Paul Kelley was a retired Portland police detective, who investigated crimes ranging from burglaries to stolen cars and arsons and worked more than 83 homicide investigations throughout his 27 years with the department.
Mr. Kelley, who trained and mentored hundreds of young Portland police officers and officers at the Criminal Justice Academy in Vassalboro, died on May 12 after a brief illness. He was 65.
He was remembered this week as a gruff and tough detective, who went above and beyond his duties to protect Portland residents.
Mr. Kelley joined the department as a patrol officer in 1971. Early on, he served as a dispatcher and evidence technician. He moved up the ranks to the criminal investigations division. He was temporarily assigned to the bomb squad during an unsettled time in Portland. His daughter, Patricia Kelley Poulin, of Manchester, recalled memories of her father on the news defusing explosives made by terror organizations. She recalled another story of his investigation of a bank robbery, where he ran into the bank and the bank robber shot at him.
“He was the guy … when everyone else was running away he ran in,” Poulin said. “He was the guy that had to go take care of the bomb. As a child, I remember watching him on the news and seeing him on top of the bomb. It takes a special person to take those risks. He never questioned. He never thought twice.”
Deputy District Attorney Meg Elam met Kelley when she first became a prosecutor in 1987.
“I was all of 26 years old and thought I knew a lot,” Elam said. “Paul was very kind and generous to me and spent time teaching me things I didn’t know that I needed to know. He would never think of himself as a mentor, but he mentored me and a whole lot of other police officers. … He was very generous in helping you do your job better and learn about what goes into making a good case. There’s no one who was more of a crusader for the victims in his cases than Paul.”
Mr. Kelley took many officers under his wing throughout his career. One of them was Kevin MacDonald, a retired evidence technician for the PPD, who now teaches criminal justice courses at Southern Maine Community College.
“Paul was an old-school cop,” MacDonald said. “He had kind of a gruff exterior, but once you got beyond that gruffness and he accepted you, you did nothing but learn from him. … His focus was what was best for the case. Sometimes it made him an outlier, but he wasn’t willing to compromise any part of a criminal case.”
Mr. Kelley retired in 1998, and then joined the University of Maine Police Department. He left law enforcement in 2000, but continued to work in another job until last year.
A lifelong Portland resident, he was a loving husband to Mary Kelley for 43 years. The couple raised two daughters.
Poulin said one of her dad’s greatest joys was coaching their softball teams. His obituary, which is published in Friday’s newspaper, said he coached teams to Eastern Regional Titles, two New England Regional Titles, two runner-up New England Regional championships, and four Maine State Titles.
“He was a tough coach,” his daughter said. “His saying was you can’t give anything less than 110 percent. That’s what he expected and that’s what we gave him. Having my dad as a coach was wonderful, but he was so much more. He was omnipotent. He was there for everything. He was always there for everything.”
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