Left: Jeffrey Buchannan (York County Jail). Right: Rhonda Pattelena (GoFundMe)
A Massachusetts man will spend the next several decades behind bars for beating his girlfriend to death with a rock on a beach in Maine.
Jeffrey Buchannan, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of murder earlier this month for the long-acknowledged daytime killing of Rhonda Pattelena, 35, the mother of his then-toddler son, on March 26, 2021.
The killer’s plea came on the eve of jury selection, avoiding trial and securing an agreement with prosecutors that his sentence would not exceed 43 years in prison. On Wednesday, a judge abided by the contours of that agreement, sentencing Buchannan to 40 years.
“Rhonda Michelle Pattelena was the most influential, kindhearted, caring, forgiving, loving, courageous woman you could have ever met in your life,” the victim’s sister emotionally recalled at the sentencing hearing, according to a courtroom report by Portland, Maine-based NBC affiliate WCSH. “She could have made any day brighter just by being herself. She saw beauty and light in everyone — clearly.”
In March 2022, Buchannan pleaded not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. Just last month, his defense attorneys moved to delay proceedings in the already frequently delayed case in order to obtain a psychiatric examination from a third mental health professional, according to The Portsmouth Herald.
In his initial police interview, the since-condemned man said he “blacked out” just before the brutal incident that occurred behind a large rock on tiny Short Sands Beach in York, Maine. On that day, to hear Buchannan tell it, he remembered seeing a man running toward him and Pattelena making hand gestures. And then nothing.
Afterward, the killer would tell investigators, he felt the sensation of breathing heavily — and the image of his child’s mother on the ground.
Witnesses would describe Buchannan walking away from the crime scene. One man said he saw the bludgeoning as it occurred and followed Buchannan afterward. And at least two video cameras caught portions of the attack, prosecutors said during the sentencing.
Pattelena was actually in the process of sending a Snapchat video to a friend when Buchannan first struck her, according to court records obtained by the Portland Press Herald. The woman falls out of the frame, then an arm is raised and lowered, again and again and again.
Surveillance footage from a nearby business also showed the crime, prosecutors told the court, showing Buchannan strike the woman while her back is turned. Belying the mental illness excuse, Buchannan can be seen dragging and trying to hide her body before fleeing.
“This is an act of domestic violence,” Somerset County Superior Court Justice Richard Mulhern said. “Completely unprovoked … The defendant executed her and she never saw it coming.”
Before the murder, Buchannan and Pattelena dated on and off for some seven years — despite his history of domestic violence. In 2017, he was convicted of felony kidnapping and assaulting Pattelena and her two older sons. At the time of the slaying, several friends and family members were unaware they had gotten back together.
A GoFundMe was started by one of the woman’s best friends to raise funds for her three children.
During the sentencing hearing, the judge was shown the rock used by the man to kill the woman who loved him dearly. A prosecutor handed over the bagged murder weapon while describing Pattelena’s injuries, according to the Herald.
Before that, she wanted to show him her favorite beach — a location that Pattelena’s friends said will remain special, even after her death.
At a candlelight vigil for the victim in 2021, friends Melissa Matranga, Angela Patch and Ashley Caiazzo said that Pattelena would want “her favorite spot” to be a place to remember her love of the beach, “not the horrific acts that took place there.”
