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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 Maine man has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his mother and her boyfriend, following a tragic incident in Limington.
Matthew Cote, aged 26, was convicted by a jury for fatally shooting his 47-year-old mother, Cheryl Cote, and her 45-year-old boyfriend, Daniel Perkins. The couple was discovered dead on June 17, 2021, inside their home, which had been set ablaze. According to the Bangor Daily News, emergency responders arrived at the scene after receiving reports of a house fire, only to find the couple had been killed prior to the fire being ignited.
Just hours after the fire was reported, law enforcement officers stopped Matthew Cote while he was driving his mother’s Chevrolet Trailblazer.
As reported by the Portland Press Herald, court documents disclosed that upon his arrest, Cote admitted to officers, “I knew this was coming,” and confessed, “Once I snapped, I couldn’t stop and I emptied the whole magazine.”
Further incriminating evidence emerged while Cote was in custody. In a previous court hearing, corrections officers from York County Jail testified about overhearing incriminating statements Cote made during phone calls from jail, as detailed by the Portland Press Herald.
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.”