Roy C. Gutfinski Jr. once lived in Augusta Maine and spent 7.5 years in the Maine state prison for aggravated assault. After his release in 2008, he changed his name to Caius Domitius Veiovis (the name, he insists, is NOT based on the Twilight series) and relocated to western Massachusetts. Unfortunately, he got into a bit of a scrape there too.
In 2011 Veiovis was arrested for his alleged role in the kidnaping and murder of three Pittsfield men: David Glasser, Edward Frampton and Robert Chadwell. Adam Lee Hall and David Chalue were also charged. The killings came shortly before Glasser was expected to testify against Hall, a Hells Angles member, in an assault case. The other two were killed since they witnessed Glasser’s murder.
A jury found Veiovis guilty on Friday and he was sentenced yesterday to the mandatory minimum, life without parole. The other two codefendants were convicted earlier and received the same sentence which is actually three consecutive life sentences, one for each victim. Since there is still no feasible way to bring back the dead, it seems likely that the men will each serve only one life sentence.
The jury heard three weeks of testimony and deliberated for six days before reaching a verdict. After he was found guilty, Veiovis exclaimed: “I will see you in hell; every single f—ing one of you. Remember that. I’ll see you all in hell.” At sentencing yesterday Veiovis maintained his innocence telling the judge: “Let me make this clear, my hand wasn’t in this…If you think I’m going to hang my head and beg for mercy you’re just as deluded as that jury of my peers who convicted me.”
Veiovis’s case was a close one and at one point he may have been offered a plea bargain for a seven year sentence. Prosecutors could not say where the murders happened, when they occurred and they never recovered any murder weapons. No forensic evidence tied Veiovis to the killings, he never made any confessions and no witnesses placed him at the scene of the crime. Testimony did establish that he was not present for the disposal of the bodies and was never seen to comment about the murders. Witnesses testified that the other two codefendants laughed as they drank whiskey and reenacted the killings, joking about the way the victims begged for their lives.
Further coverage:
- Read Betty Adams’ detailed piece about Veiovis mental and criminal history.
- Go down the rabbit hole with full coverage of the trial at the Berkshire Eagle.
- Videos of the Defense and Prosecution reactions to the case.