The hearing ended with life sentences for Matthew Cote, but much of the day focused on Cheryl Cote and Daniel Perkins.
BIDDEFORD, Maine — Nearly five years after Cheryl Cote and Daniel Perkins were found dead inside a burning home in Limington, their relatives used a sentencing hearing for Matthew Cote to describe who they were before the case became known for gunfire, fire damage and a grisly prosecution.
That emphasis shaped the hearing even as the legal result was decisive. Cote, 26, had already been convicted in January of two counts of murder and one count of arson. On Feb. 27, Justice Richard Mulhern sentenced him to two life terms plus 30 years. But the proceeding was also a last major public moment for family members to push back against a narrative dominated by the defendant’s words, the fire scene and the question of whether mental illness excused what happened.
Hannah Perkins, speaking about her father, told the court that Daniel Perkins had been a musician who could create his own songs. Her statement shifted the room away from the evidence photos and toward memory. Instead of focusing first on how he died, she told the judge what had been lost in ordinary life: a father, a familiar voice, music that now exists only in her head. Cheryl Cote’s nieces and sister made a similar move. They said they believe she is at peace, but they also made clear that the brutality of her death remains hard to separate from the way the public now knows her name. In one of the hearing’s starkest moments, Mulhern acknowledged what relatives had endured by sitting through trial testimony and viewing images of “shattered bodies.”
The facts underlying those statements were not in real dispute by sentencing. Prosecutors said Matthew Cote used a semiautomatic rifle to shoot his mother, Cheryl Cote, 47, and her boyfriend, Daniel Perkins, at the Hardscrabble Road home in Limington where all three lived. Trial reporting said he fired nearly 30 rounds early on June 17, 2021. Authorities concluded the victims died before the fire began. The blaze, the state argued, was set afterward to conceal the crime. When police later stopped Cote in his mother’s Chevrolet Trailblazer, court accounts said he admitted he had snapped and emptied the magazine. At an earlier hearing, corrections officers testified that they overheard him say he set the fire because he did not want anyone to see the bodies.
Those statements made the hearing harder for relatives because they showed how plainly prosecutors believed the crime had been described by the person convicted of committing it. Yet the defense asked the court not to reduce the case to cruelty alone. Cote’s family members and friends urged the judge to consider his mental health history. By the time trial began in January, Cote had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, with defense lawyers citing schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and the conditions inside the home. The argument failed with the jury, but it remained part of the sentencing record because it shaped how the defense asked the court to view punishment, responsibility and the defendant’s life before the shootings.
The hearing also served as a public endpoint for a case that had started in confusion. Firefighters answering a 5:13 a.m. call on June 17, 2021, entered a burning house at 259 Hardscrabble Road and found two bodies. Investigators soon said the fire had not caused the deaths, turning the response into a homicide investigation involving the State Fire Marshal’s Office and Maine State Police. Over time, the courtroom story grew to include a drive away from the scene, a trip to the beach cited by prosecutors, jailhouse remarks and a trial that the defense itself said was not a “whodunit.” The unresolved issue became mental state, not identity.
By the end of the hearing, Cote offered a short apology: “I’m just very sorry, and I apologize to everybody.” Mulhern still imposed the harshest sentence reported in the case and ordered $3,348 in restitution. Defense lawyer Thomas Connolly said he plans to appeal both the sentence and the verdict. That leaves the legal case open on paper. In court, however, the last word belonged less to the defendant than to the families who tried to restore detail, dignity and voice to the two people at the center of it.
As of March 30, 2026, the convictions and life sentences remain in place, with an appeal expected as the next formal step.
Author note: Last updated March 30, 2026.