A Portland man who was arrested on Brown Street last week is being held without bail in Cumberland County Jail on charges that he killed his friend after a night out at a Portland club.
At around 2 p.m. on Feb. 22, police blocked off both ends of Brown Street, pulled over the car the suspect and a friend were in, and brought the men out with weapons drawn. The Westbrook police department participated in the arrest, along with Portland detectives and the Portland SWAT team.
Police arrested Steven M. Clark, 28, of Portland, charged with the murder of Robert Wagner, 28, of Gray on Feb. 15.
According to Portland police, Clark and Wagner went to a club the night of Feb. 14, and then Clark killed Wagner in Portland some time after 2 a.m. the next morning. Police found a body they believe to be Wagner’s in a makeshift grave in the woods near the home of relatives of Clark in West Baldwin around 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 22. On Feb. 24, a judge in Cumberland County Superior Court ruled that Clark be held in Cumberland County Jail without bail. A grand jury will take up Clark’s case later this month to determine if he should be indicted on murder charges.
Following an autopsy by the state medical examiner on Feb. 23, the cause of death is being withheld at the request of the attorney general’s office. Portland police are handling the matter and will not say how they think Wagner died. However, they did say they have a motive in the case.
“We think we understand what happened,” said Portland Deputy Police Chief Bill Ridge. “We feel pretty confident that we know the circumstances surrounding it.”
Portland police believe Wagner was killed in Portland and transported to West Baldwin. They are investigating Clark’s and Wagner’s vehicles for forensic evidence, as well as other vehicles that might have been involved.
Ridge said someone led police to Wagner’s body. “We do not believe anyone else is involved in the murder of Wagner,” he said. “We do believe that there were people involved in the disposal of the body, not necessarily more than one other person.”
Clark and Wagner were part of a group of acquaintances that went to Platinum Plus on Riverside Street on Feb. 14, police said. The two left the bar in the early morning hours Feb. 15 and drove to Clark’s home on Toronita Street in Portland.
In an interview with police, Clark said he drove Wagner back to his vehicle at Platinum Plus the next morning. Wagner missed several business and personal appointments that Wednesday as well as Thursday and was reported missing by his brother Thursday evening. Police are investigating whether drugs or alcohol were a factor, which Portland Police Chief Tim Burton said was “a possibility.”
The two were acquaintances personally and professionally, Burton said. Wagner was an independent mortgage broker and Clark an entrepreneur with interests in a clothing line and other endeavors. According to Burton, Clark has no criminal history other than a charge for operating a vehicle under the influence.
Police said they were led to Clark because he was the last person to see Wagner alive. “The story he initially told us didn’t make sense,” said Ridge. They began surveillance on Clark, while they investigated other leads in the case. “It was a culmination of several days of round-the-clock work by detectives,” said Burton.
According to Westbrook Police Chief Paul McCarthy, Portland and Westbrook police met to discuss how to extricate Clark from a Prince Street house, where he had been staying with a friend for several days. At the same time state police and Portland police were investigating the location of the body in West Baldwin.
At around 2 p.m., Clark and his friend left the house by car, followed by a surveillance vehicle. The two police departments immediately made a “felony stop,” blocking both ends of Brown Street and arresting the suspect at gunpoint.
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