Drug use fueled Bauer's life of crime

Ronald Bauer

Ronald Bauer’s tortuous, inexorable slide from petty thief to armed robber to a charge of Special Felony that could keep him behind bars for 40 years began with booze and pot in his early 20s and ended with a withering addiction to prescription painkillers, said a relative this week.

Now the 48-year-old Dover man who had once lived a short time in Milton and York, but grew up in the Garrison City faces a 40-year sentence on the Special Felony charge because he has been convicted of a combination of three or more felonies in the Granite State under burglary, robbery and controlled drug laws.

But he wasn’t always that gun-wielding felon, a female relative told The Lebanon Voice this week. The relative wasn’t comfortable giving her name or saying what her exact relationship was to Bauer, but she did say he had been a gifted athlete and aspiring artist before he turned to a life of crime, mostly to fuel a drug habit that began with pot, then went to cocaine and finally ended with heroine and prescription painkillers like oxycodone.

She called The Lebanon Voice to say she thinks the justice system let him down by not mandating more counseling when he was released on parole several times, but nonetheless is resigned that he now probably deserves whatever punishment he gets.

She said the last time he was out on parole he had a job in York and things were looking up, but then he started asking for his pay on a daily basis instead of waiting for a weekly check.

“That was never a good sign, asking for a day’s pay that same day,” she said. “That, and then not showing up for work, we knew something was wrong, again.”

Bauer is currently under indictment in Maine in a Lebanon shooting and home invasion on Jan. 8; and in New Hampshire for an armed robbery that allegedly occurred in Somersworth in late December.

He is also been charged in the armed robbery of a gas station on Islington Street in Portsmouth on Jan. 12.

Prior to all three charges Bauer had already been convicted in Strafford County Superior Court for prior drug and weapons charges.

After the Lebanon shooting, he was remanded to New Hampshire state prison for parole violations after his arrest in Somersworth about a week after the Lebanon incident. His arraignment on the Somersworth robbery charges was scheduled for Monday in Strafford County Superior Court, but was postponed.

Bauer’s relative said when he wasn’t doing drugs Ronald Bauer was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.

She said her family has suffered with the long downward spiral of Bauer, and said that the prescription painkillers are what made that descent all the more precipitous.

When he was growing up he’d sometimes rob a house to get money for drugs or booze, she said, but he never used a gun.

“Then he started getting mixed up with the prescription stuff,” she said. “And then came the guns.”