NORTH HAVERHILL — Sam Gregory said he worried that the investigation into the death of his daughter, Sammantha Cruger, would stall out after Woodsville Police Det. Wayne Fortier, who had been investigating the case, died in 2021.

Cruger, 31, died of an overdose two weeks before Christmas in 2019 in Haverhill, nearly two years before Fortier’s death, at age 74.

“He was a trooper, the town cop, a detective — whatever you want to call him, but every time I came across him, I called him Wayne,” Gregory said of Fortier. “Him and I had a first-name basis friendship. Even though I’m a long-haired hippie biker, we had a great relationship as friends because we were both veterans and knew where the line was.”

“When Wayne died, Detective Elizabeth Elliott called me and said ‘I’m on this. I’m still on this case. I’ll call you when I get something,’ ” Gregory recalled recently.

Gregory said he wasn’t so sure Elliott, a relative newcomer to the department, had the experience to conduct such an investigation and for a long time he did not receive any updates. He acknowledges that he grew impatient with the police at times and there were moments of friction in his interactions with the department.

“Then she called me up on that Saturday and told me she closed the case,” Gregory said. “She kept at it and saw it through and did a great job.”

Now, a 54-four-old Haverhill man with a history of felony convictions has been indicted for allegedly selling drugs that resulted in Cruger’s fatal overdose.

The Feb. 21 indictment of Albert Boutin III, whose last known address was on Beech Street in Haverhill, comes more than five years after police first began investigating Cruger’s death.

Boutin is charged with distributing drugs with death resulting in connection with Cruger’s death, according to court records. Following his indictment, Boutin was released on personal cognizance and ordered to stay at least 300 feet away from Cruger’s family.

He is scheduled to be arraigned in Grafton County Superior Court next week.

Cruger was born in Littleton, N.H., raised in Benton, N.H., and attended Woodsville High School. She worked as a housekeeper at area hospitals and motels before her death on Dec. 11, 2019. She left behind a 6-year-old son, according to her obituary.

“This is a big relief for me,” Gregory told the Valley News this week. “Finally justice for my baby girl.”

Gregory, 67, said he received a phone call “out of the blue” on a recent Saturday from a Haverhill police officer indicating that the man who police say supplied the drugs that killed his daughter was going to be indicted the following Monday.

“Now that this is going, I’m just hoping it goes all the way through,” Gregory said of the case.

Boutin, who previously resided in Woodsville, has prior criminal convictions for possessing crack cocaine, heroin, check forgery and breaching bail, according to court records.

As of Friday, Boutin’s court docket did not identify whether he had a defense attorney. A notice sent to his address on Beech Street in Haverhill notifying him to appear for a scheduled arraignment and bail hearing on Monday was returned as undelivered.

Grafton County Attorney Marcie Hornick, whose office is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.

Haverhill Police Chief David Appleby credited Elliott with cracking Cruger’s case.

Cruger was found deceased after police responded to the Pleasant View Park mobile home neighborhood for an “unattended death.” She was later determined to have died from “combined drug toxicity of fentanyl and cocaine,” Appleby said in a news release.

“Over the course of the investigation officers gathered critical evidence, executed search warrants, served subpoenas and conducted numerous interviews, ultimately identifying Boutin as the individual responsible for supplying the lethal drugs,” according to the release.

Initially the investigation was led by Fortier, who had nearly a half century career in New Hampshire law enforcement before he died from COVID-19 in late 2021, nearly two years to the day after Cruger’s death.

Elliott, who joined the Haverhill Police Department as an intern before becoming a sworn officer in 2018, was being trained by Fortier and “took up the investigation with unwavering determination.”

She “worked tirelessly to see this case through, ensuring that justice continues to be sought” for Cruger and her family, the release said.

Asked to elaborate on how Elliott was finally able to put the pieces together and why it took so long, Appleby said neither he nor Elliott would discuss how the case was cracked, citing the pending criminal matter.

Individuals convicted of selling drugs that result in a fatal overdose face a potential lifetime prison sentence, but cases under the state’s “death resulting” statute are difficult to prosecute because prosecutors must conclusively establish that the victim’s overdose death was due to the drugs provided by the individual charged.

In 2022, a 22-year-old Lebanon woman was sentenced to three-to-seven years in prison after pleading guilty to providing the drugs that led to the fatal overdose of a 16-year-old Hartford High School student.

That same year, prosecutors could not establish a 22-year-old Newport woman had supplied the drugs that killed a 67-year-old woman who at the time was residing in the defendant’s apartment. Instead, the woman was convicted in connection with unrelated drug sales.

When the news broke earlier this month and Haverhill police released a photo of Boutin, Gregory felt the wrong person was getting the attention.

So he posted a photograph of himself and his daughter, taken in 2017, that shows her sitting next to him with a radiant grin, on his Facebook page.

“This was a Happy Day and today is a HAPPIEST Day for Closure,” Gregory wrote above the photograph. “Been 5 yr waiting.”

Boutin is scheduled to be arraigned in Grafton court in North Haverhill on Monday.

Contact Joh n Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.