Amy St. Laurent wanted to get back to the bar in Portland’s Old Port. She’d gone out with a friend on October 20, 2001, and had become separated from her. By the early hours of Sunday she was at an apartment with several other people, including a man she’d met that night, Jeffery Gorman. Between two and half past, witnesses saw them leave together. They would be the last people to report seeing Amy alive. [1]
A little after three, an officer in Westbrook pulled over a driver using his high beams. It was Gorman. He was alone and heading toward Portland. The officer had no missing-person case to ask him about. He could place one man on one road at a time the police would need to know. [1]
The hour the stop could account for
Once Amy’s disappearance was public, people who had seen her contacted the police. Gorman told them he’d taken her back to the Old Port and gone home. He left out the stop in Westbrook. At the automobile business where he worked, he cleaned his car and gave differing reasons for doing so, according to witnesses. Investigators had a record of where he’d been and a story from him that skipped part of the trip. [1]
A former girlfriend heard several versions. In one, Gorman had dropped Amy off downtown. He later said other men were responsible and had threatened him. On December 8, searchers found Amy in woods roughly three-tenths of a mile from his mother’s home. She had been shot. After the discovery, the former girlfriend said Gorman described suggesting that area as a place to conceal the body. The appellate record recounts these as his statements to her. The finding that Amy had been shot remained out of public reports until March 2002. [1]
The call his mother described
The day after Amy was found, Gorman spoke with his mother by phone. In February, she told a grand jury what she remembered. He had blamed other people, she said, then admitted shooting Amy. She also said he told her he’d gone back days later with a borrowed shovel to bury her. The court reporter recorded the grand-jury proceeding and took stenographic notes. [1]
The call and the testimony came months apart. The recording captured his mother describing the call under oath. The tape would matter in January 2003 when she took the stand at the murder trial and said she could no longer remember either the confession or her appearance before the grand jury. She remembered other events from the period and said she would have told the truth when she testified. [1]
What the jury heard
Questions about the transcript led the judge to allow a redacted recording to be played. The court reporter identified the witness and explained how he had checked his transcript against the audio. The trial judge treated the testimony as a recorded recollection, an earlier account that can be used when the witness can no longer recall it adequately and the circumstances support admitting it. Jurors could hear what Gorman’s mother had said earlier and see how she answered questions now. They still had to decide whether they believed her earlier account. [1]
Gorman’s lawyers challenged her competence to testify and the use of the recording. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court treated the memory problems as something the jury could weigh and upheld the trial judge’s rulings. The tape was one part of the evidence alongside the witnesses who saw Amy leave, the stop in Westbrook, Gorman’s changing stories and the place Amy was found. The jury convicted him after a five-day trial. He received a 60-year sentence, and the court affirmed the conviction on July 22, 2004. [1]
Amy’s name in Portland
The court’s account preserves the moment Amy asked to go back to the Old Port. It also records the work of people who noticed where she went and came forward when she was missing. In Portland, the Amy St. Laurent Foundation has carried her name into a different kind of record. Since 2002 it has worked with the city’s police department on violence-prevention and self-defense education for women, teenagers and children. [1] [2]
Case brief
Portland / Scarborough, Maine · 2001
- Recorded outcome
- Jeffery Gorman convicted; conviction affirmed in 2004
Key moments
People in this case
- Amy St. Laurent
Murder victim
Photo at source · Gun Memorial · memorial photographs
Kenneth C. Zirkel · Image source · CC BY 4.0
Look closer · 3 visuals
Inside the evidence.
Open a visual to explore what it contributed to the case—and the limits of what it shows. These original illustrations explain the record; they are not photographs of the actual evidence.
The traffic-stop clock
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
An officer saw Gorman alone traveling toward Portland. The stop offered an independent comparison with the story he told police.
It did not show where Amy was or establish the shooting by itself.
A voice preserved under oath
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The trial jury heard a redacted audio recording of Gorman’s mother describing his admission under oath.
This is not a recording of Gorman confessing; her reliability was challenged.
The changing accounts
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Gorman gave different versions to a former girlfriend and, according to his mother, ultimately admitted the killing.
These are reported statements. The accusations against his friends are not findings that they committed the murder.
★ Key evidence used in a conviction · ✓ Exclusion or reversal · ◇ Disputed evidence · ⊘ Excluded at retrial · ◆ Identity / investigative finding, not a conviction. A symbol does not mean one item proved the whole case.
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Follow the dated entries, then select an event to find its regional setting. Shared-location pins open a group of events. Evidence symbols identify important findings and their limitations.
Open the map in its own window ↗Sources & further reading
- State v. Gorman
- The Amy St. Laurent FoundationFoundation's description of its violence-prevention and self-defense programs.
- Scarborough’s connection to murder unfolds — The Current, reporter’s archiveScarborough as the recovery municipality; contemporary report, not the later verdict.
Editorial review: 2026-11-12 · 700 words