Background: News footage of the home in Limington, Maine, where Matthew Cote killed his mother and her boyfriend in 2021 (WABI). Inset: Matthew Cote in court for his sentencing on Feb. 27 (WABI).
A man who gunned down his mother and her boyfriend in their home in Maine will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Matthew Cote, 26, was found guilty by a jury of the murders of his mother, 47-year-old Cheryl Cote, and her boyfriend, 45-year-old Daniel Perkins, who were found shot dead in their Limington, Maine, home on June 17, 2021. According to reporting by the Bangor Daily News, first responders were alerted to the scene after reports that the house was on fire. The bodies of the deceased couple were found inside, and authorities said they were dead before the fire started.
Hours after the fire was reported and the bodies were discovered, police pulled Matthew Cote over while he was driving his mother's Chevrolet Trailblazer.
According to reporting by the Portland Press Herald, court documents revealed that when Cote was first apprehended by police, he said he "knew this was coming." Police said he told them, "Once I snapped, I couldn't stop and I emptied the whole magazine."
Cote also made incriminating statements while he was in jail, the Portland Press Herald reported. During an earlier court hearing, two corrections officers at the York County Jail where Cote was in custody testified about statements they overheard him making during jailhouse phone calls.
One officer told the court that Cote told an unknown person on the other end of the line that he "blasted the nasty [expletive]," referring to his mother, then "set a fire to hide the nasty bodies because I didn't want anyone to see them." He added that he "just lost it."
While a specific motive for the killings was not clear, prosecutor Mark Rucci told the jury in his opening statement that Cote acted in a "goal-oriented and purposeful fashion in taking a semiautomatic rifle into the home where he lived, taking the lives of those two people and burning it to the ground, and then leaving to go to the beach."
Cote's defense attorney Tom Connolly stated during his opening statement, "It's not a whodunit," and, "You're going to have to decide hard facts."
Cote had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and one count of arson. On Feb. 27, a judge sentenced him to two life sentences plus 30 years for the arson conviction.
Before his sentence was handed down, Cote told the court, "I'm just very sorry, and I apologize to everybody."
Comments