The sentence came nearly five years after a house fire in Limington led investigators to two shooting victims inside.

BIDDEFORD, Maine — Matthew Cote was sentenced Feb. 27 to two life terms plus 30 years after a York County jury found him guilty of killing his mother, Cheryl Cote, and her boyfriend, Daniel Perkins, then setting their Limington home on fire in June 2021.

The punishment capped a case that moved from a predawn house fire to a murder-and-arson conviction and then to a hearing focused on loss, mental illness claims and the lasting damage to two families. Prosecutors said the killings were deliberate. The defense had argued Cote was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. The jury rejected that claim, and Superior Court Justice Richard Mulhern imposed a sentence that ensures Cote will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The sentencing hearing centered first on the people left behind. Daniel Perkins’ daughter, Hannah Perkins, told the court her father’s music now survives only in memory. Relatives of Cheryl Cote said the way she died still haunts them and should not define her life. Mulhern acknowledged that family members had sat through graphic testimony and photographs during the trial. Then he turned to the crime itself: prosecutors said Cote fired a semiautomatic rifle nearly 30 times early on June 17, 2021, at the Hardscrabble Road home where he lived with his mother and Perkins. After the shootings, the state said, he set the house on fire and left. Prosecutors later told jurors he spent part of the day at the beach, a detail they used to argue that his actions were purposeful rather than confused or accidental.

The case against Cote included statements investigators and jail officers said he made after his arrest. When police stopped him hours after the fire while he was driving his mother’s Chevrolet Trailblazer, court records said he told officers he knew “this was coming” and that once he snapped, he could not stop. At an earlier hearing, corrections officers testified that they overheard him on jail calls saying he had “blasted” his mother and set the fire so no one would see the bodies. Those remarks became some of the strongest evidence of intent. Prosecutors also pointed to the sequence of events: authorities said the victims were dead before the fire began, and the blaze appeared to be an effort to destroy the scene rather than the cause of death.

The killings first came to light when the Limington Fire Department responded around 5:13 a.m. on June 17, 2021, to a report of a fire at 259 Hardscrabble Road. A retired firefighter who called 911 tried to get inside but could not. Firefighters entered and found the bodies of a man and a woman. From the start, investigators said the fire did not appear to have caused the deaths. That shifted the case quickly from a fire response to a homicide investigation involving the State Fire Marshal’s Office and the Maine State Police major crimes unit. In later records and trial reporting, the victims were identified as Cheryl Cote, 47, and Daniel Perkins, whose age was reported as 45 in several accounts. Cote was 21 when he was arrested in 2021 and 26 when he was sentenced this year.

By the time the case reached trial in January 2026, the main dispute was no longer who carried out the shootings. Defense lawyer Thomas Connolly told jurors it was not a “whodunit” and said they would have to decide hard facts about Cote’s mental state. Cote had pleaded not guilty and also raised an insanity defense that could have led to a second phase of the trial if jurors first found him guilty. His lawyers cited schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and stressful conditions in the home. Prosecutor Mark Rucci argued the opposite, saying Cote acted in a goal-oriented and purposeful way by bringing the rifle into the house, killing both victims, burning the home and then leaving.

Mulhern’s sentence followed the jury’s Jan. 23 verdict convicting Cote of two counts of intentional or knowing murder and one count of arson. In addition to the prison terms, the court ordered him to pay $3,348 in restitution. Before the sentence was announced, Cote addressed the court briefly and apologized. His attorney said he plans to appeal both the verdict and the sentence. For the families in court, though, the hearing was less about future filings than about fixing the public record around two deaths that began as a fire call and ended as one of the county’s most serious murder cases in recent years.

The case now stands at the post-conviction stage, with an appeal expected after the Feb. 27 sentencing and no change to the life terms unless a higher court intervenes.

Author note: Last updated March 30, 2026.