A Springvale man will spend roughly two more years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter and driving under the influence and without a license in a 2021 motorcycle crash that killed his girlfriend.
In a deal reached with prosecutors, Olaf Nordmann, 53, was sentenced last week to serve four years of a 12-year sentence, with credit for more than two years he’s already spent in jail since his August 2021 arrest. He had been scheduled for trial this month.
He will also serve six years of probation, must pay $2,100 in court fines and is barred from having a driver’s license for at least 10 years.
Nordmann was driving his 2019 Harley-Davidson north on Emery Mills Road in Shapleigh close to the New Hampshire border on May 9, 2021, when he veered onto a shoulder and crashed into a line of trees, according to an affidavit from York County sheriff’s deputy Mathieu Nadeau.
When deputies arrived, they found 27-year-old Marisa Standley had died from serious head trauma. Neither Nordmann nor Standley were wearing helmets, police said at the time. Nordmann was treated at a local hospital for non-life threatening injuries.
Surveillance footage from a store near the crash site showed Nordmann was driving “at a high rate of speed,” according to the affidavit.
He had just left a bar in Acton and his blood alcohol level was roughly 0.12% after the crash, according to court records, though his attorneys argued Nordmann’s blood sample shouldn’t be referenced in trial because investigators destroyed the sample after testing it, preventing the defense from reviewing his sample themselves. The legal limit for operating a vehicle in Maine is 0.08%.
“Ultimately, the fundamental basis for his entering the plea was to not put the family and Marisa’s legacy through a trial,” his attorney Michael Whipple said Tuesday. “He deeply loved her, and her son, and is devastated by her loss.”
York County Deputy District Attorney Justina McGettigan and Assistant District Attorney Mark Squires did not respond to an email seeking to discuss the case late Tuesday afternoon.
Standley’s family had written several angry letters to Superior Court Justice Richard Mulhern asking for a higher sentence. They wrote that they did not approve of Standley and Nordmann’s relationship because of their age gap and his criminal history.
“Justice may never be fully served for the crimes you’ve committed against my sister and my family, but know that you, Olaf Nordmann, you killed my only sibling, my bright shining star of a sister, and you will have to live with that for the rest of your pathetic, miserable, excuse for a life,” Standley’s brother, Douglas Standley, wrote.
Her father, Brad Standley, wrote about the impact Marisa’s death has had on her now 6-year-old son; she wasn’t there for his first day of first grade and the boy often asks when his mother will come back.
“Marisa won’t be there for any of the milestones coming in his life,” Brad Standley wrote. “She is gone.”
Nordmann’s attorneys told the judge that he had been incarcerated for much of his adult life, highlighting known links between veterans and the criminal justice system. They said he served four years in the Marines and was honorably discharged with post traumatic stress disorder.
Nordmann’s brother, Munday Letourneau, wrote that the two young men survived difficult childhoods and that his brother was used to people making assumptions about him based on “past troubles.”
Letourneau said Standley was good for Nordmann.
“Olaf had finally found the love he searched for his whole life and that love brought out the Olaf I knew existed all along,” he wrote.
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