Daniel Jolly, right, looks on as his attorneys talk in court in Biddeford on Thursday. Jolly is accused of killing Maxine Bitomski in her home in 1993. (Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer)

BIDDEFORD — New DNA testing of recovered hairs is what led the state of Maine to charge a New Hampshire man and longtime suspect in the 1993 killing of a Kittery grandmother.

The lead investigator in Maxine Bitomski’s homicide laid out some of the state’s evidence against Daniel Jolly during a bail hearing on Thursday.

Jolly, a 59-year-old man from Portsmouth, was arrested on June 4 and charged with murder in Bitomski’s death. He was a technician for a medical supply company that Bitomski used for her oxygen concentrator, according to police, and he had been to her home numerous times to deliver oxygen.

To get bail, Jolly has to either show there’s no probable cause against him, or that he is neither a flight risk nor danger to public safety. Superior Court Justice Richard Mulhern said on Thursday both sides have a month to issue written briefs before he will issue his ruling.

The bail hearing provided a revealing look into the investigation of Bitomski’s death. Family members on both sides were in court, and several current and former investigators testified about the decades-long case.

Bitomski died from asphyxiation due to strangulation some time on or around Jan. 15, 1993, Maine State Police Detective Justin Huntley testified. The last that anyone had heard from her was after 11 p.m. that night, when she was on the phone with a friend.

Huntley said an autopsy also revealed bruises all over the 73-year-old woman’s body and he described signs of sexual assault.

Bitomski’s adult grandson found her in a bathtub with the water still running the afternoon of Jan. 16. He told police the house door was open, Huntley testified, and officers found one of the door window panes shattered. There were large snow tracks in her yard but police were unable to identify the tread.

While police were investigating Bitomski’s death, Huntley said, they found one pubic hair on her body and a second in a maroon robe near the bath tub. A year later they found two more pubic hairs in a Kmart bag, containing Bitomski’s nightgown and bath robe, which a neighbor found on her property and turned over to police.

In 2001, state police sent all four hairs and a sample of Jolly’s DNA to a lab in Pennsylvania, where testing showed all four hairs matched “the sequence” of Jolly’s profile. It meant that he could not be eliminated as a contributor to the hair, Huntley said.

The two hairs found in the bathroom were consumed by that testing. The state sent the remaining two hairs, from the Kmart bag, to another laboratory in Texas in December, where, Huntley said, testing showed an even stronger match with Jolly’s profile.

Jolly’s attorneys cast doubt on the state’s evidence, at one point questioning early analysis that determined they were pubic hairs.

“We know that Mr. Jolly was in and out of that home, maybe 60 times, maybe more, in the course of his work,” his attorney Luke Rioux said in court on Thursday. “And so it is not inconceivable that some of his hair, and that material, could be shed.”

Jolly has always been on detectives’ radar, according to Huntley’s testimony. In addition to providing oxygen to Bitomski, Jolly also delivered oxygen to a neighbor who told police someone had been pounding on her door and window late on the night of Jan. 15, 1993. That neighbor told police she never saw who had been knocking.

Jolly spoke with detectives twice during the state’s investigation, Huntley said, and voluntarily offered blood and hair samples.

Huntley said detectives have also obtained reports from four interactions Jolly had with Portsmouth police in the 1980s and 1990s that a prosecutor said showed “crimes of violence.” Three incidents involved an ex-partner, including alleged assaults on her friends, fights and him threatening her with a firearm. Huntley said he met with the ex for an interview in 2022.

A fourth incident in 1991 involved Jolly showing up to someone’s house, Huntley testified, and beckoning them to fight him outside. Then in 2013, a Maine detective traveled to New Hampshire to interview a different person who alleged Jolly had assaulted her.

Rioux said on Thursday charges in most of these incidents were either dismissed or never brought. A criminal background check in New Hampshire showed one simple assault conviction in 1987.

Rioux asked Huntley in court about several pieces of evidence that are missing or were never tested, including a state police walk through of the house the following day. Huntley testified that police noted there was some overturned furniture, but they had no reason to believe Bitomski had put up a struggle.

The broken window pane in her house door was the only sign of forced entry, Huntley said.

Bitomski used a key to lock her front door from the inside, Huntley testified. Family told police she was extremely cautious and had a routine of locking her door every night and storing the key in a basket on top of her microwave, several feet from the door.

Bitomski kept a spare key hanging in the garage next to her property. Huntley said he suspects whoever broke into the home used that key, which was not in its usual spot when police searched Bitomski’s home.

Days after Bitomski’s family got the house back, Huntley said, the key reappeared. Huntley testified that police still don’t have an answer as to why. Neither key was swabbed for finger prints, nor preserved in police evidence for further testing, Huntley said upon questioning from Rioux.