This story by John Lippman was first published in the Valley News on August 9.
CHELSEA — The grieving family of a Newbury mother of four who was shot and killed by her father more than four years ago pleaded before a Vermont judge never to let her murderer live free in society again and to ensure the state places him in an appropriate institution.
“I’m not here asking for revenge. I’m asking for safety,” said Mason Rheaume, the eldest of Karina Rheaume’s four sons.
He was 18 years old when his mother was killed by a shotgun blast fired by her father, James Perry Jr., on the porch of Perry’s Newbury home in 2021. She had shown up at his door with a plate of cookies for a welfare check.
Karina Rheaume’s family has been reeling ever since the shooting and is now pressing Vermont officials to address the problem of inadequate state resources to handle people whose mental illness has led them to commit horrific crimes.
“Jim Perry must remain in a facility specifically designed for long-term psychiatric care — not a nursing home, not under the limited supervision,” Mason Rheaume said, stating that what his grandfather requires is “ongoing, lifelong oversight in a secure setting that protects him and those around him in the community.”
Mason Rheaume’s statement, along with others from his brother, their father and Karina’s sister were given in a packed courtroom in Chelsea before Superior Court Judge Daniel Richardson, after family friends and supporters contacted the county prosecutor’s office in recent weeks out of concern over Perry’s looming release from prison.
Perry, 74, was found not guilty by reason of insanity earlier this year in the shooting death of his 38-year-old daughter. A psychiatric evaluation concluded he had been “floridly psychotic with paranoid delusions and hallucinations” when he shot Karina at point-blank range with a 12-gauge shotgun on May 3, 2021, at his home on Deerfield Lane in Newbury.
Since the court’s insanity determination, which leaves Perry with no criminal record and with little agency oversight, the Orange County State’s Attorney’s Office and the state Mental Health Department have come under sharp criticism from Karina Rheaume’s family members and supporters who say the state does not do enough to protect victims and the public from the ongoing risk Perry presents to the community as well as himself.
When Emilie Perry, Karina Rheaume’s sister, learned that the options state officials were weighing for her father after his release from prison included his “uninhabitable” home in Newbury, a nursing home or a “hotel in Barre,” she called upon friends and supporters to write to the state attorney’s office to register their concern.
Within days, more than a hundred emails and letters were sent to Colin Seaman, the state attorney for Orange County.
“The court is well aware that this has become an item of great public interest,” Richardson acknowledged from the bench at the outset of the approximately 32-minute hearing, while also cautioning “misinformation” has also accompanied that concern.
Despite its reputation for progressive policies, critics have long contended that Vermont lacks adequate resources and facilities to handle people whose crimes are attributed to mental illness.
The lack of accommodations, for example, led to a Strafford man convicted of arson for burning down his cabin while suffering from delusions in 2023 spending 240 days in a Springfield prison. His attorney maintained his client needed treatment instead.
On Friday, supporters and family members of Karina Rheaume’s family filled every available spot on the visitors’ benches at the back of the second floor courtroom. A large-screen video monitor displayed phone icons of people watching remotely. Karina’s sons, dressed in suits and ties, and Karina’s sister Emilie, sat on the front bench, stifling tears when a family member went to the podium and addressed the judge.
“I urge you to consider the profound impact (Perry’s) actions have had on our family and the community,” Joshua Rheaume, Karina’s second oldest son, said. The unfathomable murder of his mother “point(s) to a deep-seated mental instability that requires long-term, intensive psychiatric care.”
Perry, shackled and wearing blue prison sweats, sat at the defense table next to his attorney, Mike Shane. With his hair cropped closely and beard trimmed and hooked up to a hearing aid, Perry appeared alert and compliant, a different visage from the gaunt, wide-eyed, straggly hair and thick, overgrown beard image in his booking photo after his arrest.
Perry’s criminal case ended with the insanity determination, Judge Richardson explained, and he is now in a “civil” phase meant to assess his mental health needs and treatment program. But those issues will be addressed at a future hearing, the judge said.
Family members said there can be no guarantee Perry will not relapse into psychosis.
“While his mental state may appear stable now, (Perry) is in a structured environment of incarceration,” Joshua Rheaume said. “What happens when he is released and faces the stresses and triggers of the outside world? The risk is too great. Our family, community and any potential future victims deserve the assurance of a more permanent solution.”
Emilie Perry grasping a tissue and fighting back tears, recounted the disbelief of learning that it was possible her father could be essentially left on his own following the expiration of a 90-day “non-hospitalization order.”
“The shock of this email was so unbelievable that it didn’t seem like it could be real,” Emilie Perry said. “I wrote back saying that was insane and spent the following days calling the state’s attorney, the defense, the mental health department, and anyone I could think of to make sense of what was a horribly terrifying proposal by the courts.”
“To act like the court is working to protect (Perry’s) rights is not true if he’s not given placement in a safe (…) environment. It is cruel to set him up to be unable to take care of himself and put himself and others at risk,” she said.
Both Seaman, the Orange County state’s attorney, and Shane, Perry’s defense attorney, said state officials are working together at multiple agencies and levels to address the public’s concern.
Shane, before Friday’s hearing, said that the Department of Mental Health will extend that order of non-hospitalization “indefinitely” and “if there are issues” then the non-hospitalization order will convert to an “involuntary hospitalization order.”
“There is a really good plan coming together,” Shane said, noting that the Department of Mental Health, the State’s Attorney’s Office, the Judiciary’s Guardian ad Litem Program that advocates on behalf of children who are victims of crime “and our own experts” are “working collaboratively to find the best fit for (Perry’s) needs and the needs of the community. I think when the plan is presented everyone will feel better.”
After Friday’s hearing, on the green outside the courthouse in Chelsea, Joe Rheaume, the father of Karina’s children and her former husband, and Karen Tronsgard-Scott, executive director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, both said there are “holes” in the way Vermont handles cases like Perry’s. Once it shifts to a civil matter victims have been excluded from the civil process phase of determining the offender’s fate.
“Victims should really have a seat at the table,” Tronsgard-Scott said. “They should be a part of every process in the courtroom.”
Joe Rheaume said the current system and civil phase needs to change.
“When you have a defendant who’s adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity and the next step is to just release them into society, I mean, everybody can logically think there’s something wrong with that,” Joe Rheaume said.
“There needs to be some kind of ramp or step-down program where this offender gets put into something secure, something semi-secure, anything,” he said.
Friday’s hearing, during which his family got to go on record with their victim impact statements, only happened as the result of the family’s persistence, Joe Rheaume noted.
“We’ve had to advocate for this. We’ve been pushing,” he said.
When it was pointed out that what he seeks requires the Vermont State Legislature to take up the matter and make law where none currently exists, Joe Rheaume acknowledged the challenge.
“That’s where this is going. That’s where we’re headed,” he replied.
