PORTLAND — A friend who helped shelter a 20-year-old man charged in a triple slaying in northern Maine says he told her husband he stabbed two men and a 10-year-old boy after a confrontation over a drug debt.

Sixty-two-year-old Joy Strout and her husband opened up their home in Orient to Thayne Ormsby a few weeks before last month’s killings in the town of Amity. She told The Associated Press today that Ormsby told her husband that the stabbings happened after he confronted victim Jeffrey Ryan about an alleged drug debt he owed Ormsby’s father.

Ormsby is charged with murder for allegedly killing Ryan, his son Jesse and neighbor Jason Dehahn at Ryan’s home.

Police today brought Ormsby back to Maine from New Hampshire where he was arrested July 2.

1:15 p.m.

HOULTON — A Maine man charged in the fatal stabbings of two men and a 10-year-old boy is back in his home state to face murder charges.

State police today transported 20-year-old Thayne Ormsby from the Strafford County jail in New Hampshire, where he’d been held since his arrest on July 2 in Dover.

He was expected this afternoon at the Aroostook County Jail. The Attorney General’s Office says it’s unclear when he’ll make his first court appearance in Maine.

Ormsby is facing three counts of murder in the deaths of Jeffrey Ryan, his 10-year-old son, Jesse, and Jason Dehahn, a friend and neighbor, in Amity, Maine. In addition, he was indicted Friday on one count of arson for setting fire to Jeff Ryan’s truck.