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cover of episode The Contentious Death of Mark Dugas, Part Two

The Contentious Death of Mark Dugas, Part Two

2023/5/3
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Murder, She Told

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Amy
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Amy的辩护律师Howard
检察官Fern Larochelle
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检察官Fern Larochelle认为Amy对事件的描述前后矛盾,Mark想结束婚姻是导致暴力事件的导火索。他强调了刀伤的深度和Amy的记忆缺失,并提出Amy蓄意谋杀Mark的推测。他指出邻居听到Mark的尖叫声而Amy却没听到,这很可疑。 Amy的辩护律师Howard则认为Amy儿子记错了,她手里拿的是磁力工具,而不是刀;Mark抓了她的头发,她腿上的伤是踢打持刀袭击者的结果。他强调Amy没有意识到伤势的严重性,并质疑地上的血迹是否属于Amy。 Cindy作为Mark的妻子,坚信Amy蓄意杀害Mark,即使并非预谋,但她的意图是杀害Mark。 Susan作为Mark的朋友和同事,认为Mark是一个温和的人,从没见过他与人争吵或冲突,Amy的自卫说法与她认识的Mark不符。 陪审员Trish认为Amy的行为举止不可信,她像个被抓住的孩子一样试图脱身。她指出Amy将刀洗干净,清洗桌子上的血迹,而不是查看Mark的情况,这很可疑。她还认为没有获得Amy过去暴力行为的信息,这会改变一些人的观点。 检察官Jeffrey Rushlow在Amy第二次审判中,提供了Amy袭击Mark和警官的证据,以及她对汽车的损坏。 法官在两次审判中都对Amy的行为和说法进行了评价,并最终做出了判决。

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The prosecution and defense present contrasting narratives during Amy Dugas' trial for the murder of her husband, Mark Dugas, highlighting discrepancies in her account of the events and questioning her motives and memory lapses.

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This is part two of the Mark Dugas story. If you haven't listened to part one, I suggest going back and starting with that one first. 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.

Prosecutor Fern Larochelle presented his closing arguments. He said that Amy's version of events didn't add up, didn't make sense. He said that Mark removing his wedding ring and throwing it on the floor was the catalyst that caused the violence. Mark wanted to end their marriage, and she didn't. That's when she went to the kitchen to get the knife to make sure that didn't happen.

Fern said that it was quite a stab wound and reminded the jury how deeply the knife penetrated Mark's chest. The notion that Amy couldn't recall how it occurred was incredible, he said. Quote, "'She's not telling the truth. She knew exactly where the knife was.'" He emphasized the fact that Mark fled his own home to seek help next door, asking the jury why he wouldn't ask his wife to call for help.

He pointed out Amy's many convenient memory lapses. Fern put forth his theory of what happened, suggesting that Amy pulled Mark's shirt over his head, pinning his arms, and then stabbed him. Based on the height and trajectory of the wound, he contended that they were standing face to face when he was stabbed. "The angle fits perfectly," he said. He recalled Chad's testimony that his mom was the one who had retrieved the knife from the kitchen.

Fern summarized it, "'Amy brought into a highly volatile atmosphere a knife, not once, but twice. And as a result, her husband died.'" He reminded the jury that the neighbor who lived across the street heard Mark scream and was so startled she went to her window to watch. But Amy didn't hear anything? How could that be possible?

Howard, Amy's defense, went next, presenting his closing arguments. "It's time to tell the state that this case is over, that this woman can go home to her children."

He said that her son was mistaken when he thought he saw her retrieve the knife from the kitchen. What she actually had in her hand was a telescoping magnet tool that she was using for the camper repairs. He pointed out that a 12-inch hair in Mark's wristwatch belonged to Amy, which proved that he had grabbed her by the hair. He said that the wounds on her legs made sense if she were kicking at a knife-wielding assailant grappling on the floor.

To lend credibility to Amy's claims that she hadn't realized the seriousness of the injury, he said that much of Mark's bleeding would have happened internally. He even suggested that the large pool of blood on the kitchen floor could have belonged to Amy because the state didn't test it for DNA. When the attorneys rested their case, all that remained was jury instructions.

The judge, after providing a detailed explanation of the crime of murder, told them to also consider the crime of manslaughter, essentially providing them with three options: murder, manslaughter, or not guilty. We spoke to Trish, a member of the jury who actually was the one who suggested Mark's story to me in the first place. We asked her to tell us a little bit about the jury.

Well, I was 33, and I would say there were a couple who were probably younger than me, but the vast majority were probably just a little bit older than me or in their 40s. Where we deliberated was like a small room in the courthouse that had a couple of the long tables, and it wasn't a huge room. I mean, it was enough room. You kind of sat at that table, and you had a little bit of room to walk around. It wasn't much to look at.

The jury was sent to deliberate around noon, and they spoke privately for the rest of the afternoon without reaching a decision. The jury returned to the courthouse at 8 a.m. on Friday and argued with one another until the end of the day. We asked Trish what it was like going on 12 hours of discussion.

I felt pressured. A couple others I'm sure might have, but I even told my husband that I just felt like I had to be in with them or we were going to be there forever. And definitely I felt pressured. They finally told the judge that they had reached a verdict. He asked them to return to the courtroom, and the jury foreman told the court and the world that Amy was a free woman.

They had found her not guilty of murder or manslaughter and not guilty of assaulting a police officer. The judge spoke to the courtroom. I know that this has been a very difficult and emotional trial for many people here, but I urge you to put the matter behind you and look to the future. There are no winners. This was Cindy's reaction to the verdict. And just a warning, there is some language in these clips.

And we thought it was going to be a cut and dried case. It was like getting punched in the stomach. And it was just complete shock. How could she possibly get away with that? How? And all the evidence was right there with her own son testifying against her, saying, "Mommy picked up the knife and mommy went after daddy in the living room." And to this day, I'm still flabbergasted that they acquitted her.

They take Amy out. We're standing around trying to collect ourselves and I turn around and look and my daughter is gone. And I went racing downstairs and out the courtroom doors and she's standing outside the courtroom. And I know she's waiting for Amy to come be escorted by her.

And I looked at Brie and said, "Come on, you know, you're representing the family here and we have to put on a good show, so you need to behave yourself." So when Amy walked out the door, Brie looked at her and said, "You fucking bitch."

and Amy stopped and the officer pushed her to keep moving forward. So they walked Amy down to the parking lot, which wasn't too far away, and they brought her around the side of the cruiser and opened up the door to push her in and she scooted under the police officer's arm and looked Bree dead in the face and started laughing. It

It was directed right at my kid, right in her eyes. Members of Mark's family who had attended the whole trial, including his brothers Ken and Jerry, cried together, hugging one another and shaking their heads in disbelief. The group of 15 relatives in the Dugas family left the courthouse together, refusing to speak to reporters.

For Susan, Mark's friend and colleague, the self-defense story just didn't jive. Reflecting on the man she knew, she wrote, "...Mark was a gentle man. Never once did I see him become involved in arguments or confrontations with any co-workers, even though there were times when I could see he wanted to say something. He wasn't violent."

Mark was not a fighter. Mark was not a hothead. He didn't start fights, nor did he take part in them. He didn't throw tools or rant and rave if something didn't go his way. He didn't storm off in anger. He just never got involved. He had more important things in his life. A home and a daughter.

Cindy said that there had been some raised voices and shouting between Mark and her during their marriage, but never violence. They learned how to take some space from one another and cool down, and come back together to really hear one another. We asked Cindy what she thought happened the night of Mark's death.

I think that he came in the house and probably just said, I'm done, I've had enough. From what I understand, he had taken off the wedding ring and thrown it at her. And I think that pissed her off to the point where she went and got that knife. And I have no doubts that she intended to kill him. You pick up a knife and you go after somebody, what is your intent? You're going to kill him. I doubt it was premeditated, but she's drunk.

Amy's mother, Betty, spoke to the press and said that she believed her daughter was not guilty. She said, Amy's attorney told reporters, Amy took her life in her hands before the jury, and they believed her. Amy still had the February assault charges to face, but she was granted a $1,000 bail, which she posted, and stayed with her mom in Nobleboro for the time being.

Reactions by the public were swift. In an anonymous op-ed published in the Lincoln County News, entitled, Dugas Jury Heard Half a Story, it argued that it wasn't fair to Mark Dugas that Amy's history of violence against him wasn't allowed to be presented during trial. It said, quote, "'Eliminating testimony of past violent behavior ignores the rights of the victim. Mark Dugas wasn't in court to tell his side of the story.'"

This thorny legal issue relates to a rule of evidence called 404 that addresses prior bad acts. 404 reads: "Evidence of a person's character or character trait is not admissible to prove that, on a particular occasion, the person acted in accordance with that character or trait."

In other words, if a defendant had a history of violent offenses and is on trial for a new violent offense, those previous offenses cannot be used to establish the defendant's character or pattern of behavior. In legal jargon, it's deemed to be unfairly prejudicial, meaning that a jury might put undue weight on that type of evidence and not fairly evaluate the specifics of the crime at hand.

but it defied the common sense of the people in Lincoln County. They were dumbstruck that this highly relevant information was purposefully hidden from the jury by some legal doctrine. The Portland Press-Herald interviewed many locals to get their reactions.

Pat Dilbert, who worked at a law office, was appalled that so much evidence was withheld. Chrissy Stiles, a sales clerk at an Irving gas station, said, "'It's a rural community. Everyone knows everyone else's business. The jury should have been allowed to hear the couple's past conflicts. I am disappointed completely in the judicial system. If Mark had done it, he would have been convicted of murder. Domestic violence seems to be strictly a one-sex crime.'"

In a Maine Law Review article by Tina Nadeau, she provided some insightful analysis on Rule 404b and how it relates specifically to domestic violence. She pointed to many instances where the Maine Supreme Court had allowed prior bad acts evidence to be admitted in trial. In particular, in child sex abuse cases, that type of evidence is widely admitted, but she

But she conducted a survey of prosecutors in the state and found that despite some favorable case law, they almost unanimously wouldn't even attempt to introduce 404B evidence because trial judges, in general, weren't fond of it, and they didn't want to upset the apple cart. Judges didn't want to risk being overturned on appeal, so they generally ruled against it.

But she brought up a compelling ruling in Vermont, which carved out one exception to 404B specifically for domestic violence cases. In 1998, the Vermont Supreme Court held that prior incidents of domestic abuse were relevant to portray the history surrounding the abusive relationship and were admissible in trial.

The High Court wrote, "Allegations of a single act of domestic violence taken out of its situational context are likely to seem incongruous and incredible to a jury. Without knowing the history of the relationship between the defendant and the victim, jurors may not believe the victim was actually abused since domestic violence is a learned, controlling behavior aimed at gaining another's compliance through multiple incidents."

In Tina's article, she argued for the Maine Supreme Court to change the rules of evidence to specifically allow for exceptions to 404B in cases of domestic violence. Amy's attorney said, "'Just because someone may have done something in the past does not mean they would do it again. A jury could have made a leap.'" Bill Stokes, top brass in the attorney general's office, said, "'The judge has to balance the evidence. It's a discretionary call.'"

Cindy and the Dugas family ended up having a meeting with the prosecutor's office to discuss the outcome.

My honest opinion is that the Attorney General's Office did a crappy job prosecuting this case. What the Attorney General's Office told me was that it was the language of the law and there was a clause in there about self-defense and it was confusing to the jury and they had to read it, have it read back to them three or four times. And, you know, I'm a pretty smart person. I've read that clause and I couldn't understand it.

So how did they expect the average person to understand it? But that's what the attorney general's office told us was that it was the language of the law and not the evidence, but it was the law itself that got her off. Trish, too, found the legal definitions confusing.

That was one of the things we were trying to get a definitive answer of, like, how we would come to whether it was manslaughter, murder, or neither. And I still, to this day, cannot remember. And I know I said it to my husband when I got home, but it was something very confusing about the way he said it that we almost had to come to the conclusion that it couldn't be manslaughter or murder because of the way he worded the definition of what we had to look for. And with the amount of information we were given, we could only come to the conclusion

because we weren't given enough information. That's basically when you have to go by what you have. Though it has been nearly 20 years since the trial, Trish did her best to recall what it was about the trial that made her feel uncertain about Amy.

I didn't find her to be the most believable person. I definitely felt like they'd had some anger in their relationship. There definitely was aggression and fighting, and you could kind of see that just in some of her demeanor. Anybody can get that way, I guess, if you're sitting on a witness stand and people are asking you questions, you're going to be a bit defensive. I don't know, I found her kind of acting like a child who'd been caught and was trying to figure out a way out.

Trish told us what she found to be the most incriminating evidence. When she had a knife in the sink, when she stabbed him, and then all of a sudden the knife was in a sink of soapy water. And she's washing blood spots off from a table, not going to see if he's okay, not...

If he was an aggressor and she had to protect herself, she wasn't, like, making sure he wasn't coming back in the house. Those actions, I thought, well, if you're defending yourself and you're concerned, she didn't, like, make sure her child was away. So she was putting a knife in the sink, but she claims she doesn't know how it got there. And she was washing blood off from the table because it was an expensive oak table. 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...

to 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. She was also confused why the history of violence between Amy and Mark was withheld.

I really wish they would have been able to tell us more about the things she had done before this, before she killed him, like such a short time before and we didn't get that information. And I'm not sure why we weren't notified to let us know that she also went after a police officer. I mean, there was no history to let us know that she was a person that attacked somebody before and she didn't just attack him. I think that would have definitely changed some opinions.

Trish had no idea what Mark even looked like. And before we connected with Cindy, neither did I. There were no photos of him in the paper. I don't recall any pictures of them as a couple or him alive in any way. And I don't recall ever seeing a picture of him. Not that I wanted to, but I don't recall seeing a picture of him deceased at the trial either. You can see photos from Mark's life at MurderSheTold.com.

Trish remembered that, at times, the prosecutor's presentation was tedious and repetitive and didn't seem to advance their case.

They would say the same things about where the blood droplets were over and over and over again. And it would show these same. And let me just tell you, their walls were white. The floors were like a white linoleum. It was just white and then little blood droplets and white. And not to diminish it, but I mean, when you're seeing the same thing over and over and over again, but that was they just weren't.

They weren't getting a point across. They were like, yes, we understand that. Now, could we move on to why you feel that she did this to him? Or we just didn't get a lot of the story of why this happened. And I was catching little bits and pieces here and there of things that I was like, well, that doesn't seem right.

And not everybody catches that stuff. And I would bring it up, but only certain people would go, oh, yeah, that's true. Like, you know, like she noticed blood on her table, but not on the floor. She thought that he was grabbing cigarettes when he was walking out the door. It was like, why would he be grabbing cigarettes if you just stabbed him in the chest? Things like that. It just, it got really long winded of the same things in just different ways of saying it. And it

I don't know why, but I mean, it just got really dragged on boring. And I was having a hard time and I'm not normally that way. And it was very hard for me to keep my eyes open at certain points. So when we broke for a bit and I was like, oh, thank God, I'm going to buy an energy drink. And the judge was sick. So that didn't help. Kind of saw him dozing because he was sick.

Susan Pardelo shared in Trish's criticism, saying, My hope is that Amy Dugas' second trial is handled better in Portland, and although she was acquitted in Lincoln County, somehow she is not exonerated from all the charges, all the pain, and all the suffering she has caused.

Ultimately, though, there was a reason why the jury found Amy not guilty, and that's because they mostly believed her testimony. I believe that quite a few of them believed not all of it, but they believed the fact that it was self-defense, that she was feeling like he was going to come and hurt her and she was defending herself. They knew that they'd been fighting. That one, I think they understood that, but they, of course, looked at it like she was the one that had to defend herself.

We asked Trish why in 2023 did this still feel like unfinished business? It's the way she spoke. Just watching her mannerisms, seeing how she was, I just had...

had a gut feeling. I just knew it then. And it bothered me always. I told my coworker because it was just me and my coworker. So when I got back to work after being on the jury, she knew it was rough on me. And I looked right at her. I said, I feel like I just let this woman walk free from killing him. I just feel like she was guilty. And then we found out the other information later. And I'm like, I knew it. I'm telling you, she was guilty.

It's just something about her mannerisms and the way she was. I just didn't feel like she was this poor woman who was just defending herself or, yeah, they fought some, but he was the more brutal person. I just never got that vibe. Even though we didn't get a ton on him, it was just a little bit we did know. And the way she was, I was like, I don't know, something doesn't feel right. Obviously, that's why I decided to contact you guys, because I've never felt right about it.

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In late April of 2005, a few weeks after the trial was over, a friend of Mark's put a call to the public in the newspaper for donations to a trust fund that was established to purchase a headstone for Mark's grave. She wrote, "'His daughter would like Mark to be able to have a headstone.'" A group called Friends of Mark Dugas marched in Rockland in an attempt to make people aware that domestic abuse knows no gender lines.

It was coordinated by the same friend who organized the fundraiser.

On Tuesday, September 6th, 2005, a jury was selected in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland. It was being held in a different county because Amy's attorney believed that the publicity from the murder trial would make a prospective jury unfairly prejudiced against her. This trial was for the February incident of domestic assault, assault on an officer, and criminal mischief. It had been a year and a half since the incident took place.

Her defense attorney was once again Howard O'Brien, and the prosecutor was Jeffrey Rushlow. According to Jeffrey, Amy went looking for Mark after he failed to come home from work on the night of her mother's birthday. She found him at his boss's house and, after an argument, kicked him in the eye with a pointy-toed boot. She later assaulted an officer by kicking him in the groin and also damaged a cruiser.

Amy took the stand and said that she was defending herself, saying she was the only one who had been attacked. She said that Mark grabbed her and shook her after she confronted him about his drug use. She said, Everything happened so fast. I was kicking my legs to keep him off me, so it's a possibility I did kick him in the eye.

Regarding the assault on the officer, she said she resisted because he was arresting her and not her husband. She said, He never asked me a question at all. He put me in handcuffs and dragged me out to the cruiser. And regarding the damage to the car, she said she was claustrophobic. Jeffrey called five witnesses. Two were present at the home with Mark, and three were police officers. Her testimony was contradicted by all five other witnesses.

The following day, the jury returned with a verdict. They found her guilty of all three offenses, domestic assault, assault on an officer, and criminal mischief. The jury did not buy her story, and neither did the judge. Mark's family attended the proceedings, and because Mark couldn't give a victim impact statement himself, his brother spoke instead.

He told the judge that Mark had been the victim of domestic violence and urged him to set the toughest possible sentence. She was sentenced to 330 days in jail.

The judge said, I am offended by the disrespect of the oath to tell the truth exhibited by this defendant. She came in here and acted at trial as if the law didn't apply to her, and she didn't have to tell the truth. Her sentence is more than she would have served had she not taken the stand and claimed that her husband and Lincoln County Sheriff's Deputy Brent Barter had both attacked her for no reason.

Amy told the court, My children and I will grieve every single day. They will never be the same again. Taking into account the 10 months Amy Dugas already spent in jail while awaiting the murder trial, she only had to serve 23 days in Lincoln County Jail. She then had two years of probation. Ken Dugas, Mark's brother, told reporters that his family was considering filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Amy, but it never materialized.

About a year after Amy's release, she met a new man and moved to Rockville, Tennessee. In September of 2006, police found her domestic partner, William Dimler, sleeping in his truck parked outside of her house.

When questioned by police, he told them that Amy had pushed and scratched him. After police entered the home, they found Amy passed out on the couch, surrounded by several bottles of Mike's Hard Lemonade. They arrested Amy and charged her with domestic assault.

Jeffrey Rushlow, the prosecutor from Maine, was keeping tabs on her and learned about the incident, but not before her initial appearance in court in Tennessee. The Tennessee prosecutor was unaware of her previous domestic assault crimes and unaware that she was on probation in Maine, so he made a deal with her to continue the domestic assault case for a year and, if she stayed out of trouble, he would drop the charges.

Jeffrey submitted paperwork to extradite her back to Maine because she had violated the terms of probation. She was abusing alcohol and had, again, lashed out physically at her romantic partner. Mark's ex-wife and the mother of his daughter, Cindy Dickinson, was calling newspapers and radio stations in Tennessee to alert them to the incident and expose Amy.

Cindy had learned about the domestic violence incident from an anonymous source, and she immediately turned the information over to Jeffrey Rushlow.

Two months later, in November 2006, the U.S. Marshals escorted Amy back to Maine to face the probation violation. She was again represented by Howard O'Brien, who said that Amy was being unfairly persecuted, that she had made a new life down there, that Jeffrey, quote, had decided, despite the fact my client was found not guilty for Mark Dugas's death, to punish her anyway.

Howard continued, I have spoken to William almost on a daily basis, and he says that Amy never touched him. By this point, she lost custody of her children, and they were living in Texas with their biological father. She'd also returned to her maiden name, Amy Bowen.

During a hearing on November 14th that was attended by Mark's family, she was denied bail and held in York County Jail. Mark's mother, Helen, said, Nothing will ever make up for what she's done, but I'm glad she's been brought back to Maine. It's just too bad that she's going to be put back on the street.

On December 12th, Amy had her probation violation hearing in Lincoln County Superior Court in Wiscasset, the same court she faced down a murder charge and was sentenced to four months in jail.

Jeffrey had asked for the maximum penalty for her to serve the entire remainder of her probation, 11 months, in a state prison. But the judge gave her credit for time already served, 81 days, leaving her a balance of 44 more days to be served in county jail.

The judge ratcheted up her probation conditions, though, requiring her to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings five times a week and reporting to a local PD three times a week.

At some point between September and December, the romance between William Dimler ended. But Amy, who was 39, ran into an old flame while she was in jail in Lincoln County over the Christmas holidays of 2006. Brian Pelletier. They had dated while they were both in their early 20s, but lost touch as they grew older. He was a corrections officer, and she was an inmate.

When she started her term at the jail, he let his supervisors know about their history, so he was assigned to a different part of the jail to limit their contact. They rekindled their romance after she was released in January of 2007. Due to employment restrictions, in order for him to continue his romance with Amy, he had to resign his job as a CO.

He did so, and they were shortly married. Amy became Amy Pelletier, and they moved together back to Rockville, Tennessee. Shortly after midnight on March 19, 2007, on the main drag that went through the small town of Rockville, Brian Pelletier pulled his car off the Tulane Highway and approached a deputy's parked car, who was on traffic duty.

He asked about getting an escort back to his house to remove his things. He explained that when he tried to leave, Amy began hitting him and pulled his shirt. Shining the flashlight on him, the deputy noticed scratches on his neck and cheek and saw that the collar of his shirt looked stretched out around the neck area. The deputy later said in court he had moved down to Tennessee from Maine, had no family or friends in the area, was supposed to start a job the next day, but he

but he was going to get a divorce and go back home because he couldn't take it anymore.

The deputy returned to the home with Brian and found Amy intoxicated. She told him she had no idea how Brian had been scratched. There were a couple signs of a fight. A picture frame was knocked off the wall and a book was lying on the floor that had apparently been thrown against the wall. She was arrested, again, on domestic assault and held at the Rutherford County Jail.

This time, Jeffrey was notified right away about the violation by the Tennessee authorities, and he filed a motion within a few days to revoke Amy's probation and extradite her to Maine. The Lincoln County News spoke with Brian Pelletier about the incident, and he changed his story. The former corrections officer said, "'Nothing happened. It's a false report. They never should have taken it. I mean, I'm six foot four inches. I've had training.'

I've dealt with things 700 times worse than that. He complained that Amy had been in jail for more than a week and wasn't given basic amenities like a toothbrush. He said, I was going for a drive to get gas and cigarettes when I left the house and she didn't want me to leave. That's all.

By June of 2007, Amy was back in Maine, held at the Kennebec County Jail. On the 26th of June, she had an initial appearance for her bail violation charge. She was represented once again by Howard O'Brien, who told the judge, Brian said he fell down over a branch and was scratched.

Howard petitioned for her to be let out on bail, and Jeffrey pushed for her to be held until trial. The judge sided with the prosecutor, and Amy was to remain incarcerated until her August trial. When that day came, she appeared before a judge in Lincoln County yet again.

The hearing drew a large crowd, including the members of the Dugas family and several reporters. But this time, Amy came clean. Brian was there at the hearing, prepared to testify in his wife's defense, but he was never called. She told the judge that she had assaulted Brian Pelletier and that she was drunk. The judge said, "'One thing has become very clear. You continue to have a significant problem with the use of alcohol.'"

She was sentenced to nine months total, less the five months she had already served, leaving her with four months to be served in county jail. The sentence would coincide with the conclusion of her probation, after which she would be totally free. When Amark's cousins spoke to the reporters, I think she'll be back in jail, no doubt about it. She will hurt someone else.

Cindy joined a half-dozen of Mark's relatives on the back steps of the courthouse to watch as police officers escorted Amy to the police cruiser that would carry her to jail. And that was the last time they ever saw her. Amy was released from jail in late 2007. And five years later, on October 7, 2012, at the age of 43, Amy died in Tennessee.

She was still going by the name of Amy Pelletier, but her obituary didn't mention Brian at all, so it didn't seem like they were still together. She died at a nursing home called Claiborne Hughes Health Center, about 25 miles from Rockville. In the last 10 years of her life, Amy had been charged with domestic assault against three different men. She was convicted of assaulting a police officer and violated her probation twice.

She was a habitual offender. Mark's brothers were left with lingering questions. One of the toughest was trying to understand why their lives had turned out so differently than his. They had happy marriages and tightly knit families and created a successful construction business together. They had deep concerns about the state's domestic violence laws, the amount of police protection for victims, and whether they could have done more to help their brother.

When something like this hits your family, it hits a lot harder. It makes you open your eyes. Jerry Dugas said, Brianna Dugas is now grown up and has spent more of her life without her dad than with him. Her family sometimes even calls her Little Mark. Her learning to drive, it was me who had to teach her. When she walked down the aisle, it wasn't her dad walking her down the aisle. Those are the things that are most difficult in life.

is that he's not here to experience what a beautiful woman his daughter has grown up to be. She looks like him. She acts like him. Some of her facial expressions is just like him. He lives on through his daughter.

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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 [email protected]. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder She Told. Thank you for listening.