A Skowhegan woman who served time for manslaughter and was nabbed last month for shoplifting in Waterville will serve six months in jail for the theft.

Vella Gogan, 64, of 327 Middle Road, Skowhegan, was arraigned Monday by video from Kennebec County Jail in Augusta, where she is incarcerated. A judge presided over the arraignment in Kennebec County Superior Court.

"She pleaded guilty Monday to the shoplifting charge," District Attorney Evert Fowle said Wednesday. "We recommended $ and the court imposed $ a six-month sentence."

Gogan was summonsed by Waterville police Dec. 28 and charged with theft of two pairs of Croc shoes and two water bottles from Olympia Sports at Elm Plaza in Waterville. The items were valued at about $78, according to Fowle.

A store employee had seen a woman conceal merchandise and leave the store without paying, Waterville deputy police Chief Charles Rumsey said at the time.

A description of the car she was driving was given to police and police Officer Dennis Picard stopped her near Kmart in the plaza. Gogan told Picard she was on probation for manslaughter and was being supervised by a probation officer, Rumsey said.

She later was arrested on a probation hold and taken to the Augusta jail where she has remained with no bail allowed.

"Her sentence basically started running on Dec. 28 and she'll serve that at the Kennebec County Jail," Fowle said Wednesday.

Gogan spent more than five years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter in the Oct. 1, 1999 death of her husband, Eugene Gogan, when the couple lived in Hartland. She was released from the Maine Correctional Center in Windham in 2006.

She originally was charged with murder. Her husband, 65, had been shot three times in the head as he slept in the couple's home on Route 43, also known as the Athens Road, in Hartland.

Eugene Gogan's body was cut into pieces and found six days later in the woods off Route 16 in Mayfield Township, north of Athens village and about 25 miles from the Gogan home.

Investigators recovered more than a dozen pieces of his body, which had been buried in shallow holes in the woods.

Vella Gogan had once worked as a butcher's assistant.

She said she acted in self-defense against her husband of 37 years and that he had been psychologically and physically abusive to her and she feared he planned to kill her.

Two psychologists and two psychiatrists concluded she suffered from "battered-wife syndrome" and feared for her life. The state prosecutor, however, called her actions a virtual execution and the ultimate act of domestic violence.

Fowle said Wednesday that based on her criminal history, he did not think anything less than a six- month sentence for the Olympia Sports theft was appropriate.

"I think of all the people who should not be committing crimes, Vella Gogan should be at the top of the list," he said. "As soon as I heard about this, I knew our recommendation would be for the maximum sentence. I spoke with the AG's (Attorney General's) Office and we decided jointly that the maximum sentence for the crime that she committed would be our joint recommendation."

Amy Calder $ 861-9247
acalder@centralmaine.com