Colby, CNN, New Sweden, Maine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
at Church>
Aired May 6, 2003 - 05:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators in the northern Maine town of New Sweden believe more than one person may have been involved in last week's poisonings at a church.
As CNN's Jamie Colby reports, more church members are coming forward with information.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERRY NELSON, FRIEND: He'd help me if I needed help. He was always helping someone.
JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): That is how many of the people in New Sweden, a northern Maine town, population 621, remember Daniel Bondeson, the man now linked to the poisoning of 16 people at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church, who himself died Friday of a single gunshot wound at home. Fifty-three-year-old Bondeson, born and raised here, wasn't at church a week ago when coffee tainted with arsenic was served. Though not a regular churchgoer, he'd been to a bake sale there the day before.
LT. DENNIS APPLETON, MAINE STATE POLICE: We feel Mr. Bondeson is linked to the poisonings.
COLBY: Lieutenant Dennis Appleton, the lead investigator in the church poisoning, says he now believes Bondeson's motive may be church related.
APPLETON: We're considering motive. We know some of the dynamics of what was going on within that church community and so we're looking at those as motive.
COLBY (on camera): Though investigators have confirmed Bondeson is connected to the poisoning, they have not yet determined whether or not he acted alone, and until they can, they say theyll continue to question parishioners, take fingerprints and DNA samples. And they say parishioners now, realizing this is a homicide investigation, are being more forthcoming, giving information they might have previously thought was unimportant that might now help solve this crime.
APPLETON: People didn't want to believe it, but they began to say wow, I guess we'd just better bare our souls.
COLBY (voice-over): An expected autopsy report on Bondeson was not released Monday. It would have ruled his death either a suicide or murder, perhaps a clue if anyone else was involved. APPLETON: We feel that there's a potential for more than one person to be involved. We haven't ruled that in or out.
COLBY: This is a community with few secrets, except perhaps one, the one that still troubles Bondeson's friend and fellow school teacher, Brenda Jepson.
BRENDA JEPSON, FRIEND: Here everybody knows everybody else. Everyone's related or somehow interconnected. And if it were possible to know ahead of time that somebody was tormented, that somebody was feeling, you know, very unhappy, we would have known it here. And we didn't. We obviously didn't know that.
COLBY: Jamie Colby, CNN, New Sweden, Maine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
at Church>
