CONCORD – One of the state’s most notorious prisoners is no longer serving his lifetime sentence in New Hampshire.

Steven Spader, now 22, was transferred to the New Jersey State Prison earlier this year, according to state Department of Corrections officials.

He is one of four local men convicted in the 2009 murder of Kimberly Cates, a 42-year-old nurse from Mont Vernon. His accomplice, Christopher Gribble, is the only one of the men still in a New Hampshire prison.

Spader was transferred Feb. 15, according to Jeff Lyons, a DOC spokesman. He declined to specify why Spader was transferred, but said inmates are generally moved out of state if they pose a threat to the prison or are threatened themselves.

“It’s not uncommon to send people whose crime was high-profile,” Lyons said. “The bottom line is it’s for institutional safety.”

Spader never moved out of the New Hampshire State Prison’s Special Housing Unit, where he spent 22-23 hours a day alone in his cell. He had only minor disciplinary infractions there, the last coming in June 2012, Lyons said.

Spader, now sporting medium-length brown hair, is being housed at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, N.J., along with another 1,800 inmates, according to the state prison system’s website.

The prison was built in 1836 and is one of the oldest in the country. It’s also New Jersey’s only maximum security facility and houses the state’s “most difficult and/or dangerous” inmates, according to the website.

Gribble, who is now 24, is still being housed at the Concord prison’s Special Housing Unit, Lyons said.

Gribble was briefly moved to a lower-security housing unit last fall but moved back to the maximum security wing about three hours later after being in a fight with another inmate, Lyons said.

Spader and Gribble are serving life sentences without the chance of parole.

The two other men charged in connection to the 2009 murder and attack on Cates’ daughter, Jaimie, have been transferred to prisons in Vermont.

Quinn Glover, 22, is at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, Vt., and William Marks, 22, is at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vt., according to the Vermont Department of Corrections’ website.

A fifth man, Autumn Savoy, 24, was charged with helping the men try to hide the crime from police after the fact. He is held at the Merrimack County jail in Boscawen, according to the state DOC website. He will be eligible for parole later this year.

Joseph G. Cote can be reached
at 594-6415 or jcote@nashua
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