BIDDEFORD — Jamie Wakefield met Douglas “Doug” Michaud Jr. in 2019 while he was playing pool.

“He said he saw me and it looked like I had a beam of light on me, and he knew I was the one,” Wakefield, 29, told a jury on Tuesday. “We were inseparable.”

Wakefield, who watched Michaud get shot seven times on their front porch in Biddeford, was the first witness to testify in the murder trial Tuesday in York County Superior Court.

She moved into Michaud’s place in the three-story apartment building that Michaud owned on Union Street in Biddeford the same year they met. By the fall of 2021, the couple was expecting their first son.

One of his tenants, Randal J. Hennessey, has been charged with murder for shooting Michaud on Sept. 14, 2021.

Hennessey, 33, pleaded not guilty to the charge in December 2021, the month Wakefield said her son was born. Hennessey has been in jail for nearly three years waiting for this trial after changing court-appointed attorneys and rejecting at least two plea deals from prosecutors. He also faces charges for having a gun despite prior convictions.

The state says Hennessey killed Michaud because he was angry that his landlord sent him an eviction notice that morning.

Hennessey’s attorney, George Hess, has not denied that his client shot Michaud, but he has suggested that Hennessey might have had a more justifiable reason for killing Michaud, although the attorney has yet to explain what that reason is.

EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

As Wakefield took the stand Tuesday morning, she walked the jury through her boyfriend’s history with Hennessey.

Wakefield said that Michaud had tried to evict Hennessey twice after she moved in. After the first eviction effort in 2019, Michaud agreed to let Hennessey stay as long as he adhered to their lease agreement. The eviction case remained open for six months, and in that time, Wakefield said, there were no issues.

But when the case was closed, she said, Hennessey returned to his old ways. He was loud, smoked inside the building and used more parking spots than he was allowed. He also started to collect old motorcycles that he wanted to fix up and sell. Michaud told him he couldn’t, Wakefield said, because the building wasn’t insured for business use.

She said that’s when Hennessey began acting out.

“He would call Doug names in the driveway while working on bikes,” Wakefield said. “He would make remarks, walking by him. He would rev his engines to his bikes. He texted him a lot.”

Hess suggested the motorcycle work was Hennessey’s effort to pay rent. Michaud raised Hennessey’s rent to $1,525 in 2020 and again to $1,800 by August 2021, Hess said.

The night before the shooting, Wakefield said she was home alone and could hear Hennessey outside with a friend, revving their bike engines and drinking in the street. She said she told Michaud about the noise and he mailed Hennessey and his girlfriend eviction notices the next morning.

Wakefield remembered Hennessey pounding at their door that morning, but Michaud didn’t want to engage.

That afternoon, Wakefield said, she was waiting on their porch for Michaud to come home from a truck inspection when Hennessey began shouting at her from the top of the stairs.

As Michaud arrived and stepped onto the porch, she said he told Hennessey, “It’s one thing to harass me, but you’re not going to harass my pregnant girlfriend.”

Michaud then closed the door to the building and the couple stayed outside. A few minutes later, Wakefield said, she heard Hennessey running down the stairs and when he came through the door, he was pointing a gun in Michaud’s direction.

Hennessey shouted Michaud’s name and fired five rounds at him before going back inside. Wakefield said she ran to him and was trying to put his head in her lap when Hennessey came back outside and fired two more shots at Michaud, standing even closer than before.

“He looked like he was enjoying himself,” Wakefield testified, struggling to speak. “I’m not sure how to explain it. … He was focused.”

OTHER WITNESSES 

Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Ackerman also called to testify several neighbors who rushed over to help after Michaud was shot.

A high school student who drove by at the time of the shooting and a neighbor across the street both identified the shooter as a tall, skinny man with dark hair resembling Hennessey.

Some saw and heard as Hennessey ran from the porch for his dirt bike, which police say he rode until he ran out of gas in New Hampshire.

And they all said they heard Wakefield, who was sobbing when they arrived, identify Hennessey as Michaud’s killer.

“She was screaming, ‘Randy,’ ” neighbor Jane Harrell testified. “Everybody asked, ‘Who did this?’ She was saying ‘Randy, Randy, Randy. How could he do this, Randy.’ ”

Hess suggested during his cross-examination of Wakefield that Hennessey could have been acting in self defense.

He tried several times to get Wakefield to change her story, suggesting Wakefield had to pull Michaud away from Hennessey, and that Michaud was shouting obscenities at his tenant. As Hess was speaking, he mixed up the men’s names several times, causing some of Michaud’s family members watching in the courtroom to gasp.

Wakefield insisted that Michaud never approached Hennessey, never threatened him, never showed him a weapon or attacked him.

“And at any point prior to the shooting … was there ever any physical altercation between them?” Ackerman asked her.

“No. Never,” Wakefield said.

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