Digital Extras

July 27, 1987

Craig C. Price kills his neighbor, Rebecca Spencer.

Oct. 4, 1988

Price admits to a burglary and is found delinquent in Family Court. He receives a suspended sentence to the Training School, probation, and counseling.

July 26, 1989

Price is charged with assaulting his sister and a police officer after the police respond to a report of a fight between the siblings at the Price home in Warwick.

Aug. 31, 1989

The charge of assaulting his sister is dismissed and Price is found wayward in court after admitting to assaulting a police officer. He receives a three-month suspended sentence to the Training School, plus probation.

Sept. 1, 1989

Price kills Joan Heaton and her daughters, Jennifer and Melissa.

Sept. 17, 1989

Price confesses to murdering the Heatons and the unsolved killing two years earlier of Rebecca Spencer.

Sept. 21, 1989

Family Court Judge Carmine R. DePetrillo commits Price to the state Training School until his 21st birthday, the maximum sentence allowed for a juvenile. The judge orders the school to hire psychiatric experts to develop a program to treat Price before he would be set free -- in a little more than five years.

Prosecutor Jeffrey B. Pine, who would later become state attorney general, complains that the sentence is "nowhere near enough."

October 1989

Price participates in four preliminary evaluations with a clinical psychologist.

Nov. 1, 1989

Price interviews with Dr. Wesley Profit, then the deputy director of Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts. In a report, Profit notes that Price "had sealed over in a conspicuous and notable fashion the emotional content and affect attendant to the aberrant conduct involved in the Spencer and Heaton homicides."

Price agrees to a second interview, during which he would "lead the examiners through a review of his behavior at the time of the incidents and he would answer questions that were posed to him about his mental status," Profit wrote.

The second interview is set for Nov. 16.

Nov. 13, 1989

A spokesman for Attorney General James O'Neil acknowledges that the office was exploring ways to keep Price in jail. "Our position is that this guy should never be on the street again."

In response, Price's court-appointed lawyer, Patricia M. Byrnes, warns Price that the psychological exams might be used to jail him past his 21st birthday, and advises him not to comply.

Nov. 16, 1989

Price declines to talk to Profit.

"In fairness to Craig," Profit writes, "it should be noted that he also indicated that he had a strong desire to talk with the examiners but that he would not do so without his attorney's permission."

The doctors cannot persuade Byrnes to change her mind.

Spring 1990

The General Assembly amends the law to allow juveniles to be tried in adult court for heinous crimes. The law cannot be applied retroactively to Craig Price.

Oct. 25, 1990

Attorney General O'Neil says of Price: "We're trying to make sure he stays in beyond the age of 21. He knows that, the world knows that."

Oct. 1, 1993

Price is on his way from the recreation room back to his Training School unit when he is ordered to strip for a standard search.

Officer Mark Petrella notices four Newport cigarettes and a red lighter wrapped in tissue between Price's legs.

Don't sweat it, Price tells him, it's just cigarettes.

Petrella writes up a report on Price.

Price gets in Petrella's face and screams at him.

The confrontation opens a new front in the campaign to extend Price's prison stay beyond age 21, as the state considers bringing criminal charges.

Oct. 28, 1993

In a memo to then-Gov. Bruce G. Sundlun, Suzanne Worrell Gemma, a legal counsel to the governor, outlines a potential strategy to commit Price to a mental hospital, based on the argument that he was too dangerous to be free.

The memo lists possible amendments to mental health law to fend off any court challenge. "Obviously," Gemma warns, "the mental health community will be extremely concerned and we must immediately begin speaking with professionals who will testify in support of these amendments."

That night, Sundlun discloses at a State House rally that he had hired lawyer Brendan V. Sullivan, a Rhode Island native who gained national attention defending Oliver North in the Iran-contra scandal, to draft legislation to help keep Price locked up.

Oct. 29, 1993

Attorney General Pine says: "If someone has a way in which Mr. Price can be confined, I'm willing to listen to and support it. The bottom line is the result."

March 24, 1994

A citizens group opposing Price's release launches a publicity campaign to tell the nation that Price is scheduled to be freed in about seven months. The campaign will include banners flown by airplane over populated areas.

Spring 1994

The General Assembly enacts the so-called "Craig Price bill" that allows a judge to consider a person's criminal record in deciding whether he or she should be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

June 1, 1994

Police officers from around the state gather with citizens at Warwick City Hall for a vigil in opposition to Price's impending release. Sundlun tells the crowd, "Everybody in state government shares your concern. Everybody in state government wants to blow out the candle on Craig Price and keep him behind bars."

June 8, 1994

After an eight-month police investigation, new criminal charges are filed against Price for his run-in with the Training School officer. He faces one count of extortion, maximum penalty 15 years, and one count of assault, a misdemeanor with a one-year maximum.

It is an extraordinary indictment. State officials say that no Training School youth in memory had ever been charged for a verbal confrontation.

Pine says of the new charges: "This does not end other avenues being explored" to keep Price locked up.

June 27, 1994

Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah finds Price in civil contempt for repeatedly refusing psychological testing and imposes a one-year sentence.

Aug. 2, 1994

The Rhode Island Supreme Court rules that the Family Court may initiate criminal contempt charges. Attorney General Pine proimises to "aggressively pursue criminal contempt proceedings against Mr. Price."

Summer 1994

On the advice of his new lawyer, Robert Mann, Price agrees to undergo psychological testing. Price meets with Dr. Richard Barnum, a Boston psychiatrist, and Dr. Frank DiCataldo, a forensic psychologist.

Sept. 16, 1994

Judge Jeremiah orders Price held past his 21st birthday, until he completes a treatment plan for mental disorders. Civil libertarians are dismayed at what they see as an infringement of civil rights. Becky Spencer's brother, Carl Battey, says that he is tired of hearing about Price's rights.

"He's alive. He can breathe. He can eat. He can live. Our relatives can't. They're not here anymore."

Oct. 7, 1994

After a trial, Price is found guilty of threatening the Training School officer. Sentencing would come in December.

Oct. 11, 1994

Price spends his 21st birthday in the Adult Correctional Institutions. That night, the families of Rebecca Spencer and the Heatons attend a candlelight vigil at the State House.

Nov. 14, 1994

District Court Chief Judge Albert E. DeRobbio rules that criminal contempt of court is a misdemeanor with a one-year maximum penalty. The attorney general appeals DeRobbio's ruling to the state Supreme Court.

Dec. 1, 1994

Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Needham sentences Price to 15 years on extortion, 7 years to serve and 8 suspended. Price claims he is the victim of racism. A number of minority leaders say they see some truth in Price's charge.

Feb. 20, 1996

During a brawl, Price bites a correctional officer's finger. Price gets smashed in the face, suffering cuts that take 12 stitches. Detectives interview 8 officers and 97 inmates who may have witnessed the fight.

Prosecutors take the uncommon step of charging Price as a probation violator -- while he was still imprisoned. They also charge Price with two counts of assault.

March 26, 1996

The Supreme Court rules that Judge DeRobbio was more powerful than he thought in punishing contempt: A Rhode Island judge may impose any sentence upon a criminal contempt conviction.

June 27, 1996

Superior Court Judge Eugene G. Gallant rules that Price had violated his probation in his fight with the officers, and adds a year to his sentence. The judge also chastises the officers for using "excessive force." An internal prison investigation would assert that "all proper procedures were followed."

May 20, 1997

After a trial, a jury convicts Price of criminal contempt. DeRobbio would sentence Price to 25 years, 10 to serve. The remaining 15 years were suspended, to be added if Price got into trouble.

May 12, 1998

Price is accused of punching and stomping Correctional Officer Jeoffroy Brouillette in the prison library. He is charged with assault, and again as a probation violator.

Oct. 7, 1998

For the probation violation, DeRobbio adds 7 years of the suspended time to Price's sentence for contempt, bringing the total time to serve on that conviction to 17 years.

Feb. 12, 1999

Price pleads no contest to three counts of assault, from the incident with Brouillette and the 1996 fight with guards. He is sentenced to three more years.

Oct. 30, 2001

Price is in the prison law library, when Brouillette, the officer Price stomped in 1998, unlocks the door, lets in a 36-year-old inmate named Michael Ostrowski, and then locks the door behind him.

Ostrowski had assaulted Price several years earlier, according to a police investigative report. Available records don't list the nature of that assault, but Price claims Ostrowski whacked him twice on the head with a dust broom.

Prison officials had listed the two men as "enemies" who were not to be allowed in each other's company.

Price punches Ostrowski to the library floor and pummels him, until Brouillette pulls him away. Price would claim he acted because he thought the other inmate was going to attack him, and accuse the officer of setting him up.

Brouillette tells investigators that he had forgotten that Price was in the library when he let Ostrowski inside.

The fight results in another year on Price's sentence, which bumps his projected release date to Feb. 17, 2022.