This apartment building at 34 Lamb St., Westbrook, was the site of a homicide of one of its tenants in November. Another tenant has been charged. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

Police are using a Westbrook man’s own security camera footage against him as part of a murder case, saying the recording captures him talking on the phone about his involvement in the victim’s death.

James Fowler, 47, was arrested earlier this month after detectives obtained and reviewed surveillance camera footage recorded inside his apartment on Lamb Street. The camera angled toward his kitchen captured the hours leading up to and after 59-year-old Robert Seger was found unresponsive in a different apartment on Nov. 21. Seger was taken to the hospital and later died of multiple blunt force injuries.

The video shows Fowler talking on the phone with his girlfriend, who also is Seger’s sister, after police left that night.

“I didn’t want to say it when the cops were here, but this is our fault,” Fowler said, according to a detective’s partial transcript of the recording. It is unclear who else he may have been referring to.

Earlier that day, Fowler called 911 for help and told police Seger had been beaten up days earlier and that he had tried to help him as his condition worsened.

Fowler was arrested about two weeks later and is being held at the Cumberland County Jail with a $300,000 cash bail for depraved indifference murder, punishable from 25 years to life in prison if he is found guilty.

Peter Richard, Fowler’s attorney, said he has yet to see or hear the full security camera recordings, so he can’t say whether the excerpts are accurate or have full context. He said more information will be revealed as the discovery process plays out.

“Often we find additional information that calls into question the credibility of the evidence or the allegations of how circumstances occurred, and we expect that to be the case here,” Richard said in a statement.

He said his client’s trial is set for December 2025 and that he will “be working hard over the next year on his behalf to prepare for that.”

James Fowler appears by Zoom video feed for his arraignment in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland on Dec. 4. Fowler is charged in the death of Robert Seger in November. Standing in the foreground is attorney Randall Bates, who was assisting Fowler for the day. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Richard also said that from what he read, the written snippets of Fowler’s phone call are “materially consistent” with statements Fowler made about Seger’s condition before he called 911 for help.

Fowler told police that Seger told him he had been beaten up a few days before he died, according to court documents, but that his injuries didn’t appear to be serious at the time.

While state police initially identified the two as roommates, court documents say they lived in two different units in the same building. Fowler told police that over the next two days, Seger’s injuries worsened and he spent hours lying down without eating.

Fowler went upstairs to visit Seger at least twice, offering him a hamburger and a hot dog, he said. During his second visit, at around 8:30 p.m., he told police he offered to call an ambulance, but Seger declined. Fowler says he tried to sit Seger up and administer CPR because he could not tell if he was breathing.

He eventually called 911 and told the operator the two had gotten into an argument one day prior on Nov. 20. A neighbor who lived in the same building told police he saw Seger with two black eyes, begging to be let inside Fowler’s apartment, on the evening of Nov. 20.

Neighbors in the building said the two men didn’t get along, and they mentioned overhearing Fowler getting into fights with Seger. Police also found a previous call for service to their apartment building in October. In the body camera footage from that call, Seger can be seen with a black eye he said he got from Fowler, who allegedly hit him for not responding quickly enough.

But in a later interview with police, Fowler said he and Seger never argued and he didn’t recall fighting with him that day. Richard, Fowler’s attorney, said Fowler is not facing any charges from the alleged fight in October and has not been charged with any assaults or abuse to Seger.

“There appear to be significant inconsistencies with the alleged commission of a crime compared to the statements made by the alleged victim to a neighbor days before his unfortunate passing, which are inconsistent with Mr. Fowler committing the alleged crime he is charged with,” Richard said. “These, and likely other, inconsistencies are the types of facts that can readily cause reasonable doubt to rise in criminal cases such as this.”

Fowler is dating Seger’s sister, Theresa, according to court documents. She told police she never saw Fowler abuse her brother and that he was likely beaten up by drug users in the area before he died.

‘A BUNCH OF HOLES IN MY STORY’

Police seized at least three cameras from Fowler’s apartment while executing a search warrant the day after Seger was brought to the hospital. They received permission to search the cameras, each of which contained SD cards.

A camera angled toward Fowler’s kitchen captured him yelling at Seger to get up off the ground about a half hour before he called 911, according to court documents. The document doesn’t indicate where Seger was at the time.

Fowler later called Theresa Seger on speaker phone, put on his jacket and left the apartment, it says. About 17 minutes later, he returned, still talking on the phone. He told her he couldn’t tell if Seger was breathing. She told him to call an ambulance.

“I can call and say he just got beat up,” Fowler replied, court documents show. “I just got him home and now he won’t wake up.”

“We’re already talking about him being dead Theresa,” he said one minute later. “He better not be. Because he’s got marks from me on him.”

After police left late that night, around 2:30 a.m., he called her again, telling her there were “a bunch of holes in my story” and “a good chance that I will be in trouble,” according to court documents.

During his initial hearing in Cumberland County Superior Court earlier this month, prosecutors accused Fowler of a “pattern of abuse” while once serving as a caretaker for an “intellectually challenged victim.”

Fowler has a lengthy criminal record spanning several decades, including domestic violence assaults, violating protection orders and violating the conditions of his release, according to a background check through the Maine Bureau of Investigation.