Police arrested a Haverhill man eight months after a warrant was issued when he failed to appear for a court hearing on felony charges in connection with the fatal overdose of a 31-year-old woman.
Albert Boutin III, 46, was indicted in February 2025 for allegedly supplying drugs that resulted in the 2019 death of Sammantha Cruger.
At his March 2025 arraignment and bail hearing in Grafton Superior Court, the court entered not guilty pleas on Boutin’s behalf as he did not have an attorney present.
Judge Jonathan Frizzell granted Boutin’s release on personal recognizance with terms forbidding him from having contact with or being within 300 feet of Cruger’s family and prohibiting him from consuming alcohol or possessing a gun.
Court records show that Boutin has prior criminal convictions for possessing crack cocaine and heroin, check forgery and breaching bail.
He was charged in Cruger’s death following a five-year investigation by Haverhill police.
A year after his indictment, Boutin failed to appear for a final pretrial conference. The court ordered a warrant for his arrest.
Haverhill Police Chief David Appleby, in an email to the Valley News, declined to comment on the case as it remains ongoing.
“What I can say is that it was the Haverhill Police Department’s position that Mr. Boutin should have been held pending the resolution of this case,” Appleby stated. “Unfortunately, he was not.”
Court records show that on Oct. 5 of this year, the Grafton County Sheriff’s Office executed the court’s February arrest warrant, taking Boutin into custody.
The following day, Judge Mark Attorri, who presides over cases in neighboring Belknap and Carroll counties, denied Boutin’s bail.
He is currently incarcerated in Grafton County jail and scheduled for another final pretrial conference on felony charges of drug sale with death resulting and controlled drug: acts prohibited in Grafton Superior Court on Dec. 21 at 9 a.m.
Phone efforts to reach Boutin’s attorney, Renee Sargent of the New Hampshire Public Defender’s Orford Office, and the prosecutor, Grafton County Deputy Attorney Tara Heater, were unsuccessful.
Individuals convicted of selling drugs that result in a fatal overdose face a potential lifetime prison sentence under the state’s “death resulting” statute.
