A jury found a Portland man guilty of murder Monday in the June 2022 hit-and-run killing of his girlfriend in Acadia National Park.
The jury deliberated for nearly two hours before deciding that Raymond Lester, 37, had intentionally run down Nicole Mokeme during a retreat at the Schoodic Institute, located on the opposite side of Frenchman Bay from Mount Desert Island.
With the guilty verdict, Lester, 37, has been convicted of killing Mokeme during a June 2022 retreat for Black people at the Schoodic Institute in Acadia National Park. Lester, who was dating Mokeme, 35, of South Portland, ran her over a few minutes before midnight on June 18, 2022 with his car and then fled to Mexico where he turned himself in a month later, according to police.
Attendees at the retreat, which had been organized by Mokeme, testified last week that Lester was acting inappropriately, aggressively and abusively toward Mokeme in the days and hours before Mokeme died. One couple testified that they and their daughter were scared Lester might run them over as he zoomed back and forth where a walking pathway crosses a road on the Schoodic campus.
Lester verbally abused her during a kayak trip, drove his car aggressively and dangerously near retreat attendees during a cookout on Saturday, and blared inappropriate music with violent lyrics from the car stereo while children were nearby, prosecutors said. When some went to talk to him about his behavior, he pointed his fingers at them like a gun and loudly said “boom boom boom” over the lyrics of the song, witnesses testified.
Testimony about Lester’s past behavior, prior to the retreat, was not presented to the jury at the trial, but past girlfriends of Lester told the Portland Press Herald he was physically abusive to them before they ended their relationships with him.
Prosecutors rested their case Friday afternoon, after three days of calling other retreat attendees and police investigators to the witness stand to testify about what they observed in the hours leading up to Mokeme’s death, or what sort of evidence they collected after she was killed. Mokeme died of blunt force trauma consistent with having been run over by a vehicle, according to the state medical examiner’s office.
Lester declined to testify in his own defense when the trial resumed Monday morning. His defense attorneys rested their case without calling any witnesses to the stand.
In closing arguments Monday morning, prosecutor Robert “Bud” Ellis told jurors that Lester’s behavior the night Mokeme was killed, and his subsequent evasion of police for a month, revealed a “consciousness of guilt.”
Lester fled the scene without collecting his personal belongings, traded in his cell phone in Rhode Island 16 hours later, and quickly fell silent when Mokeme’s friends were texting him the next day to find out what happened, Ellis said. He drove south to Georgia and then Texas and crossed into Mexico, where he turned himself in to local police a month later. His car was never found by police.
Will Ashe, one of Lester’s two defense attorneys, told the jury that no one saw Mokeme get killed and that what witnesses saw of Lester’s behavior before she died does not constitute guilt. He also said that police didn’t do enough to identify and investigate other possible suspects.
