LEBANON — The Grafton County Attorney has declined to pursue charges against two Public Works employees accused of stealing from the city because of a lack of evidence.

Douglas Boisvert, 57, and Damian Hetzel, 40, were accused by the city and Lebanon Police Department of using city equipment and materials to do work at city cemeteries and charging families directly for the work. The police department arrested the men on a charge of felony conspiracy to commit theft in January, but when the report was turned over to County Attorney Marcie Hornick she found that there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges.

“My obligation as a prosecutor, as with any other prosecutor in the state of New Hampshire, is to not bring charges that we cannot prove any element of beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hornick said of the decision.

Hornick declined to elaborate on which elements of the case could not be proven.

Police Chief Phil Roberts directed a request for comment on the charges to City Manager Shaun Mulholland Tuesday.

Mulholland on Tuesday said the city wanted to see the charges prosecuted but the county attorney decided not to proceed.

Hornick “told me she’s not going to provide us a reason why, which I found really puzzling,” Mulholland said.

Hornick said she gave Mulholland the same explanation she gave the Valley News, though Mulholland continued to maintain that he was not provided an explanation.

Despite Hornick’s decision, Mulholland said he stands by the results of the internal investigation which “basically mirrors” the police investigation because the police department “received an arrest warrant that was signed by a judge who did believe that they had probable cause” and emphasized that “the facts are there.”

Boisvert and Hetzel were arrested in January and fired by the city in February after parallel investigations by the city and Lebanon Police Department found them guilty of wrongdoing.

The city’s internal investigation, conducted by outside consulting firm Municipal Resources Inc., was initiated after Hetzel reported that a supervisor in the Department of Public Works had been purchasing city equipment for outside uses and taking equipment and materials from the city.

A 550-page report outlining the investigation alleges that supervisor Patrick McCarthy used public funds to purchase equipment and materials for a side landscaping business and other personal expenses over at least three years. The items totaled about $20,000.

McCarthy died in October, before the allegations became public, and charges were not filed against him.

During the parallel city investigations, Boisvert and Hetzel both admitted to installing the gravemarker foundations with a city-owned cement mixer after McCarthy approached them with the idea. Hetzel also admitted to using “extra concrete and sand/gravel in the waste pile from the Cemetery Department” for the work, according to the report. The three men earned about $1,800 that they split evenly.

Both Boisvert and Hetzel maintained their innocence and said that doing the foundation work did not constitute theft.

This week, they each said that the fact that charges were never filed speaks to their innocence.

“I admitted that I did a couple of foundations on a weekend for these families, but I didn’t take money from the city of Lebanon,” Boisvert said in a Tuesday interview. “The people were not double charged for any of this work.”

He explained that the men were providing a service that the city had stopped offering and outside companies did not want to do, facts that are also included in the report.

And, “my direct supervisor told me that the city was not doing foundations anymore and he said ‘if you two want to do these on the weekends, go for it,’ ” Boisvert said

Boisvert’s attorney, Cabot Teachout, said the county attorney did not give a “specific reason or justification” why no charges were filed and he did not want to speculate on the reason.

But, Teachout said, there’s “pretty good evidence here from the MRI report that they were doing what their supervisor told them was okay.”

Teachout said Tracy Connolly, the Lebanon Police prosecutor, also looked at the case and declined to prosecute. Connolly did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

“Theoretically, charges could be filed or refiled in the future if new information came up,” Teachout said. “Although as a practical matter, if neither the county attorney or the district court prosecutor felt there was enough to charge Mr. Boisvert or Mr. Hetzel, then it’s unlikely that they’ll proceed with charges in the future.”

Both Boisvert and Hetzel said they felt they were targeted by Mulholland because city officials were determined to see somone publicly punished. Hetzel characterized himself and Boisvert as “scapegoats.”

“We’re not done yet, what happened to us is wrong,” Hetzel said. “We didn’t do what the city manager accused us of and he knows that.”

Mulholland responded to these claims, saying that “we had an independent entity that conducted the investigation and its available for anybody to read.”

“I didn’t conduct an investigation or tell anyone what the findings of that investigation were going to be; it was done by an independent party, and again, I think the findings of the report speaks for itself,” Mulholland said in response to these claims Wednesday.

Despite the news that no charges will be filed, “the damage has been done now, unfortunately,” said Boisvert, who has lived in Lebanon his whole life, as have “generations” of his family.

Hetzel, too, said the accusations have severely damaged his reputation and made him “unemployable.”

“It cost me several thousand dollars to find out that I wasn’t even going to be charged with a crime,” Boisvert said. “I walk into Price Chopper and people look at you and say there’s the guy that stole from the city of Lebanon.”

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com.