Suspect in Chaplin killing transported back to Conn.

CHAPLIN — A New London man who state police said was a person of interest in the death of a local man has been brought back to Connecticut after he was apprehended in New Hampshire last week.

Matthew Hampton Candler, 46, was charged with first-degree assault in the incident that left 51-yearold Jeffrey Rawson dead. State police said detectives took him into custody around 2 p.m. Monday at the Rockingham County Correctional Facility in Brentwood, N.H., where he was being held after being apprehended in Seabrook last week.

Candler had waived his extradition, state police said. He was brought to the Troop D state police barracks in Danielson where he was processed and held on $500,000 bond.

He was due to appear in Danielson Superior Court on Tuesday.

Inside the home, state police found the scene in “disarray,” the investigating officer wrote, with “various pools of soaked blood throughout the living room floor, with blood splatter on the walls and glass doors, consistent with the victim being violently struck,” according to the warrant.

State police also described “broken wood furniture that appeared to have been thrown throughout the living room where the victim was” and “a glass lamp with a metal base with blood on it on the floor a few feet from the victim.”

Three witnesses in the home told police they had been with Candler and Rawson after Candler’s truck broke down and was towed to the house, according to the warrant.

At some point later in the night, a fight broke out, according to witness accounts in the warrant. The witnesses did not say what led to it. One witness told police he saw Candler punching Rawson in the face, before “Candler grabbed a lamp and struck the victim in the head numerous times with it and was kicking and stomping the victim on his head and neck,” the warrant reads.

Rawson was pronounced dead at 6:18 a.m., according to the warrant.