SKOWHEGAN – Thirty-one years have passed since Rita St. Peter’s mangled body was found in Anson, but her family, friends and neighbors haven’t forgotten.

Six of St. Peter’s relatives watched on Friday as the man accused of killing her appeared before a judge in Somerset County District Court.

Jay Mercier, 55, of Industry told Judge Rae Ann French in a videoconference from Somerset County Jail that he understood his rights and the charge of murder against him. Mercier is accused of killing St. Peter on July 5, 1980, when she was 20 years old.

The man who found St. Peter’s body three decades ago spoke publicly for the first time about the moment he saw her form in a field off Campground Road while he exercised horses.

“I was only 18 at the time. I was scared to death,” said Tim Dyke of Chesterville.

St. Peter had been beaten and her skull had been fractured. Police said she may have been run over by a car or truck.

Dyke found her in a field where people went to party, he said Friday. People drove there often enough that there was a dirt trail through the field. There are houses there now.

Dyke’s now-deceased father, Guy Dyke, known as Shorty, owned draft horses, which he took to fairs to compete in pulling contests. On the morning of July 5, 1980, Tim Dyke took the horses to that field, about a quarter-mile from his house, to exercise them.

He knew when he saw St. Peter’s body that something awful had happened, but “I couldn’t tell you if it was a man or a woman, I was so scared,” he said. “I was smart enough not to look too close.”

He returned home and told his family. Emergency 911 service didn’t exist in Anson then, and today Dyke doesn’t know exactly how his family contacted police.

He said he worried about whether someone involved would think he had witnessed St. Peter’s death.

Police didn’t interview him at the time, he said, and provided him with no details. It wasn’t until this spring that Maine State Police Detective Bryant Jacques contacted him with questions, he said.

Dyke was identified in a 1980 Morning Sentinel news article as the man who found St. Peter’s body, but he said that Friday was the first time he had spoken publicly about it.

Though he didn’t know St. Peter personally, they lived near each other and attended the same school.

“Yes, it is a relief,” he said of Mercier’s arrest. “Hopefully they’ve got the evidence they need to convict him — for the family, for her and for the area.”

Dressed in an orange jail suit with his wrists handcuffed in front of him, Mercier appeared for four minutes Friday via a videoconferencing system set up between the Somerset County Jail and the court.

He will be held without bail and is next scheduled to appear Thursday in Somerset County Superior Court.

Mercier was indicted Sept. 16 and arrested Wednesday after investigators had a break in the case using forensic evidence. Police reportedly interviewed hundreds of people over the last three decades.

On Friday, Assistant Attorney Andrew Benson said there’s no indication that anyone else was involved in St. Peter’s death.

Madelene Pierce of Embden grew up in Anson and remembers hearing of St. Peter’s slaying.

“We were just all dumbfounded,” Pierce said. “It was a pretty scary thing, actually, to think someone was out here that could be that vicious.”

On top of that, “this beautiful little 3-year-old girl did not have a mom anymore,” Pierce said, referring to St. Peter’s daughter, Terri Lynn.

The night she died, St. Peter was seen leaving the new Main Street Depot tavern in Madison about 12:30 a.m. Witnesses told police that they saw her get into a pickup truck on the Madison-Anson bridge.

Morning Sentinel Staff Writer Erin Rhoda can be contacted at 612-2368 or at: erhoda@centralmaine.com