Philip Scott Fournier will spend 45 years in prison for murdering 16-year-old Joyce McLain in East Millinocket in 1980.
Fournier, 57, was 19 at the time of the killing. McLain’s murder went unsolved for decades before the case was reopened in 2008.
Fournier was sentenced Friday at the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor.
“It’s never too late to do the right thing but the amount of time that these folks have lived with this case is unconscionable,” says Assistant District Attorney Leanne Robbin.
Robbin says that while it was gratifying to finally get justice for McLain, Fournier put the family through years of grief and uncertainty.
“We are relieved that 37 years later it’s over — we wish it had been earlier. And certainly if the defendant had taken responsibility earlier we wouldn’t be here today, and they would have been able to get closure a lot earlier than this,” she says.
Laura Shea Merrill was one of McLain’s friends, and has used the phrase “Justice for Joyce” for 37 years. She says this day was a long time coming.
“We’ve all waited and we had faith and it’s happened. So yeah, I feel ‘Justice for Joyce,’” she says.
Fournier has not publicly admitted guilt. He was a person of interest since the investigation began, and over the years he had told various versions of events, at one time reportedly confessing to the murder. He was arrested in March 2016, after the case was reopened in 2008, and was convicted in February of this year.
Fournier’s defense team had argued that his memories and confessions were not reliable. Speaking outside the courtroom in Bangor on Friday, Fournier’s lawyer, Jeffrey Silverstein, expressed disappointment that his client was in a position to be sentenced at all, and suggested that the decades-long case was not over yet.
“Forty-five is a big number, and Mr. Fournier is 57, so as a practical matter he’s going to be jammed up down at the prison for quite some time and it’s, in essence and practicality, almost the rest of his life sentence. But he looks forward to an appeal which he’s asked that we file and we will do so. And he’ll look forward to the outcome of that,” he said.
