06/16/2026
On February 13th, 2024, I said goodbye to Block 6—and quietly made a decision I’d avoided for sixteen years. Block was a chatty, wild block of seventh graders--but they were engaged, hilarious, and responsive to the sometimes droll world of writing. Some of them loved writing--others hated it--but I tried to make it fun. We would do goofy writing prompts, play games, listen to music.
It was my favorite block when they weren’t throwing paper airplanes or doing TikTok dances in the middle of class. I watched them leave my makeshift classroom in the library, heading to buses or to the study hall before sports practice, putting on coats, laughing, full of life.
And I think something dawned on me. I wasn’t any closer to figuring any of this out--by this point, I had published the first iteration of this project, a book of poetry, and had really started to work on the second, a play--but for the first time, I had something to live for. A reason, a purpose. Or at least one that stuck: I couldn’t walk around with so much damage seeping out of me because I was surrounded by kids who deserved better of me.
I had spoken to Josh in dreams, tried to hash this out in so many ways, but nothing really stuck. So, seven days before the anniversary of Josh’s death, I decided to send a letter to Matthew Cushing, MDOC Number 106980. This is what it read.
ith which I have a complicated relationship
“Hi, Matt.
This is Jonny Bolduc, your cousin. Before I write this letter to you, I want to address a few things up front. I know we weren’t particularly close growing up. For a long time, I’ve debated sending you mail. It’s hard to do, and that’s not because of any animosity towards you. I don’t hate you, or even dislike you. I’m not angry at you as a person. I just hate what happened in 2008.
That day, something went horribly, unimaginably wrong. I think a series of terrible decisions happened in a whirlwind of emotion, and I doubt you had the mental capacity to understand the real implications of your actions until it was too late. I’ve had plenty of moments of mental health crisis in my life that have led me to some really dark places, so I understand how the raw, awful emotions that come with crisis can propel people to do things that don’t make sense. And while trying to come to a singular reason, a singular why is impossible, maybe coming to some sort of understanding, however limited, is possible. And I was wondering if you would be willing to help me with that.”
And I wish I could say that I went on some journey of forgiveness and self-discovery, and that I sat across from Matt, clad in his prison sweats, and grasped his hand and told him that I absolved him and that I was finally at peace — but it didn’t happen like that. Some things that would have made for a good story, good fiction, a neat wrap to the narrative just aren’t realistic, and I’ve stopped wishing for them. Even reading the letter back, some of that seems a bit naive. Sometimes, we have to be ok with just not knowing why.
I will probably never visit Matt in prison. Like I stated in the letter, I wasn’t particularly close to Matt growing up. I realize that we are currently in vastly different stages in life, though I know that some day if I f**k up badly enough I too could experience the rigid schedule of incarceration. There isn’t a pull for me to visit Matt, and just going there for the sake of writing a book also seems flat. This whole book--until now--has tread in the verse of poetry, of dreams, of imagined conversations. In this brief interlude, sure, you’re reading an essay--but this is not a work of journalism. It is fictionalized, but only because I don’t trust the fallible nature of memory, of recollection. I am taking a long, winding, backroad to get at some fundamental truth of my experience losing Josh.
And I can’t really do that without talking about Matt. Without expanding on who he is and was as I knew him, and what he represented after February 20th. And just so we’re clear: I’m scared as f**k about doing this. Obviously, I was not the only family member effected by the destruction of an entire family. The act has long, rippling effects of sadness and profound grief that permeate every member of my family. Matt killed three people: Josh, my Uncle Chris, and my Aunt Carol. Some say that Matt should be forgiven. Some see Matt as a monster. Me? Well, I’ll tell you later. But we have to start somewhere, so let’s start in a memory.
The lake is a real place. My grandparents own a house on Little Sebago Lake where Josh, my sister and myself would spend a week every summer. Matt is 38: I’m 32, so there was a pretty large age gap between us, and between Josh and Matt. Matt was doing teenage stuff when I was still a kid. We would also spend Christmas with my grandparents.
I mostly thought of Matt as a cool older person in my life. We never really spoke, but I envied him from afar. One Christmas, I remember it was after gifts had been given and the grownups were upstairs. We were in the carpeted basement. I was purposefully being annoying: throwing bits of paper at Matt while he played James Bond on the PS2. He had enough. He stood up, and I knew I was about to get dragged. He leapt behind me, grabbed my feet, and pulled me back across the carpet. It was fun at first, but it started to sting as my shirt came up to my stomach. I started yelling for him to stop: he didn’t, he kept dragging, and I twisted to look at him. I have never seen anger so clearly glint in someone’s eyes, before or since. I’m not sure if he couldn’t hear me or didn’t want to, but he dragged me back into the bedroom and let go. He wound up like he was going to slap me across the face before his eyes went back to normal. I have never since seen someone so obviously trapped by whatever emotions were swirling around in their head. And I guess it makes sense. Matt did have some deep-seated anger issues. He had a Myspace before I was allowed to have one, and Josh showed it to me: the background was from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and he described himself as a Rage-A-Holic. When I went into his room when he wasn’t there while hanging with Josh, I was freaked out by the chainsaw hanging above his bed and the horror memorabilia littering his room. I don’t think Myspace or horror movies or anything caused any of what happened to my family, but I know Matt has admitted to having urges to harm from a young age. Maybe some of the decoration and horror obsession was for him to blow off steam. But I know a ton of awesome people who have never murdered their families who also love horror, so I am not implying any sort of causation.
But what the Christmas incident showed to me was that Matt didn’t always have a full grasp on his urges. That he could seem like a totally different person under stress--even the rather trivial stress of an annoying cousin.
And of course, the triple homicide has captured the attention of the True Crime community, which I have a complicated relationship with. In 2016, Dr. Michelle Ward with the Discovery TV show “The Mind of a Murderer” did an episode with Matt at the Maine State Prison. I don’t know what I had expected: at that time, I was drinking a lot, barely out of college, and emotionally capricious and precocious. I cracked open a six pack of PBR and watched the episode when it aired.
It was f**king bu****it.
First off, I remember at a dinner a year before the episode aired when my Grandparents, who still had a close relationship with Matt, said that a “doctor with a T.V show was going to study Matt’s brain and tell him what could have caused him to do what he did.” And goddamn, Michelle Ward is no f**king brain scientist. Basically, all she did for the entire episode was sit across from Matt, clean cut with round glasses and talk about how “terrified” she was to be sitting across from a murderer. Like first off, you do this all day for a living, lady.
And second off, how the hell do you think I feel? The one he was going to beat to a pulp on Christmas day? The one who was supposed to be hanging out with Josh on the day he was murdered? I see a young man with sadness in his eyes and a darkness hanging over him, begging for answers, and all you can do is spout nonsense about how much of a danger he is while a 30 year old actor with a bowl cut plays Josh in a house that looks like a beaten up frat.
The one revelatory thing about that interview was that Matt had been experiencing urges to harm people since childhood. And that made some sense. But he was not some childhood dark triad burgeoning sociopath. I can vouch for that: he spent his entire senior year in Africa helping children. He loved his dogs. He loved Josh to the point that he got a flowing tattoo of Josh’s name on his stomach, which I thought was extremely odd, but Josh thought was the coolest thing in the world. And since, in prison, he has helped inmates earn G.E.D’s and is getting a degree in mental health counseling. He clearly cares about people. So how do you reconcile that with what he did? With the lives he destroyed?
I remember watching an interview with Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine Massacre. She stated that for there is a close link between suicidality and homicidal actions. She said that in her own son’s case, there was deep depression, deep anger, and a deep want to not exist. I think that is important to remember in Matt’s case, as well. Matt obviously had some deep, deep mental illness brewing inside of him. I think he committed the horror he did not out of hatred or any inherent “evil” nature, but because he was desperate, angry, and scared.
A few months before he did what he did, he failed out of college, or at least had to drop down to so few credits that financial aid wouldn’t cover him. He was trying to get his parents to pay for his last semester, but I think they wanted to wait until he stopped drinking, partying, and, from what I’ve gathered, stopped casual drug use before they would do so. Right before he did what he did, he wanted to backpack across Europe, and his parents flat-out told him no.
Also, his dog died. He had a husky that he loved, a husky that was hit by a car. Apparently, and I haven’t verified this, he slept with the husky for a few days after he died until his friends came and helped him have the dog cremated. Matt was in a deep spiral, and his childhood also wasn’t easy. I didn’t really understand this nuance when I was a child, but Matt was Carol’s from her first marriage, and some on my side of the family treated Matt like he was an “other,” never fully accepting him--not allowing him to come to Thanksgiving. He also had a complicated relationship with his biological father and a more complicated relationship with my Uncle Chris, who, although I loved him, had a hell of a temper and could go into “rages.” Josh and I thought they were funny, but I can see him being livid at Matthew during this dark period.
So there were threads, just as there were threads that led Dylan Klebold and other killers to do what they did: sadness, self hatred, isolation. It doesn’t excuse Matthew’s action, but it paints him as I believe he truly is: a young man dealing with the brunt of a deep depressive episode who spiraled and did something heinous and terrible. I don’t forgive him. I don’t think Josh would forgive him. I wouldn’t sit in a room with him. But I do not think he’s a monster.
At one point, I did. Early on, when I transitioned into being a 16 and 17 year old, I started flirting with a bit of isolation. I spent a lot of time online, I spent a lot of time surrounded by voices of unhealthy, angry young men. I am not proud of that, but I lacked the experience and emotional intelligence to realise that shutting myself in my room and talking to strangers on forums was not a healthy way to have social bonds. I would have never survived as a teenager today: I would constantly be chatting with AI or scrolling Tik Tok. I was also weirdly spiritual: searching for esoteric, secret knowledge sometimes under the guise of “conspiracy theories.” I would have fallen in hard to some absolutely wacked out conspiracies I see floating around today.
Now, the anger of a young man, the power of self loathing and shame is a f**king toxic swirl. It can lead to some of the darkest actions society is capable of producing. I am not sure where or how society led Matt to do what he did, but I don’t think anyone really exists solely without input from the time they live in. I don’t think 2008 was a time where we were ready to talk about loneliness or depression or mental health. I don’t know as if there were a ton of resources available to Matt to keep him from spiraling out of control.
I do know that Matt had a loving family, but no real way to get help. College is a hell of a time. I remember it as the environment where my suicidality first started to take shape: powered by the shame of failing a class or missing a midterm and the near constant supply of alcohol and parties and risky social situations. I flirted with death back then as serious and chronic mental health issues bubbled up and became parts of my being. I did not have the homicidal component Matt did, but I did struggle with impulse. The impulse to just keep sleeping, just keep drinking, to take the random pill in some friend of a friend’s basement.
So it makes sense that the environment Matt was coming from was UMaine Orono during a particularly cold winter, dreary, and harsh winter after months of failure and grief. It makes sense that something snapped in him that morning, that he pulled over and cried and maybe decided, then, that it was time to confront Chris about what he foresaw: an impending divorce. Maybe the reason that hit him so hard was the feelings of abandonment and denial he experienced becoming a part of the family. Maybe that’s why he felt the need to drive to Old Orchard Beach that day. Because he was going to take someone else out with him. Maybe that’s why he was so angry when Josh laughed at him when he asked Josh to help him kill Chris.
There were so many moments, so many chances to stop the terrible trajectory, sure. But once Josh said no, the real snapping of the self took place and the violence began. And it’s how so much violence begins. Being an American is f**king surreal. I live in Lewiston now. In 2023, 500 feet behind my house, seven people were killed in a mass shooting. Biden made an address and the Secret Service had my neighborhood blocked off. Lester Holt taped a segment at the entrance to my street. Our small city was on military lockdown for two days. The shooter drove down the same street I drive every day and killed eight more people on the other side of town.
And…it keeps happening over and over and over and f**king over again. Our town wasn't the first, and it sure as s**t wont be the last. To have that eruption and eventual static. And my family wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last to feel this massive shockwave of grief. Won’t be the first or last to reach for a “why?” And be greeted with silence: just a candle flickering. I wrote this after the shooting.
It’s not that I don’t love my city. It’s not that my city doesn’t want me, It’s how can I sleep? They died in my backyard. And our Lewiston says, I know. I can’t sleep either. They died in my cradle.
Even after the news vans leave, the basilica spires tickle the clouds.
Even as the candles and the Jack-o-Lanterns pile in front of where those souls lifted, I see the twin skylines from the top of Goff Hill.
Even when it seemed as if terror gripped the night, a terror still locked in on our throat,
Lewiston, you ushered in a new morning, all pink, orange, and purple mirrored in the calm canal water.
Do you remember, Lewiston, when the looms hummed and whirred? Now, ghosts in the brick sing with the old, forgotten hum of this ancient engine, saying, ‘we remember the hot mill steam.”
And life, from the tilled garden of the past, reached up from the brick, a vibrant generation, growing, this place, not without pain. And God, city, I love you, but 18 candles is too many.
God, I love you city, but I can’t sleep. And neither can you, with eighteen bricks demolished from your foundation. We shook, that October night, terror and sirens and earthquaking grief.
I love you, city, but I am scared. And dear city, you reply, the foundation is cracked, but the walls are strong.
Give to me one light to chase away the darkness. Give to me thousands
of lights, pooling like stars. We cannot unshatter the night they were stolen, but together, we can remain tall through the storm.
And I feel the same ache trying to process my own grief—the grief of a community echoing the grief of the individual. All we are ever looking for is a light to shine where life once glowed. Eighteen candles is too many. Three candles is too many. Even one candle—one life snuffed out—is too f**king many.
Angry young men are so goddamn bad at seeing human life for what it is—not a bargaining chip for their suffering, not proof of how broken they feel—but a whole person, radiant and alive, carrying their own unseen pain and hope.
I know it’s pointless to wish Matt had made a different choice. Just like it’s pointless to wish someone had reached Robert Card in time. But the chasm they fell down is the same: narrow at first, easy to miss—until it opens wide and swallows everything.
