Vermont State Police search the home in Waterford of homicide victim Michael Pimental and his girlfriend, Krystal Whitcomb, on Oct. 17, 2018, three days after Pimental’s body was found. File photo by Alan Keays/VTDigger
Vermont’s federal prosecutors are considering charges that carry the death penalty in the fatal shooting in the Northeast Kingdom of a man police said was at the center of a drug ring and whose girlfriend and her father have been questioned in his slaying.
Information about the possibility of the death penalty comes as authorities continue to probe the killing of Michael Pimental.
The 37-year-old’s body was found on Oct. 14 off the side of a rural dirt road in Concord, about 15 miles from his home in Waterford. According to police, he was shot multiple times in the head and torso.
Krystal Whitcomb, Pimental’s girlfriend, and her father, Shawn Whitcomb, were arrested at separate locations Oct. 14, the day Pimental’s body was discovered by police, and are facing federal firearms and drug charges.
A third person, Michael Anthony Hayes Sr., also known as “Mo,” has also been charged in the case with knowingly conspiring to unlawfully possess ammunition.
Hayes and the Whitcombs have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them and are currently behind bars.
No one has yet been charged in connection with Pimental’s homicide, as the investigation is continuing.
However, in a filing late Wednesday in federal court in Burlington, Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Fuller, the prosecutor, wrote that the charges under consideration include ones that carry the possibility of the death penalty.
And, the filing stated, since the death penalty is a possible punishment to the crimes under investigation, the Vermont U.S. Attorney Office is required to consult with the Capital Case Unit at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington prior to indictment.
Michael Pimental. Vermont State Police photo
“The USAO must make its own recommendation to the CCU about whether to seek the death penalty and the CCU must then independently evaluate the case and make its own recommendation to the Attorney General for the United States,” Fuller wrote.
“In all Federal cases in which a defendant is charged, or could be charged with an offense subject to the death penalty, the Attorney General makes the final decision about whether or not to seek the death penalty,” Fuller added. “This process, from start to finish, is time consuming.”
As a result, the prosecutor wrote, she requested a deadline for the filing of motions in the case be extended six months, from later this month to Dec. 4.
“This case is undoubtedly complex,” Fuller wrote, “with a large number of defendants and unindicted co-conspirators, and nature of the investigation involves one of the most serious crimes the government prosecutes.”
The filing also stated that the prosecution had consulted with attorneys for Hayes and the Whitcombs. The lawyer for Hayes does not object to pushing back the motions deadline, while the attorney for Krystal Whitcomb “takes no position on the motion at this time,” Fuller wrote.
However, Alex Nelson, the attorney for Shawn Whitcomb, has “indicated” that his client objects to the prosecutor’s motion, the filing stated.
At a hearing in the Whitcombs’ drug case last month, Fuller said that Krystal Whitcomb had sought her father’s help after she told him that Pimental had physically abused her.
Shawn Whitcomb, according to Fuller, also told investigators, “I did what I did to protect Krystal.”
The prosecutor also said during that hearing that while Krystal Whitcomb at times provided conflicting statements to investigators about her boyfriend’s death, she did say that another man, in addition to her father, was involved in the shooting.
That other man hasn’t been identified by authorities.
The shooting, Krystal Whitcomb told investigators, took place at the residence on Duck Pond Road in Waterford, where she lived with Pimental, according to the prosecutor.
Also, according to court filings in the case, Hayes and Krystal Whitcomb purchased ammunition at a Walmart in Littleton, New Hampshire, on Oct. 11, three days before Pimental’s body was discovered.
A mugshot of Krystal Whitcomb from an arrest in 2015. Photo courtesy Vermont State Police
Also, on Oct. 14, the filing stated, a sheriff’s deputy in Grafton County, New Hampshire, stopped Hayes and Krystal Whitcomb in a Cadillac registered to Pimental.
During the stop, court records stated, Hayes provided a false name and was arrested. Whitcomb was taken back to Vermont by state police detectives.
She later admitted that three firearms found inside the vehicle belonged to her, including a .38 Special revolver, the filing stated. Prosecutors said they also found 2,600 baggies of heroin and more than $20,000 in cash in the vehicle.
Also, according to court records, both Whitcombs and Pimental were the subject of an investigation by the Vermont Drug Task Force involving large quantities of heroin and fentanyl that started the summer before Pimental’s slaying.
The case of Donald Fell, charged in the slaying of Teresca King of North Clarendon in 2000, was the most recent in Vermont that involved the death penalty.
Vermont does not have the death penalty. However, because King was abducted as she arrived to work early one morning at a supermarket bakery in Rutland and was killed in New York state, federal prosecutors took jurisdiction.
A plea deal with federal prosecutors in Vermont had been reached with Fell early in the case, prior to his first trial in 2014. That deal would have resulted in Fell receiving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
However, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected moving forward on that proposed agreement and the case proceeded to trial.
Fell was eventually convicted and sentenced to death. However, that conviction and sentence was later overturned due to jury misconduct.
As jury selection was underway last year for a retrial for Fell, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont reached a plea agreement with him.
That plea deal, later approved by the judge, called for him to be sentenced to life without parole after he admitted to crimes in the slaying.
Following the hearing where Fell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life behind bars, U.S. Attorney for Vermont Christina Nolan said the agreement was reached after the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington issued the “directive” to withdraw the pursuit of the death penalty in the case.
At that time, the U.S. attorney general was Jeff Sessions. Now, William Barr is the U.S. attorney general.
Barr is pro-death penalty and has previously said such a punishment would send a “message to drug dealers.”
Both Nolan and Fuller, through their spokesperson, declined comment Wednesday evening.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Prosecutors consider death penalty charges in Northeast Kingdom slaying.