WATERVILLE — The first thing Aurele Fecteau’s neighbors noticed in recent days was that the 92-year-old man’s lawn had not been mowed at his normally manicured Brooklyn Avenue property.
On Saturday, the property at the corner of Vose Street was a crime scene.
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A family member found Fecteau’s body in the house about noon Friday. Waterville police called Maine State Police for assistance based on what they saw at the home. Police are calling the death suspicious, but they would not say why.
State police and Waterville detectives spent Saturday canvassing Fecteau’s neighborhood and interviewing his friends, family and neighbors, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. He said evidence was gathered from the home that might help explain the death, but he didn’t reveal what that evidence was.
An autopsy was performed on Fecteau’s body Saturday at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta, but the results were not released.
The house at 33 Brooklyn Ave. is near Waterville Senior High School and Mid-Maine Technical Center.
“He was good about keeping his lawn mowed,” said neighbor Nancy Morissett, who lives on Vose Street, across from the Fecteau home. “He used a riding mower even with him not being able to see too good; he’d be out there, and I thought last night it was kind of strange because I saw him two or three days ago.”
Morissett said Fecteau suffered a stroke in recent years that affected his eyesight.
Morissett and another Vose Street neighbor, Jade Noonan, said Fecteau had mowed his lawn once since the weather turned nice, and it needed to be mowed again.
“I cut my grass just the other day and I thought it was funny that he hadn’t come out to mow. I’ve already mowed twice,” Noonan said.
Lt. Christopher Coleman of the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit said Saturday that “investigators from the state police and Waterville worked until the early morning hours last night, and they were back here early this morning. We’re continuing to talk to neighbors and working our way through family members, trying to understand the relationships and how this man lived and conducted his life, and we’re continuing with that effort today.”
Fecteau was a longtime resident of Waterville and had retired from Scott Paper Co. in Winslow, police and neighbors said.
Neither Morissett nor Noonan saw or heard anything out of the ordinary on Brooklyn Avenue the night before Fecteau’s body was found, they said.
Fecteau’s Brooklyn Avenue neighbor Harolyn Clifford, 91, said the street normally is quite busy, with the high school track and football fields at one end and the school and softball and baseball fields at the other.
Clifford and his wife, Marjory, said they had known Fecteau for 60 or 70 years. They said Fecteau and his wife, Jeanne, had seven children – five boys and two girls. Jeanne Fecteau died in June 2009.
Fecteau lived alone, but his children came over often to visit, the Cliffords said.
“He was a good man, a good family man,” Marjory Clifford said. “He was a home man; his boys took him fishing in the summer. He took care of his grounds; he was always working on his gardens and his house.”
Coleman, of the Major Crimes Unit, said the neighborhood is quiet, and Waterville police told him it was not known to have problems that would require a police response.
“I always ask the public to take normal precautions,” Coleman said. “By that I mean, when you leave your car somewhere, you lock it; when you leave your house, you lock it.”Police are asking for the assistance of anyone who may have been in the neighborhood the last few days and saw anything out of the ordinary.
The telephone number for state police in Augusta is 624-7076.
Maine Sunday Telegram Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy contributed to this report.
Doug Harlow can be contacted at 612-2367 or at:
dharlow@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @Doug_Harlow
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