MAN CONVICTED OF MURDER-HIRE PLOT

By Mike Elfland; Telegram & Gazette Staff
February 14, 1998

CAMBRIDGE - Jerry L. Hamel, a state prisoner from Athol, has been found guilty in a murder-for-hire plot that called for the killing of his parents as a means of paying for a hit on his wife's ex-husband.

A jury in Middlesex Superior Court delivered the verdict yesterday following 14 hours of deliberation. Jurors did not buy Hamel's defense that he was set up by frustrated law enforcement officers.Hamel, 30, will be sentenced Feb. 24.

While a prisoner at Shirley State Prison in 1996, Hamel met in the visitors room with an undercover police officer posing as a hit man and plotted the killing of his wife's ex-husband, according to testimony during the two-week trial. Angela Hamel of Athol, Hamel's wife, had told her incarcerated husband that she had been raped and beaten by Richard Bernier, the ex-husband. Bernier, of Templeton, was never charged.

State Trooper Brian Connors, posing as a hit man, hashed out the details with Hamel during three prison visits in the summer of 1996. Hamel was serving time for parole violations, stemming from years of run-ins with police.

With little means to pay for the hit on Bernier, Hamel promised Connors an inheritance from his family. He told Connors to kill his parents, Raymond and Sylvia Hamel of Athol, and his brother, Paul Hamel.

Prison and state police investigators arranged for an undercover hit man to meet with Jerry Hamel after Hamel told a cellmate of his desire to have Bernier taken out. The cellmate informed prison officials of Hamel's intent.

Prosecutors sought indictments after Hamel mailed a sketch of his parents' house to a post office box of investigators. He was charged with four counts each of attempted murder and solicitation of murder.

The attempted murder charges carry a maximum sentence of five years each, and the solicitation charges could yield two-and-a-half year sentences.

John A. Bosk, Hamel's lawyer, portrayed Hamel as the target of a setup by rogue state police, parole and correction officers. Bosk cited a variety of reasons why he believed authorities disliked Hamel.

Bosk argued that authorities were embarrassed by a failed raid in September 1995, in which Hamel's parole officer wrongfully believed that Hamel was holed up in the Phillipston home of his in-laws. A police helicopter was involved in the highly publicized raid.

Angela Hamel, the defendant's wife and a key defense witness, testified that her actual attacker wasn't Bernier, but a law enforcement officer she first met as a teen-ager while both were patients in a psychiatric hospital. She said she was afraid to tell her husband the truth about the rape.

Prosecutor David P. Linsky countered the claim with a statement from the hospital that said the officer was never a patient there.

The 12 jurors deliberated all day yesterday and Thursday.

Copyright (c) 1998 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.