State police: Suspect in Chaplin killing transported back to CT
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-year-old 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.
According to the arrest arrant, state police received a 911 call around 5:43 a.m. on May 1. The caller reported a man in a house in the 200 block of Miller Road had been assaulted two hours before inside the residence.
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.”
Rawson was found sitting inside the home, propped up against an end table, shirtless, and with apparent “blunt force trauma” to his head, the warrant states.
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. One witness told investigators Rawson and Candler had worked on Candler's truck for several hours before the two men came inside the home.
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.
Police believe Candler fled the scene in his truck — a Ford F-350 with a Minnesota registration.
Another witness interviewed by police recounted how Candler called her around 6 a.m. that morning and rambled on about “how he was sorry and how he ‘tried,'” the warrant reads. The woman told police it was not uncommon for Candler to call her rambling, stating that she knows he has a drug problem. She told investigators Candler had told her he “won't let them take him”— which she took to meant he may attempt “suicide by cop,” the warrant states.
Police believe Candler traveled to the home of someone he knew in Woodstock, Maine, asking them to modify the appearance of his truck. During an interview, this witness told police Candler had told them he “didn't know the person that died,” the warrant states, and that “something really bad had happened in Connecticut.”
Police located Candler's truck at a business in Salisbury, Mass., on May 2, and seized the vehicle, according to the warrant. A tip from a cab driver that he had dropped someone off matching Candler's description led police to a motel in Seabrook, N.H., the following day where police set up surveillance. Around 1 p.m., police were able to take Candler into custody as he exited the front entrance of the motel, the warrant states.
He told waiting police to “just kill me,” before he was taken into custody, the warrant states.