Owen Pollard testified that he was employed with the State of Maine as director of the Maine Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation for many years before moving to Norman, Oklahoma in January of 1985. (December 5, 1984, Richard argent, Roger Johnson and William Myers had been arrested for Mike's murder. )

Pollard said he became acquainted with Paul Cormier when he was about eight years old. (Paul was born in 1959. He would have been eight years-old in 1967.)He said he first met Paul through some friends of his and then met his mother and then worked with his mother. She was involved in some of our programs; and subsequently his mother moved out of state and Paul remained with me ... and went to school and then would visit his mother in the summertime. “[He] became more and more dependent on me and I helped him with various things. I helped him in relation to school and problems that developed ... [He related] to me as a father figure. He had no father.” Owen said Paul's mother was “very willing” that he just take over this parental role.
     Owen said he could not really say that he was acquainted with Lionel Cormier,  but he “was aware he existed.” He came in and out of the mother’s home, and he would hear about him but he didn’t recall the first time he ever personally saw him. He was released from prison the end of Paul's senior year in high school and he came to Owen’s home at least once or twice. ”... Lionel was never a welcomed visitor to our house.” His reason was because “Paul feared him ... I recall the things that he told me that Lionel used to do to him as a child that frightened him; and that was sort of the characteristic of the relationship, sort of a bullying kind of relationship. That he would physically hurt him and frighten him and that kind of thing.”
     Owen said regardless of Paul's feeling of fear he “also had a feeling that he should do something, if he could, to help; and the mother had never really reconciled the whole thing with Lionel and his behavior and had always laid some guilt on Paul. If there was ever a chance that he could help this child that she didn’t want any more contact with, that Paul should. I had a sense of that, but I had a sense always of Paul's apprehension about him.”
     He said he was also aware that Paul, for a period, was residing with Lionel Cormier in the Bangor area. He said he clearly didn’t think it was a safe place for him to be.