AUGUSTA, Maine — Donald Crabtree, the owner of the torched topless coffee shop in Vassalboro, told a jury Thursday morning that he had sex at least three times with waitress Krista MacIntyre.

Crabtree took the stand Thursday morning on the second day of the trial of Raymond J. Bellavance Jr., 50, of Winthrop on two counts of arson. One count alleges that Bellavance deliberately set the blaze to cause damage. The other alleges he recklessly endangered a person or property.

Alan Kelley, deputy district attorney for Kennebec County, told jurors Wednesday that Bellavance “had a lot of anger, a lot of jealousy” toward Crabtree, who now lives in Greenbush. Kelley said in his opening statement that the defendant didn’t like the fact that his ex-girlfriend, MacIntyre, was working at the shop and having sex with Crabtree.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Andrews Campbell of Bowdoinham, Crabtree admitted that he had a conversation with Bellavance before the fire, but it ended with the two men shaking hands.

Crabtree testified that Bellavance had told him MacIntyre was working as a prostitute out of the coffee shop and that her clients were customers. The shop owner also said that the defendant expressed concern over MacIntyre’s drug use.

Crabtree also told jurors under direct examination that he had fired and rehired MacIntyre several times. He testified that she told him the job kept her off drugs and from hanging around with people who were a bad influence on her.

Crabtree also testified that no people had directly threatened him or told him they did not like having the topless coffee shop in town on Route 3. The shop owner said that the fire apparently broke out less than four hours after he had returned from a town meeting at which there was no opposition to his plan to expand his hours into the evening and operate a strip club in the former bar.

He disagreed with the timeline provided by other witnesses. Crabtree said he was awakened by his daughter and a member of a passing ambulance crew about 12:15 a.m., not forty-five minutes later than that.

Robert Richards and Shirley Rogers, both volunteer emergency medical technicians for Belfast, testified Wednesday that they were on their way home shortly before 1 a.m. June 3, 2009, when Richards noticed an odd glow behind a building on Route 3 as they drove by the coffee shop. The two had taken a patient from Belfast to Portland earlier.

Richards, who was driving, turned the ambulance around and headed back toward Augusta to check out the glow. He and Rogers both said they saw flames shooting up the back of the building and in the grass.

Richards used the ambulance radio to report the blaze to a Waldo County dispatcher, who alerted local agencies.

Crabtree said Thursday that Richards was on the scene for only six or eight minutes. The shop owner testified that it took an hour and a half for the first firetruck to arrive.

“I don’t believe they called 911 until they were back in Belfast,” he said. “I should have dialed it myself.”

Testimony is scheduled to resume at 1 p.m. with Crabtree back on the stand. The jury is not expected to begin deliberating until late next week.

Reprinted with permission from the Bangor Daily News.