Editor’s note: This article by Jordan Cuddemi was published by the Valley News on Nov. 14.
NORTH HAVERHILL, N.H. — The 50-year-old Rhode Island man accused of fatally shooting his mother in her hospital bed at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center last year is likely to avoid a trial.
Travis Frink, of Warwick, R.I., has a plea hearing scheduled for next week.
Just what Frink will change his plea to isn’t yet clear, nor is whether he will rely on an insanity plea, as a previously filed notice indicated he might.
Frink stands charged with first- and second-degree murder in the death of his mother, 70-year-old Pamela Ferriere, of Groton, N.H.
Frink has pleaded not guilty, and remains held without bail in the Grafton County Jail in North Haverhill.
Frink had a final pretrial hearing scheduled for Thursday, but that has been canceled and, instead, a plea hearing in its place has been set for Tuesday, according to his case summary.
Many other court documents in Frink’s file are sealed.
Associate Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin, who is prosecuting the case, said he couldn’t comment on the case ahead of the hearing.
Messages left for Frink’s public defender, Caroline Smith, weren’t returned.
The situation at DHMC unfolded on Sept. 12, 2017, when Frink drove to the hospital from Rhode Island, signed in at the visitor’s desk and went to the fourth-floor intensive care unit, where his mother had been receiving treatment for an aneurysm, according to a court affidavit. She was scheduled to be released in the coming days.
Frink’s stepfather, Bob Ferriere, who was present at the hospital during the shooting, told police that upon arriving at the room, Frink asked for some time alone with his mother. Pamela Ferriere agreed. Shortly thereafter, Bob Ferriere said, he heard a shout and saw Frink point a gun at Pamela Ferriere and fire several shots.
Frink was arrested that day during a massive campuswide search that sent the hospital into lockdown and left many people panicking.
Reached on Wednesday, Bob Ferriere said he doesn’t know what might transpire on Tuesday.
“The day this all happened, I said I wanted no involvement at all with any of the court proceedings,” Ferriere said, noting that, whatever track Frink’s case takes, he will be OK with it.
He is stuck between a rock and a hard place, he said. Ferriere loves his stepson, but he also understands he may need to punished, he said, adding that he looks forward to the day the case comes to a close.
“I just don’t want to have my voice involved in it because I both love my son and I hate what he did,” Ferriere said. “I don’t want to say anything bad about him per se, but I will say that what he did was bad. It was evil.”
Ferriere previously told the Associated Press that Frink had a long history of erratic and violent behavior that he blamed on post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the military. Frink had suffered a traumatic brain injury.
“No one in this God-given world knows why he did it. I can’t tell you why he did it,” Bob Ferriere told the AP in September 2017, adding that the only possibility he could think of was the PTSD, based on his past behavior when he didn’t take his medication.
Frink’s public defenders earlier this year filed a notice saying Frink gave statements to police after the shooting that led them to believe that his actions were the result of a “mental illness or defect.”
His comments involved a “delusional belief” that he was taken from the womb of his birth mother, who wasn’t Pamela Ferriere, and became a subject of a “bizarre and sadistic scientific experiment,” according to the notice.
Frink has been hospitalized before and his diagnoses include bipolar disorder, with severe psychotic features, as well as schizoaffective disorder, the notice said.
In New Hampshire, first-degree murder holds a penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, while the penalty for second-degree murder can vary.
Frink’s hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
