Intruder Awakens South Windsor Resident In Her Home, Asks To Use Bathroom

Suspect Has Violent Criminal History In California

By DAVID OWENS

The Hartford Courant

10:19 PM EDT, July 6, 2011

SOUTH WINDSOR

 

Heath Elliot Cain (Courtesy South Windsor Police Department / July 6, 2011)

 

A local man with a violent criminal history was arrested on Wednesday after he let himself into a woman's home early in the morning, woke her up and told her he needed to use the bathroom, police said.

Pamela Bowen said in an interview that said the man, Heath Elliott Cain, 36, stayed for about 15 to 20 minutes but did not harm her. She said she prayed throughout the ordeal that she would be OK.

Police said that a short time after Cain left Bowen's Homestead Drive home, officers tracked him down with the help of a police dog.

Cain, of 135 Norton Lane, was arraigned Wednesday on several charges in Superior Court in Manchester. Court records from California show that he served time in prison after a conviction on assault charges in the late 1990s.

Bowen said on Wednesday afternoon that Cain did not seem to be drunk or under the influence of drugs. Some of the things he said were incoherent, and other times he seemed lucid, she said.

"He said to me, 'I'm not going to hurt you lady, I just want to use your bathroom,'." Bowen said.

After waking her up, he told her at various times that he wanted to purchase the home, that he used to live there with another family and that someone had dropped him off and he was looking for his car, Bowen said.

She said she repeatedly asked Cain to leave, and followed him downstairs to her kitchen, where he looked at photos on her refrigerator, then opened the refrigerator to get a drink.

At one point, Cain went into the bathroom, then came out with a towel, Bowen said.

"That's when I really got scared," she said. "I said, 'What are you doing with that towel?'?"

Cain responded that he had to wipe down the door knobs he had touched because he left his DNA on them. He tried to put the towel in the washing machine to get rid of his DNA, but Bowen said she told Cain she wasn't turning on the machine. He eventually left through a garage door.

Before he walked into Bowen's home, police said, Cain defecated on the walkway leading up to it. Police also found his underwear on the walk.

Cain later told police that he got into the house through the unlocked front door.

Bowen said it won't be unlocked ever again.

South Windsor police Lt. Richard Riggs said several people called the department earlier on the same night to report that someone had rang doorbells at their homes. In once instance, Riggs said, a man approached a home, rang the doorbell then told the person in the house that he was handcuffed and needed a ride to his house. The homeowner locked her door and called police.

Police charged Cain with second-degree criminal trespass, second-degree criminal mischief and disorderly conduct and held him in lieu of $50,000 bail for arraignment Wednesday in Superior Court in Manchester.

During that arraignment, prosecutors added a charge of first-degree burglary and a judge increased Cain's bail to $150,000. He is due back in court Aug. 9.

Cain served seven years in prison for California after he shot his then-girlfriend in the head and stabbed a hospital pharmacist in the late 1990s, according to California court records.

He was charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, assault with a firearm, robbery, assault with a knife and burglary. A jury acquitted him of attempted murder and kidnapping, apparently believing Cain's statement that was trying to shoot himself and not his girlfriend when he hugged her tight and fired the pistol. He said he intended to shoot himself in front of her, not shoot her.

After driving his girlfriend to the hospital, according to the court records, Cain forced his way into the hospital pharmacy, threatened to stab the pharmacist, then "slurped the contents of several medication bottles."

He was convicted on the assault charges.

Courant reporter Jesse Leavenworth and Senior Information Specialist Cristina Bachetti contributed to this report.