Jurors rejected Matthew Cote’s bid to avoid criminal responsibility, and a judge later imposed two life terms and 30 years.
BIDDEFORD, Maine — When Matthew Cote was sentenced Feb. 27 for killing his mother and her boyfriend and burning their Limington home, the punishment reflected a legal conclusion reached a month earlier: the jury did not accept his insanity defense.
This case turned on responsibility as much as on violence. By the time of trial, the defense was not primarily contesting that Cheryl Cote and Daniel Perkins were shot inside the home on June 17, 2021, or that the house was later set on fire. The harder question for jurors was whether Cote, who had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, could understand the wrongfulness of what he had done. Their answer opened the way for a sentence of life in prison.
Maine’s insanity process mattered because it could have changed the trial’s structure. Reporting before the trial said a guilty finding would have been followed by a determination of whether Cote’s mental state impaired his understanding of wrongdoing. Defense lawyers pointed to schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and what they described as stressful conditions inside the house. That approach tried to move the case away from raw chronology and toward state of mind. It also explained why early proceedings included a mental health evaluation after Cote was charged in 2021. The defense lawyer, Thomas Connolly, later told jurors the case was not a “whodunit,” a notable concession that narrowed the real dispute to criminal responsibility.
Prosecutors answered with evidence meant to show planning, awareness and concealment. They said Cote acted in a goal-oriented and purposeful fashion when he took a semiautomatic rifle into the Hardscrabble Road home where he lived with Cheryl Cote, 47, and Daniel Perkins, whose age was reported as 45 in several accounts, killed them, set the house on fire and left. Trial coverage said he fired nearly 30 rounds. Court reporting also described statements attributed to Cote after his arrest, including, “Once I snapped, I couldn’t stop and I emptied the whole magazine.” Corrections officers later testified that they overheard him say he set the fire to hide the bodies because he did not want anyone to see them. For prosecutors, those words showed not only action but understanding.
The physical sequence of the crime also supported that theory. Firefighters reached 259 Hardscrabble Road around 5:13 a.m. on June 17, 2021, after a retired firefighter reported the blaze and tried to get inside. They found a man and a woman dead in the house. Investigators quickly said the victims were dead before the fire started, which transformed the blaze from possible cause of death into possible evidence destruction. Hours later, police stopped Cote while he was driving his mother’s Chevrolet Trailblazer. Prosecutors later added another detail to sharpen their argument: after the killings and fire, they said, Cote went to the beach. That detail became one of the clearest markers of normal-seeming behavior after extreme violence, and the state used it to argue that his conduct was deliberate rather than detached from reality.
Jurors delivered their verdict Jan. 23, 2026, after more than a week of testimony in York County Superior Court. They found Cote guilty of two counts of intentional or knowing murder and one count of arson, rejecting the insanity claim. That left the sentencing hearing to focus on punishment and family impact rather than on legal capacity. Daniel Perkins’ daughter spoke about missing her father. Cheryl Cote’s relatives described the pain of living with how she died. Cote apologized briefly. Justice Richard Mulhern then imposed two life sentences and a consecutive 30-year term for arson, along with $3,348 in restitution.
The next legal step is appellate review, not a new trial date. Connolly said he plans to challenge both the verdict and sentence. Unless an appellate court rules otherwise, the case stands as a blunt example of a failed insanity defense in a murder-and-arson prosecution built on sequence, statements and the jury’s decision that mental illness did not erase criminal responsibility.
Author note: Last updated March 30, 2026.