Former Dover officer Letendre found not guilty of falsifying physical evidence

Ronald Letendre, left, confers with his defense counsel Carl Swenson during a courtroom break on Wednesday. (Rochester Voice photo)

DOVER - You might call it a first-round knockout.

It took a Strafford County jury less than three hours on Thursday to return a not guilty verdict for a former Dover police officers accused of falsifying physical evidence in a 2016 drug case.

Ronald Letendre, 48, of Rollinsford, a former MMA fighter, was working as a Dover patrol officer on Sept. 16, 2016, when he was dispatched to a Dover residence to seize a package of suspected THC edibles sent through the USPS.

The man who lived at the residence told then-officer Letendre that he had mistakenly opened the package - which wasn't addressed to him - and soon realized they might be illicit drugs. He said he them called his lawyer who advised him to call police to have them come to his residence to seize the drugs.

An indictment handed down in October 2020 alleged that Letendre took a portion of the Jolly Rancher-style THC gummies from the package before locking it in the evidence room, which was the basis of the falsifying physical evidence complaint, a felony that could have resulted in a seven-year prison sentence.

An internal investigation by Dover Police into the gummies theft may have never occurred, however, but for a widely reported domestic violence incident of July 10, 2020, that involved Letendre and his former wife at their Rollinsford home.

Initially, Rollinsford Police arrested Sarah Letendre after they found her husband with scratches on his chest and a torn shirt.

Soon after, however, Sarah Letendre said on her Facebook page that it was her husband who attacked her breaking four of her ribs.

About two weeks later Sarah Letendre filed her own Domestic Violence Petition accusing her husband of breaking her ribs when he "forcefully fell with his elbow into my left ribcage."

All charges against both were eventually dropped, however during a Dover Police investigation into the matter they learned that in September 2016 Ronald Letendre had brought some Jolly Rancher-type edibles home, at least one of which was eaten by Sarah Letendre, who confirmed the THC content. THC is the active ingredient in cannabis that produces a high.

The indictment, in part, reads that "believing that an official investigation is pending, he (Letendre) removed any thing with a purpose to impair its verity or availability in such investigation; in that Ronald Letendre did investigate the delivery of controlled drugs to (Dover address), and in the course of that investigation he did remove a portion of the seized controlled drugs before entering the seized controlled drugs into evidence at Dover Police Department."

Strafford County Attorney Tom Velardi said on Wednesday evidence clearly showed there were drugs missing from the 2016 seizure, but public defender Carl Swenson countered that the charge of falsifying physical evidence was wrongheaded.

"The indictment says "with a purpose to impair its verity (truthfulness)," Swenson said. "They are saying he was sabotaging an investigation; what investigation? what sabotage?"

The falsifying physical evidence charge also alleged that Letendre's behavior was executed while "believing that an official investigation is pending," four years prior to when it was investigated.

Ronald Letendre was fired by Dover Police in August 2020 after an internal investigation into the stolen gummies. He had been a police officer in Dover for 13 years.