BELFAST – The day after Stanley Ward abducted a Belfast woman, robbed her, slashed her throat and left her to die in an isolated camper, he told a detective exactly what he had done.

On Wednesday, Patricia Moss, wearing a scarf to cover the scars on her neck, watched Ward’s description of the events of Nov. 24, on a police video shown in Waldo County Superior Court before Justice Jeffrey Hjelm sentenced Ward to serve 45 years in prison.

“I picked her up and asked her if she was bleedin’. She said yes,” Ward told Belfast police Detective Michael McFadden in the video. “Then I hit her on top of her head a couple times I stabbed her twice, hit her on the head a couple of times with the back end of the knife. Then I cut her throat.”

Ward’s unemotional voice on the tape mixed with the soft sobbing of many in the courtroom, including Ward’s family and Moss’s friends.

Moss, who had not been named previously by the Bangor Daily News because she was a victim, spoke during the hearing and agreed to be identified publicly.

She saved herself that night by escaping from the camper and crawling down a long dirt road to Route 137, where drivers stopped for what they initially thought was a bloody deer.

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The white-haired woman, now 73, was surrounded by friends in the courtroom. Moss addressed the court — and Ward — in a clear, confident voice.

“It’s been over seven months and I feel like it should all be over — and it isn’t,” she said. “I hear the soft voice of Stanley Ward saying, ‘Are you bleeding yet? Are you dead yet? Yeah, you’re dead now.’ Those words just stay with me.”

Ward appeared to stare straight ahead as Moss explained the extent of her injuries — deafness in one ear, lost teeth, nerve damage in a shoulder, stab and slash wounds to the neck and constant pain.

Fern Ward, his mother, told the court that the family is sorry.

“I know it is your wish that Stanley suffer,” she said, adding that her son has been suffering at the hands of other inmates at the Two Bridges Regional Jail. “You see a bad man, and I see a boy.”

Ward also addressed the court. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done. If I could take it back, I would,” he said. “I’m sorry for what I done to that poor woman.”

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He also indicated that he was sorry for his family and for his own future, as he emphasized his concern that he has lost the chance to hunt with a rifle because he’s a felon.

Ward, who pleaded guilty in April to all charges, was sentenced by Hjelm to serve 50 years in prison, with five years suspended, for attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery. He also was ordered to pay about $10,000 to Moss, mostly to repay medical bills, and to spend four years on probation after he is released — at the age of 68.

“His demeanor with the investigator was chillingly cold,” Hjelm said. “He showed no sign of any humanity.”

Ward’s court-appointed attorney, Jeremy Pratt, said after the hearing that he and his client plan to appeal Hjelm’s decision.

According to Deputy District Attorney Eric Walker, Ward decided two days before the attack to carry out a robbery.

After attacking Moss and leaving her to die in the camper, Ward returned to Belfast and got his own vehicle before driving back to check on Moss. He didn’t find her.

Moss had begun crawling toward Route 137. At one point she heard a vehicle coming and hid in a ditch, evading Ward.

“She crawled for her life,” Walker said. “Somehow, someway, Mrs. Moss managed to make it to the road, where drivers did not recognize her as a human being.”

 


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