Central Maine community officials are now trying to deny they failed to alert the public about an alleged pedophile running town hall.
Six days after Town Manager Nicholas Nadeau shot and killed himself, Skowhegan selectboard members issued a canned, innocent-sounding bereavement statement.
“This is a difficult moment for town government and the community,” the board said. “We extend our condolences to Mr. Nadeau’s family, friends, colleagues, and all those affected by his passing.”
Yet a day after that attempt to cover up their knowledge that Nadeau was being investigated for child-sexual exploitation they trotted out their “interim manager” to deny what taxpayers now already knew.
Acting Manager Donnie Zaluski was forced to publish a virtual hostage tape telling the public that his bosses found out about Nadeau’s alleged criminality “around the time” of his death.
“On the day Nick passed away, selectboard members first learned of state and federal investigations into what appeared to be conduct unrelated to Nick’s work for the town,” the new statement said.
So when they issued the first milquetoast bereavement statement they knew what they knew – but refused to acknowledge that Nadeau took his life only after cops had begun investigating him for sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl.
Police began investigating Nadeau earlier this month after a Florida teen reported inappropriate online communication with an adult male, the release stated.
Nadeau, 32, had been town manager less than a year when cops began their probe that came to include retrieving electronic evidence of his allegedly trading sexually explicit material with the girl.
Police found sexually-explicit child porn in Nadeau’s house March 6 and then got a warrant to search town offices March 17, two days before he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a day after Police Chief David Bucknam learned of the investigation.
The selectboard chair learned of the investigation March 19 but didn’t tell the public about it until March 22.
Trying to cover their tracks, selectmen later instructed Zakuski to tell the public that neither they nor the town’s police chief had been investigating their manager.
That is vastly different from whether they knew state police were doing so, which they apparently did but yet didn’t immediately inform the public what they knew.
Town officials were careful not to say they learned of the police investigation “after” Nadeau committed suicide – because they already knew beforehand but kept it a secret from the public.
