April 14, 1999, Wednesday

Candidate's Life: Bullets and Batter to Bread and Butter; Jacqueline Bevins Knew the Gun WasLoaded and Voters Still Forgave Her

Pamela Ferdinand, Special to The Washington Post

OGUNQUIT, Maine

Nine years ago, Jacqueline Bevins shot her husband 15 times as he stepped out of the bathtub, reloading her pistol twice. She was charged with murder, but her lawyer argued wife battering as a defense, and a jury acquitted her.

When it was over, Bevins never closed the doors of her seaside restaurant to muffle the whispers and gossip, and she never stopped speaking her mind. Instead, she constructed a new life out of the shards of her old one. And any doubt in her community's capacity to let bygones be bygones was put to rest April 3--nine years to the day after the murder--when Bevins was elected to the five-member board of selectmen that governs Ogunquit.

"What she did yesterday has no bearing on what she does tomorrow," said Robert Cammarota, a local restaurant owner and friend. "The past is the past."

Bevins, now a 58-year-old grandmother, declined comment after winning one of three open spots. She received 236 votes out of 541 cast to fill a two-year, $ 1,000-a-year position.

Turnout at the first board meeting, held last week in a community center basement, could not have filled a 12-person jury box. With a small pair of black-rimmed glasses poised atop her head, Bevins asked questions on code enforcement and liquor licenses and seemed shyly at ease in her new role.

"The woman has got grit," said fellow selectman Karen Maxwell. "She knows better than anybody that there was more talk behind her back than to her face, and that's got to be a hard life to lead."

Perhaps voters deliberately weighed Bevins's traumatic past in making their decision. Most likely, locals say, they cast ballots with bread-and-butter issues such as electric bills and sidewalk construction in mind.

"She's very interested in the welfare of the town and its betterment, so even if she was Lizzie Borden, she would still get in," said Richard Perkins, a friend and restaurant owner.

Last year, an Ogunquit electoral candidate who died one day after ballots were printed came in second. Some now remark how fitting it is that a town that served as the setting for Stephen King novels has an acquitted killer on its board.

Bevins has told others that she lies awake at night reliving the shooting, wondering if it could have been avoided. "I've felt isolated, doing my own form of punishment," she said in an interview with the Portland Press Herald. "I think the town has accepted me for who I am, a very fair and honest person."

Memories run deep in close-knit communities, and Ogunquit (motto: "A Beautiful Place by the Sea") is no exception. This southern Maine town, 15 miles from former president George Bush's Kennebunkport estate, covers four square miles and has an estimated 1,200 year-round residents, many of them retirees. Summer attracts tens of thousands more to a sandy white beach, an art colony and an active gay and lesbian community.

Jackie's Too, the well-known restaurant still owned by Bevins, sits on the edge of Perkins Cove. On one side of the cove lies a working harbor crossed by New England's only foot drawbridge. On the other side stands a coastline as rocky as Jackie and John Bevins's marriage.

By all accounts, John Bevins was a bigger-than-life businessman and reputed playboy with a penchant for flashy cars and shady dealings. They met in a Massachusetts restaurant where she waitressed, then fell in love and moved in 1975 to Maine, settling in a stylish house in nearby town of York, according to an account in the Press Herald.

Friends say Jackie became a worker bee, turning a deli-style cafe into a full-service restaurant. Court records show John, two years older, ran a cement company in the Cayman Islands. As their relationship deteriorated, so did her physical and emotional state. She suffered depression, gained weight and began seeing a psychiatrist, records show. A medical report gave evidence of multiple bruises on her body.

When John Bevins finally asked for a divorce, according to court testimony, his angry wife told a friend: "I'm afraid of what I'm going to do. I'm afraid I'm gonna blow him away."

On April 3, 1990, he was dead, and Bevins had checked herself into the psychiatric unit of Maine Medical Center. During the trial, prosecutors said she had no right to kill her husband, even if she was battered. Defense attorney Daniel Lilley argued, however, that she feared for her life.

"I don't think she's any different from someone who has come back from a war and taken lives of the enemy. It was a 'kill or be killed' situation," Lilley said in a recent interview. "The guy had done everything to this woman, and it was time to stop."

Public support for Bevins was widespread even then, with dozens of letters flooding into court. "She has always impressed me as a very kind person with a hard exterior who is always sympathetic toward those less fortunate than herself," one person wrote. Another added, "Jacqueline Bevins is a person about whom it is impossible not to have an opinion."

Local residents say that sentiment holds true today, years after the murder.

Publicly, many people laud Bevins for her kindness and civic contributions. For nearly two decades, she has served as a community volunteer and appointed member of several town boards. Friends say she serves hot chocolate to children at the annual Christmas tree lighting, brings magazines to prisoners at the York County Jail, and supports employees and business owners with supplies and money in times of need.

Still, there are those who privately wonder if Bevins should have paid a higher price for shooting her husband. Most women who kill their abusers do so during violent episodes, national domestic violence data show, and the vast majority of women charged with killing their batterers are found guilty.

"I'm sure there are some residents who feel she got away with it," said former police chief William Hancock, who worked here at the time of the murder. "Well, she did."