DNA evidence connects West Newfield man to death of Freeport woman

The West Newfield man accused of killing a woman in September had her blood in his bedroom, according to new police documents.

Gary Mariner appears in York County Superior Court in November via Zoom.

Gary Mariner, 65, has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in connection with the death of Danielle Goodwin. He has been held at the York County Jail since his arrest in November.

Goodwin, who had been living in Freeport, was remembered as a prominent member of Maine’s substance use recovery community. It’s unclear how or whether the two knew each other.

Superior Court Justice James Martemucci agreed to release a police affidavit supporting Mariner’s arrest Tuesday.

The document, signed by Maine State Police Detective Benjamin S. Handzel, describes several pieces of DNA evidence tying Mariner to the crime.

Police say they found Mariner’s blood on the pants Goodwin was wearing when her body was found in South Portland on Sept. 5. They also found evidence of Goodwin’s blood in Mariner’s home.

Mariner’s defense attorney, Tina Nadeau, said Wednesday that she has not received any of this evidence from police or prosecutors.

Danielle Goodwin Photo courtesy of Stephanie Doyle

“Mr. Mariner is presumed innocent of this serious charge against him,” Nadeau wrote in an email. “Apart from the affidavit, we have been provided no information from the Maine State Police or Attorney General’s Office at this time – no reports, no statements, no audio, no video, no photographs, no lab reports. Nothing. Our work here has only begun.”

Mariner is being held without bail. A hearing to reconsider bail has not yet been scheduled.

Police found Goodwin’s body near Clark’s Pond Parkway in South Portland by the Home Depot after a man identifying himself as “John Carpenter” called 911 on the afternoon of Sept. 5 from an untraceable phone, the affidavit states.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled on Sept. 6 that Goodwin’s death was a homicide and estimated that she had died at least one to two days earlier. They found several “crushing” and “chopping” type injuries to her head and throat, Handzel wrote.

Prosecutors had said in previous court proceedings that they believed Goodwin was not killed where the body was found near Clark’s Pond Parkway.

Handzel’s report shows that a month after she died, he was reviewing surveillance footage from two nearby businesses – Eastpoint Christian Church and Restore Spa – and noticed a dark colored passenger car driving slowly near where Goodwin was later found. He wrote that he later saw a pickup truck with lumber in the back suddenly stop, “as if it had to go around a vehicle stopped in the road.”

Using surveillance footage from Home Depot, Handzel tracked down the pickup truck driver and asked her about that day. On Oct. 10, she called police and said she remembered a car had been pulled over against the rock wall. She said it had round taillights, but she couldn’t remember who was in the car and its color. She told police she thought there was “some ‘activity’ associated with the vehicle, but she ignored it,” the affidavit states.

On Oct. 24, the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory told Handzel they had found a match for some blood found on Goodwin’s pants. Using a database of DNA profiles for convicted offenders, they confirmed the blood was Mariner’s.

Mariner has a criminal history dating to 1978. He recently served four years in prison for gross sexual assault after intimidating a sex worker into giving him free sex by impersonating a police officer. He was released from prison in 2017, but must register with the Maine Sex Offender registry for the rest of his life.

Handzel said he looked up Mariner’s records at the Bureau for Motor Vehicles and found that he drove a black 2020 Toyota Corolla, matching the dark passenger car that Handzel saw in the surveillance footage. Police observed the same Corolla parked in Mariner’s driveway in West Newfield early on the morning of Oct. 30, Handzel wrote.

Police interviewed Mariner the next day. He told them that he knew Goodwin, but hadn’t seen her for a couple of years. Then he said he had actually given her a ride about five to six months ago. He denied that she had ever been in his home. He denied having ever fought with her and said there would be no reason for his blood to be on her, according to the affidavit.

Police took samples from seven blood stains found around Mariner’s home, Handzel said – near the kitchen stove, on his bedroom ceiling and from several items found in his bedroom, including a clothes hanger, a toolset and a circular saw.

The Maine State Crime Lab later found all of the blood matched Goodwin’s DNA profile.

On Nov. 2, Handzel said police also found multiple types of rope and cleaning supplies in the back of Mariner’s car, along with a 9mm handgun in the backseat. It appeared, he wrote, that the rear hatch of the car had recently been cleaned.