New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Attorney: Man convicted in sex trafficking ring stabbed at home
GLASTONBURY — Bruce Bemer, a millionaire businessman who is appealing a conviction related to a Danbury-area sex trafficking ring, was stabbed Tuesday night during a “violent altercation” at his home, according to his attorney and police reports.
Glastonbury police said Wednesday that officers responded to a Sherwood Drive home around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday for a report of an “active family violence incident,” according to Lt. Corey Davis.
“Officers found an elderly male victim in the garage suffering from multiple stab wounds,” Davis said. “Another male, identified as Jason McCormick, was found in another area of the home with self-inflicted knife wounds to his arms.”
Bemer’s attorney, Anthony Spinella, confirmed Wednesday that his client was the victim.
“He’s been released from the hospital,” Spinella said. “He’s comfortably resting.”
Spinella said McCormick was Bemer’s live-in partner at the Sherwood Drive home.
Police charged McCormick, 47, with attempt to commit murder, first-degree assault on an elderly person and second-degree threatening. He is being held on a $500,000 bond and is expected in court Thursday.
Police said they learned that McCormick stabbed the victim with a knife during a “violent altercation in the home,” Davis said. McCormick and the victim were taken to Hartford Hospital.
Bemer was sentenced on June 17, 2019, on four counts of patronizing a trafficked person and one count of criminal liability for trafficking a person.
Authorities arrested Bemer along with two other men in 2017 in connection with a sex trafficking ring they said exploited vulnerable young men for more than two decades.
In court filings, authorities claimed Bemer was a client of the ring operated by Danbury resident Robert King.
King befriended young men in vulnerable circumstances and provide them with drugs, authorities said. When they ran up a debt to him, he pushed them into prostitution, according to court filings.
Bemer, who owns the Waterford Speedbowl car racing track, told police King had been supplying him with young men for more than 20 years.
Bemer was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the patronizing charges and 20 years, suspended after 10 years, for the criminal liability charge. The judge ordered the sentences to run concurrently. His jail sentence would be followed by five years of probation.
Bemer was released in September 2019 while he appeals his conviction, his attorney said. Court documents show he was free on a $750,000 bond.
King pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit trafficking in persons and is serving a 41⁄ 2- year prison sentence at Cheshire Correctional Institution, state records show.