By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
A Berlin Police Department internal review of the Marisol Fuentes murder, made public Friday afternoon, details the lapses in official police response in the days leading up to the grisly shooting.
Fuentes, 25, was killed by Gleason on July 6 inside the La Casita Mexican Restaurant in Berlin. Gleason hid inside the business before it opened and ambushed Fuentes with a shotgun. After shooting Fuentes, Gleason went into the men’s room and used the shotgun on himself.
The 65-page report details the many calls for service officers dealt with between Fuentes and her killer, estranged husband Michael Gleason. But the damning parts in the report are the things officers didn’t do, specifically the failure to follow up on a call from Gleason’s friend two days before the murder telling police that Gleason was homicidal.
“This is a glaring failure of basic police functions and basic criminal investigation,” the report states.
Berlin Police Chief Jeff Lemoine told WMUR that the officer who should have followed up on the July 4 call about Gleason, Lt. Cpl. Jarod Beal, was fired as a result of the review. Another Berlin officer, Joshua Herrmann, left the department before the review was complete. Herrmann was faulted for an earlier lapse in the matter when he failed to document a report Gleason was violating a protective order.
But buried toward the end of the report is the fact that Beal’s “glaring failure” to follow up on the call from Gleason’s friend didn’t violate any department policies, because the Berlin Police Department didn’t have any.
“The Berlin Police Department, at the time of the July 4th welfare check, did not have a specific policy detailing the proper response to welfare checks,” the report states.
The Berlin Police failures to protect Fuentes have already been well documented. According to a report completed last year by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, Gleason’s friend Walter Marchiso called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department on July 4 to report concerns Gleason might kill Fuentes.
“Gleason [told Marchiso] not being in his right state of mind: that he had been having a hard time with the woman he married, and that he should just kill himself and maybe take her out too,” the Attorney General’s report states.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Department got that information to Berlin Police within minutes, and the report was given to Beal, according to the Attorney General and the Berlin reports. But Beal did next to nothing with the information.
“[Beal] contacted Gleason by phone and that Gleason denied both knowing anyone by the name of Marchiso, and that he needed any assistance. No further action was taken by Berlin PD relative to Marchiso’s call,” the Attorney General’s report states.
According to the internal Berlin review, Police Dispatcher Crystal Wallace expressed worries to Officer Joshua Cusson about Beal’s handling of the Marchiso call.
“An internal investigation conducted by the Berlin Police Department revealed that on July 5, 2025, Dispatcher Wallace expressed concern to Officer Cusson on how the call for service (2025-12508) had been handled the previous day. No other action was taken by the BPD on this call for service prior to the July 6, 2025, murder of Fuentes and suicide of Gleason,” the Berlin report states.
In April of 2025 Gleason was first arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting Fuentes, kidnapping her, and stealing several thousand dollars. He was in and out of court for no-contact orders, criminal hearings, as well as an accusation he sexually assaulted a minor child. Throughout the spring and early summer of last year police were called numerous times by Fuentes and Gleason over property disputes and potential protective order violations.
But the Berlin review found miscommunication inside the department compounded by officers not getting vital information about the ongoing issues. On May 26, 2025 Fuentes reported to Herrmann that Gleason was repeatedly driving by the restaurant where she worked and by her house. At the time, Gleason was under court order to stay more than 300 feet away from Fuentes.
Despite the fact the road in front of the restaurant was less than 200 feet from where Fuentes worked, the call for service was listed as “not a violation,” according to the internal review. Herrmann did tell Fuentes that Gleason would be in violation in front of her house, but he never filed an incident report that would get investigated by other officers, according to the review.
“There should have been an incident report taken for a Violation of a Protective Order by Officer Herrmann. The report by Fuentes should have been fully investigated to determine if there was probable cause to charge Gleason with violating the protective order by driving by the residence or her place of work,” the review states. “Since the reported driving by the residence violation was not documented in the call for service, a supervisory review of this call would not have flagged this situation or caused further investigation by a supervisor.”