Telegraph file photo Police lead Peter Gage into a crusier after his arrest in 2004. After serving a 15-year sentence, the convicted assailant is eligible for release from state prison.

CONCORD – Of the 26 cases the state’s Adult Parole Board is scheduled to hear on Thursday, the name of one inmate on the list is certain to evoke a lot of unpleasant memories for many residents of the greater Wilton-Lyndeborough area.

The name is Peter Gage, the now 85-year-old former Lyndeborough man convicted in 2006 on charges stemming from what a veteran police chief called “the worst case of elder abuse he had ever seen.”

For 40 years Gage heaped abuse on his wife, Mary Sanborn Gage, a petite, soft-spoken woman who died in 2010, about four years after her husband was sentenced to 4-18 years in State Prison.

Whether Gage, who is reportedly in frail health, will attend the hearing isn’t known. Petr Lord, a longtime friend of Mary Gage who has been following Peter Gage’s case since the beginning, said the time slot allotted for Gage’s hearing begins at 10:10 a.m.

The hearing comes roughly a month before Gage’s maximum sentence is up on March 25, which raises the question of where Gage, who has no residence to return to, will live when he leaves prison.

Indications are he will be admitted to a nursing facility, but parole officials couldn’t be reached for comment on whether those, or other, arrangements are being made.

Gage was 70 when police, after responding to an ambulance call to the couple’s 27 Glass Factory Road home, issued a warrant for his arrest on charges that included attempted murder, felonious sexual assault, first-degree assault and criminal restraint.

Ambulance personnel found Mary Gage unresponsive in the home and rushed her to a Nashua hospital. The medics later told police Mary Gage had numerous injuries that were consistent with “severe elder abuse,” according to a story from The Telegraph at the time.

The nature of the abuse, but especially the fact it went on – presumably undetected by others – for an astounding 40 years, stunned not only those who knew the couple, but just about everyone in Lyndeborough and surrounding towns.

In 2008, two years after entering State Prison, Peter Gage lost his first of two attempts at parole, the other coming in 2013.

Although Mary Gage was able to enjoy the last four years of her life free from the abuse delivered by her husband, she lived in almost constant pain, faced multiple surgeries and used a wheelchair for most of the time, friends said.

She was 81 when she died peacefully at a Milford nursing home.

Police also arrested the Gages’ son, Lyman Gage, who was 42 at the time, in connection with the abuse, charging him with domestic violence, simple assault and witness tampering.

He was given a suspended sentence and served two years of probation.

At Peter Gage’s sentencing hearing, a packed, emotionally charged courtroom watched as Mary Gage, supported by a close-knit group of friends, confront her husband.

“It’s a wonderful thing to realize that he can’t get to me anymore, because I spent years not saying anything,” she said in a soft, but firm, voice.

“I was made to understand he couldn’t get away with this behavior anymore, and I feel a tremendous load off my head that I can finally say what he did to me.”