AUGUSTA – A Maine prosecutor recommended in 2000 that 20-year-old Roy Gutfinski Jr. be kept behind bars for as long as possible.

Deputy District Attorney Alan Kelley said that Gutfinski, on trial in a bizarre assault case, would continue to be a problem — both for himself and for society.

“Quite simply, the only guarantee of safety is adult incarceration,” Kelley wrote as a judge was poised to sentence Gutfinski in a ritual blood-letting case that left a 16-year-old girl scarred for life.

Kelley’s words were prophetic.

Gutfinski was convicted of elevated aggravated assault and served 7½ years of the 10-year sentence — one of his various stints in Maine and Massachusetts jails.

Last week, now living under the name of Caius Domitius Veiovis after a legal name change in 2008, he pleaded not guilty in a Massachusetts court to three counts each of murder, kidnapping and intimidation of witnesses. The former Augusta man now faces the possibility of three life sentences without parole.

Veiovis, 31, and two others are accused of killing three men on or about Aug. 28 in Pittsfield, Mass., allegedly to prevent one of them from testifying.

A look at Veiovis’ history — largely through Maine court documents and previously published stories — offers a picture of an increasingly self-loathing person who lapsed into recreational drug use, cultivated a fascination with knives and adopted demon worship to repel people.

‘DANGEROUS’ AT 13

Veiovis was raised in Pittston — he says by adoptive parents. But the reference to adoption is nowhere on a copy of his birth certificate, which lists his custodial parents also as his birth parents.

His problems with the judicial system began when he was 13 and was arrested for carrying a double-bladed assault-style knife.

A neuropsychologist who evaluated him said teachers noted a preocccupation with devil worship and resistance to authority. Another counselor said the boy “exhibited very dangerous and threatening behavior” and didn’t want to change.

He was placed on probation at age 14 and spent the next couple of years in and out of the Maine Youth Center and various hospitals where he was treated for substance abuse — alcohol, heroin and mushrooms — and behavior disorders.

In April 1994, he was involuntarily committed to St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston, then discharged a week a later after hospital workers were unable to control him and he assaulted a staffer.

At that point, the boy admitted using marijuana daily, alcohol regularly and amphetamines and acid sometimes.

“Again he revealed to staff that a ‘nun’ had told him he was ‘psycho, evil, and that he would grow up to be a murderer,’ ” Kelley wrote in the June 28, 2000, presentencing memo.

Released from the Maine Youth Center at age 18, Gutfinski applied for — and later received — Social Security disability.

He told the examiner then that he spent his days watching for people who were out to get him.

‘HATES WHAT HE SEES’

A month after he turned 19, he was committed to the state’s psychiatric hospital after reportedly assaulting his girlfriend and threatening her boss with an ax.

Then, in August 1999, he watched in his darkened downtown Augusta apartment as his 17-year-old girlfriend took a razor and sliced a 16-year-old girl in the small of her back. The wound required 32 stitches to close.

Gutfinski and his girlfriend then licked the blood and kissed. He told police he was a vampire, but one who was without fangs and able to go about in daylight.

At that 2000 sentencing hearing, Roy C. Gutfinski Sr. told the judge his son was a very active child who was later diagnosed as hyperactive, and hospitalized for drug problems.

He also said his son was close to his sister, fond of the family pets and once dived into a swimming pool to rescue a toddler.

At the same hearing, Dr. Ann LeBlanc, chief of forensic services at the Augusta Mental Health Institute who had evaluated the 20-year-old defendant, testified that he failed to deal well with emotionally charged situations and had several diagnoses, including antisocial personality disorder, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, self-mutilation, identity disorder, impulsivity and dissociation.

“He looks at himself and hates what he sees,” LeBlanc said.

He moved around, living in Augusta, Waterville and Bangor, as well as traveling to New Bedford, Mass., where he and another Maine man were charged with kidnapping and drug possession.

In that incident, they were accused of keeping two exotic dancers in their hotel room even though the women wanted to leave. Those kidnapping charges were later dismissed.

‘IN HARMONY WITH EVERYTHING’

Gutfinski, who did not testify during his 2000 trial in Kennebec County Superior Court in Augusta, addressed the judge at the sentencing hearing, saying he should have halted the blood-letting when the two girls began pricking their arms with tacks.

It was one of the few times he has spoken at length publicly.

“I believe I can do probation,” he told the judge. “I want to make it out there. I want to be able to live out there in harmony with everything.”

Gutfinski said he wanted a house, a decent job and maybe to start a body-piercing business.

But in psychological examinations, he told people he heard voices inside him and had visions of killing people.

“Despite the constant efforts of a supportive and loving family, he has consistently lashed out at them, and at society as a whole,” Kelley wrote. “It appears that he has attempted to do whatever he could to ‘shock’ his family and society, perhaps even attempting to instill a ‘fear’ of what he might do next. He has proven himself to be deeply psychogically disturbed, and obviously dangerous to those around him.”

After the 2000 conviction, Gutfinski began altering his appearance, with small bumps that appear as horns implanted in his forehead, filing his teeth, reshaping his earlobes and gathering tattoos.

He also had small horns implanted in his septum. However, those long, tooth-like horns in his nose are absent in photos of his recent court appearance in Massachusetts.

A tattooed “666” on his forehead showed prominently.

BLOGGING ABOUT TRASH

In a blog about Trash — a name he attempted to adopt in 2003 — he describes himself as a musician and talks of trying to “keep my ass out of jail” long enough to work with a band.

The blog also makes fond reference to body piercing, torture and necrophilia.

His parents declined comment for this story, but years ago they spoke out to ask for an improved mental health system and assistance for their son.

In an interview after his arrest in the blood-letting case in 1999, the couple said their son took on the so-called Goth style of dark clothing and odd haircuts after the Columbine shooting, which was in April that same year.

Before that, Gutfinski fashioned an identity as a skinhead and, before that, a punk rocker.

TRYING TO ALIENATE PEOPLE

All the trends, including the practice of drawing blood for kicks, were designed to alienate people so they would stay away from him, according to his parents.

His mother said she and her husband tried to get their son the mental health treatment they thought he needed for his dual diagnosis mental-health problems.

She bemoaned a lack of long-term programs.

“We’ve done everything in this state to get help — he needs a better mental health system,” Trina Gutfinski said. “There was no placement for him, other than the one-month program that stabilized him.”

Various court files contain his handwritten motions and petitions, mostly bearing the signature Roy Gutfinski Jr.

The words are articulate and polite, the printing neat and characterized by angularly shaped letters.

In some court filings, he asks relief from an obligation to do 500 hours of community service; in another, he requests credit for time he spent in jail before the 2000 conviction.

But Gutfinski’s letters to probate courts in Kennebec and Knox counties show a darker side: He talks about rejecting his family name and the Christian religion into which he was baptized and about his adherence to satanism.

He doesn’t specify in those documents why he chose his present name. Caius Domitius, or Domitian, was an early Roman emperor; Veiovis was an early Roman god of healing who was often depicted with goat horns.

Veiovis’s court-appointed attorney in Massachusetts, James Gavin Reardon Jr., said Wednesday he had spoken briefly to Veiovis at his arraignment and would be meeting with him later to discuss the charges.

Reardon said the state had yet to provide discovery in the case.

“I look forward to obtaining the information that shows my client’s alleged participation and reviewing that with Mr. Veiovis,” Reardon said.

In the meantime, a judge has ordered Veiovis held without bail.

Kennebec Journal Staff Writer Betty Adams can be reached at 621-5631 or at:

badams@centralmaine.com