Prosecutor sees evidence of kidnapping in Wiggin murder [03/01/2003]

By William Marvel

For more than a decade, Gary Wiggin has been complaining that prosecutors should have charged Timothy Eldridge and his associates with kidnapping in connection with the death of Wiggin's son, Travis. Wiggin sued Eldridge and three other defendants in civil court for wrongful death, and the judge ruled them all culpable, but no criminal charges were ever brought against any but Eldridge.On Friday Wiggin's contention finally gained acknowledgment from the senior prosecutor in the homicide unit of N.H. Attorney General's office. Senior Assistant Attorney General Malinda Lawrence, who appeared in Carroll County Superior Court to contest Eldridge's petition for sentence reduction, noted that Eldridge was lucky not to have been charged with capital murder."It occurs to me," Lawrence said after the hearing, "that under these facts the defendant may be fortunate that he was not charged with causing this death knowingly in the course of a kidnapping, which is a capital crime in the state of New Hampshire." The undisputed "facts" are that Eldridge induced his sister (Travis Wiggin's former girlfriend) to lure the victim to a dark and isolated location; that two of Eldridge's friends posted themselves in hiding, at Eldridge's behest, to cut off the boy's escape; that Eldridge then apprehended him and, by means of physical force and intimidation, coerced him into Eldridge's car. Eldridge and his compatriots then drove directly to Chocorua Lake, where Eldridge immediately shot his victim in the chest at pointblank range.For all of that, Eldridge was originally charged only with manslaughter. That was later bumped up to second-degree murder, but no kidnapping charges ever surfaced.Brian Tucker, one of the state's prosecutors in the original trial, told The Conway Daily Sun in 1992 that conflicting testimony might have jeopardized a case for kidnapping. Bill Paine, who was then Carroll County Attorney, saw insufficient evidence of a conspiracy. The attorney general at the time was Steve Merrill, who was later elected governor: Merrill thought "the evidence did not support additional charges being brought against other individuals."One longtime prosecutor in the attorney general's office differed. Tom Wingate, who later pressed Gary Wiggin's lawsuit against the other three, suspected that state officials simply botched the investigation. He noted, for instance, that one of the main participants was interviewed on only one occasion.While Lawrence's reaction to the record of the case does imply support for that viewpoint, any hope of further criminal indictments at the state level is now lost. Lawrence said that, unlike some states, New Hampshire law does not hold all accomplices equally responsible for a death caused during a kidnapping. Accomplice participation is therefore not automatically a capital crime, and statutes of limitation therefore apply. Those statutory limits have now passed for all the other participants, she said.