Albert Paul, photographed in 2013 at the Maine State Prison in Warren. Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer
Maine’s oldest and longest-serving prisoner, who was convicted of murder in 1972 and famously escaped twice from the former Maine State Prison and once from a federal penitentiary, has died.
Albert Paul was 87.
A Maine Department of Corrections spokeswoman confirmed the death Monday but did not reveal a cause, although it’s not believed to be related to COVID-19. His death will be investigated by the Attorney General’s Office and Medical Examiner’s Office, which is standard when an inmate dies.
Paul had been housed at Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston for the last several years but spent much of his adult life at the Maine State Prison, first in Thomaston, then in Warren.
In addition to his high-profile escapes, Paul earned notoriety by building a makeshift bomb while incarcerated and then mailing it to a former prosecutor. His long life behind bars was the focus of a 2013 Maine Sunday Telegram story.
Born in 1933 in Sanford, Paul grew up in foster care and began committing crimes at a young age, mostly thefts and burglaries for which he spent time in and out of jail.
In the 1960s, he escaped twice from the former Maine State Prison in Thomaston.
The first time, he left a dough mixer running, slipped away from the kitchen and scaled a 16-foot temporary wall. He was free for 11 days and spent part of his time holding an elderly couple captive in their home with their gun.
In the second escape, he tricked the guards by throwing a shoe over the wall and then hiding out in an upholstery shop until the search efforts slowed. He climbed the wall again but had nowhere to go. He turned himself in within 24 hours.
In 1971, not long after he was released from a prison stint, Paul intended to rob Ellen Donahue, the owner of a local tavern in South Portland, and ended up strangling her. His fingerprints and hair samples were found inside her home and a taxi driver picked up a man matching Paul’s description at Donahue’s address hours before police declared it a crime scene.
He waived a jury trial and was convicted of murder by a judge and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole – the harshest penalty possible under Maine law.
Two years later, while in prison, Paul fashioned a makeshift bomb out of match heads and light bulbs and hid it under a miniature wooden doll cradle he made in the prison craft room. He then sent the package to Robert Marden, an attorney who prosecuted him in a robbery decades earlier. Marden received the package but never opened it and the bomb didn’t go off.
Paul’s final prison escape came in 1982, this time from a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa., where he had been transferred from Maine. He hid inside boxes of towels and linens that were taken away in a truck for cleaning.
He was free for two weeks and even robbed a bank before he was caught and returned to Maine to serve out the rest of his sentence.
In an interview in 2013, Paul admitted that despite his many escapes, he could never make it outside prison.
“The world out there has changed for me,” he said. “It’s a foreign place.”
Copy the Story LinkComments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
