An application for a sentencing appeal, filed in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court by Earl “Buddy” Bieler, was denied without comment by a panel of justices Aug. 31, according to the court clerk’s office in Portland.
Bieler, 25, formerly of Waldoboro, was convicted of the brutal killing of one woman and near-fatal stabbing of another April 2009.
He pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder in April and stood for sentencing on May 10 in Lincoln County Superior Court. Justice Andrew Horton sentenced Bieler to 55 years in prison for the murder of Rachel Grindal, 27, and attempted murder of Tracey Neild, 32, both of Waldoboro.
Bieler, along with accomplice Corina Durkee, 43, also of Waldoboro, nearly decapitated both of his victims in front of Neild’s home at 161 Controversy Lane in Waldoboro.
Durkee, who according to prosecutors did not stab either of the victims, received a 15-year sentence.
The sentencing appeal, which Bieler’s attorney William Avantaggio described as “standard for a sentence of this length,” would have given appellate court justices a chance to review and possibly change Bieler’s sentence based on any issues they found with the sentence.
The Justices did not specify why the application was denied, the clerk’s office said.
According to Bieler’s application for appeal filed in Lincoln County Superior Court on May 21, he asked for the appeal “because what has happened in this case is very sad,” he wrote on the application.
“It wasn’t anything that was planned,” Bieler wrote on the application. “It just happened, and I don’t even know why. All I do know is that it happened because I was on drugs. I’m not person [sic]. And some day, I want to be able to help others so this kind of thing don’t [sic] happen to them. If granted, then I will show my plans in full. Thank you.”
Avantaggio declined to comment on the Court’s denial of Bieler’s application, and said he did not know what Bieler meant by “show my plans in full.”
Bieler remains incarcerated in Maine State Prison in Warren.