Former cook gets life imprisonment for murders

A former cook got lifelong sentence for killing and dismembering four people during a murder spree in Maine last year.

Photo: Former cook gets life imprisonment for murders

Former cook gets life imprisonment for murders

Christian Nielsen, 32, pleaded guilty to four counts of murder last week in the deaths of three woman and a man over a four-day period in Maine's worst homicide in recent memory.

Justice Robert Crowley sentenced Nielsen after hearing testimony from about 20 family members of the victims and of Nielsen.

Nielsen was a boarder at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast in Newry, Maine, and working as a cook at a restaurant in nearby Bethel at the time of the killing spree.

Nielsen first shot James Whitehurst, 50, dismembered his body and buried the remains in the woods. Whitehurst was a handyman who had been staying at the lodge.

Over the next three days, Nielsen also killed the lodge's owner, Julie Bullard, 65; her daughter, Selby Bullard, 30; and her daughter's friend, Cindy Beatson, 43, to cover up the murder of Whitehurst. He used a chain saw and hacksaw to dismember the bodies, prosecutors said.