On December 7, 1998, in Caribou, Maine, four-year-old Cortina Cousins was one of three family members killed in an event described as a murder-suicide. Investigators found the charred remains of the family’s cabin and discovered Cortina, her two-year-old brother Cote, and their thirty-year-old mother Tina Marie Saunders Cousins dead from gunshot wounds. Authorities reported that the victims had been shot by Leigh Cousins, who was thirty-four at the time, then set the house on fire and died by a self-inflicted gunshot.

Police found two identical suicide notes from Leigh in vehicles parked outside the cabin, and no arrests were made because he was deceased. The deaths were officially treated as a triple murder followed by the perpetrator’s suicide.