Bail set for accused in hit-and-run; prosecutor cites tampering of evidence
Other news: paid public parking coming to Quietside? Tremont, SWH move to fortify working waterfronts
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, July 29, 2023 - Did John Holdsworth try to cover up evidence of a negligent homicide in the hit-and-run death of a Tremont women here on the night of June 10 on Rt. 102?
"Despite the fact that the defendant did choose to turn himself in, a warrant had still been sought,” Hancock County district attorney’s office stated. “The serious nature, as well as the fact that there were deliberate actions taken to attempt to subvert the investigation, led the state to still seek a high cash bail.”
Holdsworth, 31, was arrested Thursday and charged with manslaughter. The affidavit gave a Bar Harbor address as his legal residence but stated that he lived at 10 The Otter Way, Hancock.
Bail was set at $10,000. Holdsworth will appear in court again Nov. 16.
Friends who saw the truck damage late at night on June 10 outside of the Dog & Pony Tavern in Bar Harbor urged Holdsworth to return to the site of the collision to determine what he struck. They drove a friend’s car there and inspected the area where Holdsworth saw broken pieces of his truck and picked them up, police said.
They spotted a trash bag at the side of the road and surmised that that might have been what he struck, the police affidavit stated. They returned to Bar Harbor around 1:30 a.m.
The next day, two bicyclists found the body in a ditch on the north bound side of Rt. 102 between the Food Mart and Smuggler’s Den campgrounds, police said.
The state police crime lab found human tissues and blood stains on the exterior of John Holdsworth’s pickup truck which DNA tests confirmed belonged to Amber Robbins, the 35-year-old victim, according to the affidavit by state office investigator Dana Austin.
Holdsworth told police he attended a birthday party at MDI Lobster on Clark Point Road and drank two or three beers the night of June 10. He first told police he went to a friend’s house in Bar Harbor after he left the party. He later admitted to police he went to the tavern first.
The affidavit stated Holdsworth said he was distracted by a text message from his wife that night and looked away from the road and appeared to have struck something.
Cell phone data obtained by police confirmed that his wife texted him but it wasn’t until 11.29 p.m., after his truck was already spotted in the parking lot next to the tavern, state police reported witnesses as saying.
On June 11 at 6:13 p.m. he made his first call to police, after news reports of the found body.
“During the late hours of June 10, John Holdsworth left a birthday party in Southwest Harbor,” Austin wrote in his affidavit.
“John Holdsworth did not report the crash until the evening of June 11, 2023. On June 12, the autopsy of Ms. Robbins was completed the cause of death was blunt force instruments injuries.”
Robbins of Tremont grew up in Waldo County and attended Searsport High School, where she played basketball, according to her aunt, Belfast resident Amylin Billings.
Robbins held a few jobs over the years, working at one point for The Jackson Laboratory, and more recently as an in-home health aide.
Robbins was married but at the time of her death was separated and living alone with her daughters, who are 11 and 12 years old.
The maximum penalty for manslaughter in Maine is 30 years in prison and a fine.
Southwest Harbor explores paid public parking to manage ‘mayhem’ at Manset dock
SOUTHWEST HARBOR - Is paid public parking coming to the Quietside?
The select board this week asked for quotes from a kiosk vendor for three potential paid parking lots at the town docks. The vendor, IPS Group, is the service provider for the private paid lot owned by the Drydock Cafe on Main Street and the town of Bar Harbor, which is expecting parking revenues of $4 million this year.
The primary motivation is to manage the “mayhem” principally at the town dock in Manset and to relieve the harbormaster of the responsibility of monitoring illegal parking.
Harbor Committee Chair Nicholas Madeira said the kiosks offer the opportunity to “assign parking, give people limitations, know who's there and just reel in some of the mayhem that happens at all of our town docks.”
A spokesman for the company recommended using the current system in Bar Harbor where users enter the vehicle’s plate number, and enforcement is enabled by a scanner which may be operated by someone driving by.
Bar Harbor kiosks accept cash, credit and debit cards, resident discount cards and tokens. Without any supporting data, select member Luke Damon told the company he wants a cards-only system.
Damon also triggered a rebuke from Madeira when he asked a series of questions on how the harbor Committee would manage such a system. “Do we have a plan of what's allowed, what permits would be exempt from the meter? Is everybody going to be on the meter?”
Madeira replied,
“This is not our plan.
“This is a select board that has talked about signage for more than two years. I mean, you guys beat signage into the ground - on exodus, how to get in and out of town, emergency roads, where the public restrooms are …
“The harbor committee has ideas for the town facility but signs are in this room right here.
“So whatever you guys want to do. This is a way to manage the process. Whatever you implement. We know the number of parking spaces available. We can put numbers on it. We can draw lines in the sand so to speak. But there are different codes that can be put into this machine. It's not a one size fits all. It's 24-hour, eight-hour or no pay for the people on Greening Island. It's very versatile.”
The harbor committee has openly criticized the select board the past several years for not understanding its mission and for its lack of support.
The select board Tuesday put an end to any notion by the harbor committee that it could move ahead and replace the harbormaster’s office without approval from the select board.
“Nope. Has to be approved by us,” select chair Carolyn Ball said when told of the committee’s discussion. (See below)
Quietside select boards support much-needed working waterfront improvements, vote to seek more info
The select boards of the island’s two largest working harbors voted to pursue three projects to enhance their waterfront infrastructure.
In Southwest Harbor, the board authorized the harbormaster and the harbor committee “to move forward” with plans for a new office for the harbormaster after committee member Anne Napier presented drawings she had drafted for a proposed building.
“The harbor committee has been talking about the need for the harbormaster to have a new office where the floor is not rotted out and the building is not 25- or 30-years-old, and is well heated and functional.
“We've made that recommendation a number of times, and there have been no action. So I took it upon myself to investigate …
“I worked as a general contractor and I know quality of materials and how to design buildings myself, so I put together a packet on Backyard Builders and present it to the committee and they gave me permission to move forward with whatever I research.
“I did a design and I did both the floor plan with the schematics for the electrical and the plumbing and also did elevations which means if you're looking at a building from a particular side what looks like and then I put together specifications for the building in several different sizes.”
Napier asked Backyard Builders for estimates for three different sizes. Town Manager confirmed there is money in the budget for the project.
Tremont revisits replacing wharf house, mulls new hoist, approves Seal Cove repairs
In Tremont last week, the select board authorized the town manager to have plans drafted to replace the town-owned wharf house with a potential harbormaster’s building.
A stray firework into the house requiring some repair may have serendipitously triggered a new conversation about the house, which has not been occupied for more than five years. The town owns the house and a nearby garage.
In 2015, the select board had a similar conversation about the future of the house which was rented at the time for $750 a month.
The Wharf House was struck by a stray firework through the front of it and lodged in the baseboard heater in the kitchen area. The person who accidentally shot the firework broke through the door and kicked another window in to put the fire out. They extinguished the fire and called the fire department. The individual who caused the incident has boarded up the window, cleaned up the glass, re-secured the door on the hinges.
Town Manager Jesse Dunbar wondered if there’s anything else the members wanted the individual to do.
That prompted a discussion about its future.
The code enforcement officer has said if it has not been a residential structure for five years, it cannot be resumed as a residential structure where it’s located. DEP has been asked to determine whether a harbormasters’ building is considered a water-dependent use which would give the town flexibility to relocate the current office on the deck of the town dock.
The board voted to proceed with what would be a triple-bank shot: investigate plans to replace the wharf house, and use it as a new harbormaster’s building. That would open up the deck for a fourth hoist sought by the harbor committee.
Seal Cove ramp
The select board also voted to authorize use of funds from the Seal Cove fund to repair slabs at the ramp at Seal Cove. The town crew is expected to do most of the work.
researching Pay Parking, I respectfully suggest passage of a motion to authorize the Harbor Committee to research Pay Parking Options and bring their recommendations back to the board.
I have put information in your packets for the harbormaster office project. Anne Napier has been
instrumental in getting drawings, quotes, and basic information together to discuss with Jarrod and myself. Jarrod has collaborated with the committee also in what they see as valuable in the office. I believe due diligence has been done, for this long overdue project to go forward and the
presented information will allow the board to give their authorization to move forward. Should you wish to approve the moving forward with the harbormaster office project, I respectfully suggest passage of a motion to authorize the Harbormaster and Harbor Committee to move forward with the harbormaster office project.
How do you want to be remembered as a citizen of this Isle which at 108 square miles is Maine's largest island, and the second largest in the Northeast, next only to Long Island?
The extraordinary efforts of the titans of Acadia - George B. Dorr, Harvard President Charles Eliot, his son, landscape architect Charles, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. and landscape architect Beatrix Ferrand - did not come cheaply and with plenty of angst about the commercialism of this fecund eden with its unusual geology jutting out into the ocean.
Their off-springs blur into a foggy gene pool of sloppy acceptance of their lot in life which is good when your major worry is whether you’ll meet the start time in your sloop.
When was the last time any of them came to a Planning Board meeting to cast their influence on, say, affordable housing?
Which is what makes Bill Horner a special man who will be remembered among his antecedents, especially his great grandfather, the Honorable Luere B Deasy, the principal legal mind behind the crafting of Acadia National Park.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://static1.squarespace.com/static/610d5055699fb835cba4d997/t/61bca0dcf6d1c81c10e71676/1639751916557/Horner.pdf
I was born in 1941 at Mount Desert Island Hospital and graduated from Bar Harbor High School in 1959. As most of you readers know, there were three high schools on MDI in those days and competition in sports and for girls was pretty intense. I remember being thoroughly chastised for inviting a very attractive young lady from Mount Desert to my senior prom. I thought this was a major coup, especially since I was a terrible basketball player.
I didn’t know much about what was going on in towns outside Bar Harbor then, except that there were a lot of summer people in Northeast Harbor and a lot of fishermen in Southwest and on the outer islands. I went away to college and medical school.
I returned to my hometown in 1972 as a newly minted general surgeon and began to see patients from everywhere: Swan’s Island, Frenchboro, the Cranberries, Ellsworth, Downeast Maine and, of course, from every square inch of Mount Desert Island.
By then the island had managed to consolidate the three high schools and I began to appreciate the true character of island residents and, despite differences in geography, how much we had in common.
People had really interesting stories to tell about their families and lives, many of which intersected with my own — and with “my” town. Rather than as separate villages and towns with separate histories, I began to understand that we were one very interesting community of islands, each of our stories fitting together.
I retired from surgery in 2007 and, having island roots, began to explore my family’s history and stories, many of them handed down orally and having taken on rather dubious if not mythic qualities.
I aspired to do research, discover the truth and write. This led me to a particular family member who became a community leader in 1880s Bar Harbor and subsequently had much to do with the formation of Acadia National Park.
His local interest had quickly translated to the regional. He lifted his eyes above the small town of Gouldsboro, where he was born, and saw the entire region from the tops of mountains. He saw Acadia not as a pretty island park but as a grand public resource, a gift to the country to be held in trust for the benefit of every American. He inspired me.
I wrote his story and in my search for truth found historical resources I had not previously imagined: people, collections, both private and public, and institutions.
The closer I got to completing my manuscript, the more suggestions of resources came in. Where was all this stuff? How could I access it?
I gathered a number of interested friends and we decided to form a collaborative, to be known as the Friends of Island History (FOIH). Included were Acadia National Park, the College of the Atlantic, the island libraries and museums, several historical societies, and individual collectors and historians. FOIH had a cordial if untested relationship.
Aside from the libraries, FOIH members had little to no history of collaboration. This was a very new idea. And given the old competition among towns, it wasn’t entirely clear that we completely trusted one another.
As we held these candid discussions, one essential philosophical point became clear: With regard to our institutional collections, we were stewards, not owners. We were, in effect, trustees — just as the founders of Acadia National Park called themselves, The Trustees of Public Reservations.
Then came the idea of a History Trust and further realizations. As an initial group of 11 organizations, the History Trust could support individual organizations’ efforts to maintain their autonomy, protect and catalog their collections, digitize them and create sophisticated metadata — a digital archive — so that they could be easily searched by scholars from fifth grade to graduate school and by the general public.
We could also tap numerous opportunities to economize and take advantage of synergies. Together, we could seek funding from hitherto untapped resources in the form of grants and enlightened private philanthropy.
In essence, we would be engaging our communities and schools in telling their stories and passing them on to future generations, preserved and improved.
To date the following organizations form the History Trust: Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association, Thorndike Library of College of the Atlantic, Great Cranberry Island Historical Society, Great Harbor Maritime Museum, Islesford Historical Society, Jesup Memorial Library, Maine Seacoast Mission, Mount Desert Island Historical Society, Seal Cove Auto Museum, Southwest Harbor Historical Society, and Tremont Historical Society.
The History Trust’s governing council has begun the strategic planning process that will establish clear goals and deliverables to achieve the organization’s mission and vision.
The group has defined the mission of the History Trust as the following: The stewards of Mount Desert Island regional collections, united as the History Trust, work together to improve collections care, enhance digital and physical access, and engage the public to better understand and use these essential, irreplaceable, historical and cultural resources.
The History Trust collaborative has been doing the hard work of creating an organization that can save the region’s archives, develop a common catalog so that anyone can see what is in them, engage young people and preserve and appreciate the rich histories that define this place to which we always return, the place we all call home.
For this native son, that is a dream fulfilled. That is progress!
Bill Horner is a retired physician and resident of Bar Harbor.
My friend Bill Horner shared with me these worries by the founders a century ago.
“In March 28,1903, Eliot worried to the point of despair about public acceptance, particularly among native Islanders. On August 25,1903, Eliot wrote to fellow Trustee Lea McIlvaine Luquer:
So I assume that they are checking to see if he only consumed “2 or 3” beers at MDI lobster?
Kill a parent of two after drinking, driving and texting, get slapped on the hand... Wtf