Sumner "Power Couple" Plea Deal For Stealing From Vol Fire Dept Delayed, Again
Thanks to Maine's DHHS, we now have a job description and resumé for the western Maine gun dealer and big-wig at state psych hospital.
Former Sumner Select Board member Kelly Stewart and her husband Bob were supposed to appear in Oxford County Court on Tuesday, September 24, presumably to enter a plea agreement with the DA in connection to the felony “theft by deception” charges (spawned by a taxpayer-funded town investigation) exhaustively explained in the “The Case of the $60,000 Gloves” Crash Report. A last-minute motion by Kelly Stewart’s lawyer pushed the couple’s guilty pleas back until early November, allowing them at least another month of sales at their gun store and firing range. And, for Kelly Stewart, the delay presumably means more paid time off from her job as Forensic Outpatient Services Director at Maine’s Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, although no one at the state will confirm or deny her current employment situation, except that she still gets paid by DHHS.
This is the second “motion to delay” the plea in this odd theft case. Earlier this month, Kelly Stewart asked for more time from the court so she learn, from her “employer’s human relations director” how a guilty plea would affect her $103,000 salaried position at Riverview, as well as her multiple licenses and her ability to supervise and mentor social workers studying for master’s degrees.
As mentioned in “The Case of the $60,000 Gloves,” I had requested additional information from DHHS, including the employment listing for Stewart’s job description and the resume she submitted when applying for her current gig. Thanks to a DHHS spokesperson, we now have those documents and have updated, upon the request of the spox, the previous Crash Report to reflect that the department has provided the information requested.
Gotta wonder how her presumable guilty plea will look through the lens of the Office of Professional and Occupational Regulation who will determine if she can keep her social work licenses. According to state law, as a licensee, Stewart is required to self-report any criminal conviction within 10 days to the licensing board for review. And I’m still trying to determine how a felony plea deal will impact the Stewarts’ ability to sell fully-auto weapons, silencers and ammo in both the long and short-term.
If the gossip from the back alleys of Sumner is accurate, the couple are planning to take a “deferred guilty plea” which means if they behave, legally, for the next year, the case will disappear from their records. However, as we discussed in the earlier Crash Report, licensing agencies on the state and federal level will still consider a deferred guilty plea to be a guilty plea.
And the local scuttlebutt is that the plea also includes the Stewarts repaying the Fire Department at least $15,000 to make up for missing and waylaid funds.
Stewart’s state-furnished resume includes some interesting tidbits about her work history. And the claims of the first and last sentences of her resumé are especially amusing. She is “experienced, ethical and hard-working…. has develped a highly effective, firm but fair management style.” Yeah. Sure. Not sure how that jibes with considering the criminal charges she faces, plus all the weird tales I’ve heard about the Sumner “social scene” and party-hearty atmosphere of the gun shop. Not to mention her bizarre management style at the state hospital that includes the frequent workplace use of the term “fuck off” and self-references by Kelly Stewart to having male genitalia and that she’s willing to use it.
This workplace photo from last October, below, is from Kelly Stewart’s Facebook, posted a couple months after her arrest for “theft by deception” when her colleagues at the state psychiatric hospital dressed up as Stewart for a random Wednesday “pick me up and huge belly laugh.”
Oddly, Stewart’s resume doesn’t mention a master’s degree from Liberty University that’s listed on her “Clinical Professional Counselor” and “Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor” licenses. Also, thanks to the DHHS-provided resume, we now know she used to be a jail guard and an aide to Strom Thurmond before she moved to Maine to become a social worker and, eventually, the Forensic Outpatient Services Director at Maine’s psych hospital for the criminally insane.
And since she was hired for the state job before opening a gun store and firing range dealing in fully automatic weapons, sawed-off shotguns, ammo and silencers, that business is not mentioned in her curriculum vitae. The resumé also neglects to mention her gun fetish.
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What is wrong with the State of Maine? And, like old orange head, paid a lot for lawyers who know how to delay, delay, delay!
I’m also thinking maybe the state cannot do anything about her job until after she is found guilty. The belief is, innocent until proven guilty.
The greed, the shameful attitude they have towards others is disturbing. She works with social workers!!!!!! My undergrad major, social work!!! Makes me very angry to know this.
Thank you for keeping us up to date on this case.