The Contentious Death of Mark Dugas, Part One
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We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it.

But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with AllTrails. I'm Kristen Seavey. This is Murder, She Told.

This episode contains descriptions of domestic violence. Please listen with care. If you or someone you know are feeling unsafe at home, help is available 24-7. Reach out to your local crisis center or in the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233. It's never too late to get help. Mark Dugas and Cindy Hastings grew up together and fell in love.

My best friend was dating his best friend. So that's when we started hanging out and we started dating, but he didn't have a driver's license then. So he would hitchhike from his home in Rockport to my home in Thomaston. We spent a lot of time hitchhiking. If he couldn't get a ride, he'd walk. There was one time when he walked all the way from Rockport to my house in Thomaston to come see me.

Mark graduated from Camden Rockport High School, class of 1982. He was a year older than Cindy. Mark loved riding his ATV, snowmobiling, canoeing, ice fishing, skiing, and camping. They had a child together, Brianna. Cindy described Mark as having a huge capacity for love. He just wanted everybody to get along. He and Cindy could be spontaneous,

It must have been a Saturday night and Mark and I were sitting at home, you know, a beautiful summer evening and we're bored and Bree's in bed sound asleep and we just decided that we would pack up our gear and we had a little tow behind trailer for the ATV so we packed all our camping gear in that and woke up Bree and told her we were going up to the top of the mountain to pitch the tent and go camping for the night and then we'd get up in the morning and

watch the sunrise and cook our breakfast and then go home. Mark worked in the shipping and receiving department at Bicknell Manufacturing, a supplier of tools for the stone cutting industry. He worked for his father-in-law, Richard Hastings, who said of him, you couldn't ask for a better guy. He was always willing to help out.

He worked there for nine years, and then he worked for his father at Weather End Estate as a painter, working on high-end residential furniture, and part-time operated his own fence company, Missing Link Fence Co. He was a very talented woodworker. He inherited that skill from his dad, whose father made furniture in his shop. Mark made furniture. We had quite a few pieces in our house at one point that he had made.

Wasn't an athlete of any sort, but he was strong. Not too tall, maybe 5'10", 5'11", but very slender build, very lanky. For Brianna's seventh birthday, her parents took her to Disney. It was their first big trip together out of state. They inadvertently got a cut-the-line pass when Cindy sprained her ankle and needed a wheelchair to get around the park.

Every day he would push me around the park and his favorite ride was the Tower of Terror and we went probably six or seven times a day every day. And on the last day, my foot had healed enough that I was ready to walk around the park. I was tired of being wheeled around so I had said to Mark,

I'm going to walk today. And he said, absolutely not. He said, I have pushed your ass all over this park for a whole week. He said, today's the last day. We're going to use this wheelchair and we're going to get to the front of every line. So we did the Tower of Terror that day, maybe six or seven times in a row until I finally said enough was enough. Mark earned a nickname that stuck.

Mark was always one to start projects around the house, and the ambition and drive was always there at the beginning. So he would start the project, but very rarely finish them to completion. So that's why we called him Project Yugus, because he'd start projects and never see them to fruition.

Mark always raced through life. Mark didn't just stroll. He raced through life. He was always in a hurry. So in saying that, he would tend to be a little bit careless.

So there was one summer where he injured himself repeatedly. He sliced his hand open with a utility knife and they had to stitch up his hand that time. And then he was painting my brother-in-law's house and he'd fell off the ladder from the second story.

and caught the side of his face and opened up the side of his face. So when Mark would come into the emergency room, they knew him on a first-name basis and would say to him, "What have you done this time?" Mark and Cindy were full of life. They both worked a lot and spent most all of their free time with their large circle of friends.

So Sunday afternoon, our friends would come over, they'd bring the kids. So we'd set the kids up upstairs, they'd play. I'd cook everybody dinner and we would play Mario, Super Mario, all afternoon. We came from kind of that beginning phases of, you know, the video game trend. So Super Mario was our thing. We asked Cindy about Mark's relationship with alcohol.

Mark drank alcohol and that was part of the reason that I left because of his alcohol consumption and it wasn't the fact that he drank alcohol he would occasionally drive and I had laid it on the line with him that I wasn't going to tolerate that he

He would stop at the Elks Club after work and have a beer or two or three and drive home. You know, we talked continuously about the safety aspect of that. If you want a ride, I'll give you a ride. So towards the end of our relationship, he wasn't doing that much anymore, only because we were growing up. You know, we had so many more responsibilities. Sure, we loved to party, but it wasn't an everyday type of thing.

it actually ended very amicably. I just made the decision one day that, you know, life's too short for either one of us to be unhappy in our relationship. So I sat him down one night and said, you know, it's time for us to get a divorce. And he said, okay. And we filed and went to court and

After their divorce, Cindy moved to Ireland and their daughter remained with Mark. He started to raise her as a single parent with help from his mother and father in Rockport.

Even after they were divorced, Mark would drop in to visit his ex-in-laws, help with lawn work, and do little projects around the house. The ex-couple remained fast friends. Susan Pardelo, who worked with Mark at Mainstone and Landscaping in Rockport, said,

Brianna was the most important thing in his life, his pride and joy. He didn't date because his priority was raising his daughter. He worked hard to give her what she wanted and needed. All one had to do was listen to Mark talk about her, and it was obvious how much he loved her. Susan also spoke about Mark's personality. He was a kidder, and he loved to joke. He liked to pull pranks on others, and he could just dish it out.

and just as he could dish it out, he could take it. We had a rivalry to see who could outdo each other or embarrass the other more. In her writing, Susan continued, he was a conscientious, dependable, hard worker. He was a good man with his priorities in the right places. I saw Mark daily, Monday to Friday, and he would stop into the office just to say hello and joke.

Susan remembered how Mark was there for her in the face of tragedy. She wrote, In November of 2001, my husband and I were involved in a bad car accident. My husband almost died and I got two broken legs. It was many months before we were back on our feet.

When we returned home from the hospital, Mark and a co-worker came to our home and helped us settle back in. They moved furniture to allow us to live on the first floor of our home. For the next several months, he would call and stop in to see if we needed anything. Mark was a kind and caring man. In 2001, when Bree was 11 years old, her mother Cindy moved back from Ireland to Maine, and her father met a new woman, Amy Hudson.

Mark and Amy fell in love. She was a divorced mother of two, and Mark also fell in love with her children. He told his friend Susan that Amy was a wonderful person and the right one for him. Here's Cindy again. He was ecstatic, and I was happy for him. They stayed up all night talking. They had so much in common, and, you know, and that he was really, really happy. It was around this time that Mark's life began to change.

he would have to seek permission to actually speak to me. If I called his home, she would answer the phone. And nine times out of ten, she wouldn't let me speak to him. So she was controlling what was going on in that household.

Mark had been the primary caregiver for Bree while Cindy was in Ireland, but it was up to Bree where she would live after her mom returned. Mark and I had always agreed that just because she lives with one parent or the other doesn't mean that's where she stays. I let her stay with her dad. Even when I moved back, I could have gone and gotten her, but that wasn't the right thing to do. She wasn't ready for that. So

So Mark and I agreed that when Bree said, I want to live with my mom now, that he would agree to do that. It was her choice. And then Amy moved in. In the middle of the fall semester in 2002, Brianna decided that she no longer wanted to live with Mark and Amy, and instead wanted to join her cousin, who was her same age in Thomaston, and live with her mom. She was going to make the transition following her Thanksgiving holiday.

She was supposed to come back to me that Sunday so she could start school in Thomaston on Monday. They never showed up. And when I called them, Amy answered the phone and refused to let me speak to Mark. And eventually I spoke to Mark and all he said to me was, we've changed our minds. And I'm like, let me speak to Bree, please. And he said, nope. And he refused to let me speak to her.

So the next day, while I was at work, my boss said, go get your kid. You have every right to that child. And I did. I went up to the school, and he had re-enrolled her in school, so this was premeditated. He knew he was going to do it. And I went and took her out of school. That's when Amy pulled in just as we were trying to leave, blocked my vehicle in, and started screaming and hollering at me.

and telling me that who did I think I was. I was ruining their happy family as she was screaming at me. The air around her was completely black, and at that point, I knew that she was evil. She was pure evil, and I've never, ever...

Soon after Bree began living with her mom, Cindy began petitioning for child support, which escalated tensions.

Mark's colleague, Susan, said, Mark didn't believe that he should be responsible for paying child support since he had never asked Cindy for anything while he raised their daughter on his own. She clarified that she wasn't really sure if this was Mark's opinion, though, or Amy's. Amy would pick fights with Mark about child support.

Amy was divorced and her husband lived in Texas. They had two children together, and Susan heard that her Texan husband wasn't paying Amy child support, so she didn't see why Mark had to pay his. In April of 2001, Susan recalled that Mark had come to her office to let her know that he and Amy were moving to Tennessee. Mark said that Amy believed the work was better there and that he could make more money.

He also said that by moving to Tennessee, he could avoid having to pay child support. The Maine state government had legal mechanisms to automatically deduct money from people's paychecks that were delinquent. And by earning income in another state, it could potentially avoid or complicate this remedy. Amy was familiar with Tennessee after having served there in the military and would help get him on his feet. Susan recognized a transformation in Mark.

She wrote that after that day, he became quiet, unhappy, and lost, in a sense. The mark that had become my friend had changed. He didn't smile, and he didn't say goodbye. Shortly after this conversation, he put his house on the market, picked up his final paycheck, and moved.

Cindy saw Mark's relationship with his friends and family deteriorate as his relationship with Amy grew. Cindy later said, I watched him go from a loving, outgoing guy to a shell of a man. He didn't even let his close friends know that he was leaving. He lived for his daughter, and he cherished his friendships, and poof, he was gone. Cindy had even reported a couple of strange incidents with Amy to the police.

when my daughter would finally say, "I don't want to go up there for a visit." She was living with me at that point. And that kind of blew me away because that, for him to give up his daughter for a woman, I couldn't comprehend that, especially with him because he loved his daughter so much.

His communication with her started to wane because it got to the point where Brie didn't want to go up there because the household was so different. You know, Mark moved his girlfriend and her two kids in and they took over my daughter's home. So she wasn't even feeling welcome in that house anymore.

The last time Bree saw her dad was at the Micmac County store on Route 17. She was with her mom, Cindy. While they were at the gas pumps, Bree looked up and said, "'Mom, there's Dad.'"

He looked over without even acknowledging them. And he went into the gas station, apparently paid for his gas, and then walked by us again and over to their vehicle and camper or whatever they had, poked his head inside to the vehicle, and then turned around and came and talked to his daughter. And I believe he asked Amy for permission to speak to his own child.

He was crying. He told Bree how much he loved her. And he said, Bree, you know, I just have a lot on my plate right now. I have a lot going on, but, you know, I'll be in touch soon. And that was the last conversation she had with him. And then he was gone. And once they left the area, he never looked back. He never called her. He never communicated with her. Mark returned to Maine with Amy and they rented a house.

Susan wrote, It wasn't long before Mark reappeared at Mainstone. Tennessee didn't work out. He couldn't find work that paid well, and it didn't solve his and Amy's problems. He didn't talk about much. But when he did talk, there was a hesitation, almost a sadness in his voice. His eyes no longer met mine. Mark seldom stopped by at the office, and when he did, he was quiet and withdrawn.

Susan said that once the state discovered he was again earning in Maine, they began docking paychecks for child support payments. And then, quote, he disappeared as quickly as he had reappeared. I never heard from Mark again. Around this same time, on March 15, 2002, Mark Dugas married Amy Hudson, and she became Amy Dugas.

Mark's brothers, Ken and Jerry, said that Mark had eloped with Amy in Hawaii, returned to Maine, and had a ceremony at a lakeside lodge. The close-knit Dugas family started hearing less from Mark. At times, they didn't even have a good number for him. Ken said,

They lived in a number of different places, towns along the Maine coast, New Hampshire, Florida, and Tennessee. For a short time, they lived in a camper in the driveway of Jerry's home in Surrey. Jerry was Mark's brother. He remembered that Amy's two children would call Mark dad. He had embraced his role as their stepfather. He remembered seeing the trouble between Mark and Amy, and he told him, things are not working out.

He remembered Amy becoming drunk and violent with Mark, and he encouraged them to get counseling. On New Year's Eve, police in Lincoln County took Mark to Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta for mental health care. Amy came to the hospital in the early morning hours of January 1, 2004, and she had to be removed from the hospital by police.

In February of 2004, Mark and Amy were on the rocks. According to Mark's brother, Larry, he had told Amy that he was going to leave her. On the 26th, the night of Amy's mother's birthday, Mark didn't return home from work. He went to the house of his friend and employer, Larry Suckeforth. That evening, Amy showed up looking for Mark, and she refused to leave.

In short order, she got into a violent confrontation with him, kicking him in the eye with her pointy-toed boots. She also hurt his neck, which was scraped and bloody.

The cops were called and three officers showed up. She was placed under arrest for domestic assault. In addition to Mark and Amy, there were three other witnesses to the violence. She resisted arrest and kicked one of the officers in the groin who then charged her with assault on an officer.

She was placed in a cruiser while the cops collected written statements from the witnesses. In a rage, she kicked out the cage window that separated the back seats from the front. The officer then charged her with criminal mischief and took her to the Lincoln County Jail.

After spending a night in jail, she was arraigned and granted bail with conditions. The judge ordered her to seek anger management counseling, not to see Mark, not to have any guns, and not to drink. In defiance of the bail conditions, Mark and Amy continued to live together and see one another. They moved again from Hancock County to a home in Waldeboro. They lived a few miles north of town on Route 32.

It was a very rural area, but they were in a small cluster of other homes and businesses. Around this time, though they weren't in touch, Brianna had a terrible premonition. A couple months before Mark died, Bri had a nightmare. And I went into her room and I said, it was just a dream. It's just a nightmare. I said, but what was it about? And she said, I dreamed that Amy killed Daddy.

I said, that's not going to happen. Amy loves your father. And people that love one another don't kill each other. Mark's brother, Ken, remembered talking to him, encouraging his brother to leave Amy.

It turned out to be their final conversation. I think that Mark put a lot of trust in people and couldn't always tell when people weren't on the up and up. So I don't think that he was a good judge of character with some people.

It was the evening of Friday, June 4th, 2004. It was 6 p.m. The sun was still in the sky, two hours before sunset. Wendy Benner, Mark and Amy's neighbor, was startled by a frightful cry for help moments before Mark arrived at her entryway bleeding from his bare chest.

She tended to his wounds with a roll of paper towels, applying pressure, trying to stem the flow of blood. He collapsed in her enclosed entryway. She could tell from the look of the wound that it was serious. They quickly called for help, but by the time the ambulance had arrived, Mark Dugas was dead. He had been stabbed deeply in the chest. The police then arrived soon after and asked Amy what had happened. She said that she had acted in self-defense.

The police had a mess to unravel. Detectives arrived soon after and began processing the scene. They noticed the smell of liquor on Amy's breath and arrested her for a violation of bail conditions. In addition to this violation, it was later learned that, though she was ordered to attend regular sessions on anger management, in the three months since she'd been released on bail, she'd only attended one.

On the way to jail, trooper Jason Andrews noticed that Amy was trying to slip out of her handcuffs. He pulled over to the side of the road, and she tried to exit the vehicle.

As he went to hold on to her, she bit his hand, leaving teeth impressions on the knuckle of his right index finger. She was charged again with assault on a police officer. Amy was held at the Lincoln County Jail in Wiscasset. There would be no further interview with her that night. She had asked for an attorney.

They did, however, take a blood alcohol test that revealed that she had a 0.157 blood alcohol content, which, for her size and weight, would result from having about six to seven drinks in one hour and was twice the legal limit to drive. Amy's two children were taken to her mother's home in Waldeboro to stay. For the sake of their privacy, I've changed their names in this episode.

One of her children, who I'm calling Chad, her seven-and-a-half-year-old son, was home and a witness to the violence that had taken place that night. State police worked through Friday night. The Waldeboro Police Department and the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department assisted.

On Saturday, they continued searching the areas in front of the two homes in the couple's white Ford Explorer and their Southwind brown and tan motorhome. Cindy got the call from Mark's family about what had happened. His brother called me the morning after, and that was probably the single most difficult moment of my life, is to tell my child that her father had died.

And I can still see my daughter throw herself to the floor, sobbing. On Sunday, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner conducted an autopsy on Mark's body and ruled the following day that the cause of death was a major stab wound to his chest. Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine State Police, gave a bare-bones account of what happened to the press and said that Amy and Mark had a history of domestic violence.

Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes said, There have been no decisions regarding charging Amy Dukas. We're still trying to figure out what happened. It is being treated as a homicide, but at this point, we don't know what went on inside that house. Amy was still in jail on her bail violation charges.

On Tuesday, Amy had a big date in the Lincoln County Superior Court. She arrived in an orange jumpsuit with her hands shackled at her waist and her legs cuffed. The judge read the new charges that arose on Friday night. Assault on a police officer in violation of her bail conditions. She pled not guilty. The prosecutor for the state, Judge

Jeffrey Rushlow, asked for the judge to revoke her bail and keep her in jail until trial for the charges relating to the February domestic violence incident and asked to keep her in jail until trial for the charges relating to the February domestic violence incident. The judge agreed, and she was returned to Lincoln County Jail to await trial.

On Friday, June 11th, one week after Mark's death, his funeral service was held in Waldeboro at Broad Bay Congregational Church. He was then buried that afternoon in Rockport at Glen Cove Cemetery. The family, in his obituary, asked for donations to be made to a domestic violence charity called New Hope.

Susan and her husband attended his funeral service and said that it was confirmed for her what she had known all along, that Mark was an abused husband. She said, I know this is hard for many people to understand, but I did understand. I knew Mark. I knew the symptoms of abuse because my first husband was an abuser, but I never told anyone because I feared the repercussions.

I knew Mark's values. I knew his morals. I knew Mark walked away from trouble. I knew Mark would never hit a woman. I knew Mark would more than likely have trouble defending himself against a woman unless he believed his life was in danger. Mark was a slight man, thin and not very tall in stature, but in my opinion, he was a big man.

On the Sunday following Mark's funeral, his brother, Ken, spoke to the Portland Press-Herald about his death. He said that he had a prediction for how the marriage would end. He thought that Mark and Amy would get into an argument, violence would erupt, and Mark would be injured seriously enough to take his family's advice and finally leave her.

Jerry said to the Herald, you never get over something like this. You just work through it. They acknowledged the stereotype of domestic violence, men abusing women, and said that it might be hard to picture Amy, who stands 5 feet 4 inches and weighs 115 pounds, as the abuser. The Herald cited some statistics.

In Maine, of the more than 3,000 incidents of domestic violence that were reported to police in 2003, 20% of the time, women were the abusers. Mark's death left them wondering if the state's domestic violence laws were doing enough and whether the amount of police protection for victims was sufficient. They wanted to know if there was anything more that they could have done to help their brother.

A vigil was conducted on a Sunday afternoon in late June. It was organized by the same charity, New Hope, in tandem with the Dukas family. On July 9th, about a month after Mark's death, the state's prosecutors decided to charge Amy with murder. She was arraigned, and with her new public defender, Howard O'Brien, she pled not guilty.

Over the next nine months, Amy waited in jail, coordinating with her attorney. They decided to face the murder charge first and asked to delay the charges arising from the February incident until after the murder trial. On Monday, April 4, 2005, ten months after Mark was killed, Amy's trial began at Lincoln County Superior Court in Wiscasset, Maine.

On the first day, 200 members of the public were gathered and asked questions by the two attorneys. By the end of the day, the crowd was winnowed to a jury of nine women and five men. Twelve would sit on the jury and there would be two alternates. As they were wrapping up in the courtroom, the judge instructed the jury not to look up any information about the case. They were only to consider what was presented during trial.

The prosecutor for the state, Fern Larichal, presented his opening arguments. He explained to the jury that after Amy had stabbed Mark in the chest, she failed to call 911 and waited outside their home for several minutes while her husband bled to death in their neighbor's entryway. Fern said that the stab wounds to his upper left chest penetrated his lung and cut open his pulmonary artery.

Police found the large kitchen knife lying in two inches of soapy water in their kitchen sink. He encouraged the jury to use their common sense to reach a verdict.

Amy's public defender, Howard O'Brien, told the jury, As she sits there right now, Amy is presumed innocent, as innocent as you and I. When the process is finished, she is still innocent, unless you decide the state's proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. He said that Amy acted in self-defense during a heated argument over money.

Howard laid out the events of the night for the jury. He said that Mark and Amy were driving around, looking for a mechanic to repair their RV. Unable to find one, they got frustrated and began arguing over the money that Mark owed in child support. He said that Mark had tried to die by suicide several times, including one time where he stood in front of the kids and held a knife to his neck.

Mark had descended into this deep gloom. Howard said that Mark flipped out, grabbed Amy by her hair, and used a knife to cut her leg, and that during the struggle over the knife, he was stabbed. He said that Amy didn't even know he was seriously injured until police told her four hours later.

He concluded by saying, this case is about two people, about Amy and Mark and their relationship. He was a good father. He was a good husband. But Mark had some problems.

The prosecution went first, calling their witnesses. Police officers testified that they found bloodstains on many pieces of furniture and other items inside the home. Wendy Benner, their neighbor, testified that she heard a frightful call for help just before Mark arrived at her doorstep. Her husband, Murray, said that Mark, pale and bleeding, collapsed in the doorway before he could answer the question, "'What's wrong, Mark?'

Another neighbor, Mary Stimpson, told the jury that she heard a screech, a yell like I'd never heard before. It scared me. It alerted me that something was not right. She went to her window and saw Mark clutching his chest and his stepson, Chad, running after him.

She said he was crying and appeared to be quite upset. She said that after about two minutes, Amy came outside. She was wiping her hands on a dish towel. She stood in front of her home until the authorities arrived.

First responder, Waldeboro police officer Jeffrey Fuller took the stand and said that he stood with Amy outside her home for several minutes, and she pointed to the left side of her chest and repeated the same line twice, I got him here. I got him right here. She also said, he got me too. She said that she, quote, didn't care. He had it coming.

On cross-examination, Fuller admitted that Amy had made a couple of statements that betrayed that she didn't realize how seriously Mark was wounded. She said, I don't see what the big deal is, and asked why Mark was being treated better than her in reference to the medical care he was being given.

The following day, Wednesday, April 6th, was day three of the trial. Fern told the jury, Amy's son, Chad, was the star prosecution witness. He referred to Mark as dad, though he wasn't Chad's biological father.

The almost eight-year-old boy was sworn in and all eyes in the courtroom were upon him. He was the only witness who had first-hand knowledge of what happened in that house. He said that he was in the backseat of their white Ford Explorer as his parents began arguing when they were making their way home.

He corroborated Howard's claims in opening arguments, that Mark and Amy had been looking for a mechanic to help fix their RV, and that their arguments started in the car. Once they got home, Chad said he was in the kitchen while his parents were in the living room. At some point, his mom came into the kitchen and got a knife from the cabinet. This was one of the most important moments of the entire trial.

He said he followed her back into the living room and his mom and dad were arguing, fighting and kicking. Chad said that the knife was on the living room floor at that point, but then he said he saw his mom getting the knife. He said his mom and dad then went back into the kitchen, leaving him alone in the living room. After a short time, Chad entered the kitchen just in time to see his dad running out of the house.

Chad heard him say, that hurt, and saw that his dad was crying. He followed his dad to the neighbors, Wendy and Murray Benner, but they kept Chad from getting too close. That concluded the prosecution's questioning.

The worst part of the trial for me was watching that little boy testify. It was gut-wrenching. And when I looked over, my family, of course, we're all crying for this little boy who has gone through this traumatic event and is still going through a traumatic event, sitting in front of all these people testifying. And her whole family was dry-eyed. Not one tear was being shed for that little boy.

Fern called another witness, Michael Middaw, a 25-year veteran of the police force. Michael went to the Dugas household.

He said that Amy told him that Mark had cut her with the knife on her fingers and calf. He said that the couch cushions in the living room were in disarray, evidence of a fight. Chad was present, and when Michael went to ask him some questions, Amy cut him off and told Michael that Chad didn't see anything. Michael asked Amy where the knife was, and she said she didn't know.

State police detectives later discovered the bloody knife in the kitchen sink, soaking in about two inches of soapy water. As a result, no fingerprints or DNA could be retrieved from the murder weapon. The EMT that was treating Amy's wounds, Richard Lash, was called to the stand. Amy told him that she wrestled the knife away from Mark and pointed to the spot on her chest where she, quote, got him.

The medical examiner that performed the autopsy, Margaret Greenwald, testified that the wound was about five inches deep and two inches long, and that there was some movement up and down to create a larger wound.

At the end of day three of the trial, the prosecution rested. The Portland Press-Herald asked Howard if Amy would consider a plea deal, and he said, Absolutely not. Adding, The state has rested its case, but I think the state still has a long way to go to prove murder. On Thursday, day four of the trial, the defense called its one and only witness, Amy Dugas.

She said that she and Mark were under a lot of strain. They had moved eight times between March of 2002, when they got married, and January of 2004 because she said that Mark was trying to avoid paying child support. Amy told the story of what happened the night of Mark's death.

She said that an argument had arose from the child support issue. She told him, as she had on a number of occasions, rather than complain all the time that he should just deal with it. She told Mark he had been acting so different lately, isolating himself.

She suggested that they might have to separate to do some soul-searching to see if their relationship was really going to work. Shortly after that, she went into the house to grab a beer for Mark and use the restroom. While she was inside, she spoke to her son, Chad, who asked for a snack, so she made him a bowl of Cocoa Puffs cereal. He wanted her to watch something on TV with him, so they went to the living room together and sat on the sofa.

While they were sitting there, Mark entered the house and yelled, "'Where the hell have you been?' After which, he took off his wedding ring and threw it on the floor. He came up behind her carrying a 12-inch long kitchen knife she recognized from the camper. He grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the loveseat."

Mark threatened to kill himself and her, saying he couldn't take it anymore, and she tried to protect herself with her feet, kicking him and eventually kicking the knife away. After disarming him, she went to the kitchen to collect herself, but Mark picked up the knife and came after her.

She fought for her life in that kitchen. They were pushing and shoving until they lost their balance and fell on the floor. Amy said, She said she feared for her life.

During that struggle, though she couldn't say exactly how, Mark suffered a deadly blow to his chest. She said she didn't recall whose hand was on the knife when Mark was stabbed. When he got up, blood came out on Amy and her shoes. Amy didn't recall if Mark had said anything at that point. She said he gestured to his chest and left the house, picking up a pack of cigarettes on the way out.

Amy went into the living room and sat on the love seat, trying to collect herself. She returned to the kitchen, where she noticed some spots of blood on the oak table. She took out some pledge and a rag and cleaned it. Quote, "'The next thing I knew, an EMT was coming through the door.'" She was treated at the scene for the cuts on her left thigh and right leg. She said she didn't go to the hospital because she had no insurance and didn't want to incur another bill.

The prosecutor had some questions in his cross-examination. He pressed her on whether or not she heard Mark scream. Three neighbors all testified that they had heard a terrible scream. She said that she didn't hear it.

He asked if Mark was wearing a shirt, which he wasn't when he was seen exiting the house, and she said that she couldn't recall. He asked her if she drew the water in the sink and put the bloody knife in the basin. She said that she couldn't recall, but it was possible that she may have done that. He asked her if she noticed the large 13 by 9 inch pool of blood on the kitchen floor, and she said that she didn't. I was just looking straight ahead, she said.

He asked if she remembered saying to the officer, I got him right here. And again, she said she couldn't recall. In addition to the murder, the jury was also considering the charge of assaulting a police officer from that night. So Amy explained the rest of the evening. She said that she was placed in handcuffs and put in the front seat of the cruiser.

She was told that they were going to Waldeboro Police Department. But as they were coming into Waldeboro, the officer turned onto Route 1, which headed away from Wiscasset. Amy grew more upset and said that the handcuffs were causing her discomfort. The officer pulled over at a business on the way to Wiscasset, and that's when the biting incident occurred. Once she got to Lincoln County Jail, she was told that her husband had died.

When asked what her reaction was, she said, "If he's not here, I don't want to be here either." We spoke to Trish, a member of the jury, and she had some doubts about Amy's story.

It's the way she spoke, just watching her mannerisms. And I just was like, well, if you really loved him and you were concerned, wouldn't you either first see if he's okay or two, make sure that you're safe, one or the other? It just, it didn't seem like either of those things were a big problem for her. She just wanted to get the knife clean. I just had a gut feeling. I just knew it then. And it bothered me always.

Join me for part two as we conclude the murder trial of Amy Dugas. If you're enjoying Murder, She Told, I would love it if you shared it with a friend. Word of mouth or sharing on social media or recommending it is one of the best ways to help reach new listeners. And if you want to support the show in other ways, there's a link in the show notes with options. Follow Murder, She Told on social media at Murder, She Told Podcast on Instagram, at Murder, She Told on TikTok, and Murder, She Told on Facebook.

A detailed list of sources and photos from this episode and more can be found at MurderSheTold.com. Thank you to Byron Willis for his writing and research. Special thanks to Cindy and Trish for sharing their memories with us. If you have a suggestion or a correction, I would love to hear from you. You can email me at HelloAtMurderSheTold.com. I'm Kristen Seavey, and this is Murder She Told. Thank you for listening. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. Oh!

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