SWANS ISLAND – Investigators trying to figure out a motive for the weekend murder-suicide of a young island couple said Monday they found a note seeking forgiveness but offering no explanation for the violence.

Jamie Wheaton, 23, and Stacy Carr, 18, were found dead Sunday evening in separate locations on the island.

Wheaton is believed to have stabbed Carr to death with a kitchen knife in their home before shooting himself by the lighthouse at the southern tip of Hockamock Head, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland.

Wheaton’s body was found at about 6 p.m. at the bottom of a 50-foot cliff near the lighthouse, according to Swans Island police Officer Troy Cleaves. Carr’s body was found more than an hour later in the bedroom of the small, one-story home the couple was renting at the northern end of Burntcoat Harbor.

A friend of Carr’s discovered her body when she went to the couple’s home, located about 50 yards into the woods off the island’s main road, to tell her that Wheaton was dead, he said.

The bodies of both were removed from the island Sunday night and sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta. Investigators there determined Monday that Carr died from multiple stab wounds and that Wheaton died from a single gunshot wound to the head, McCausland said.

McCausland said it was unclear whether Wheaton killed Carr late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. He said a kitchen knife was found in their home and that Wheaton was believed to have shot himself with a .22-caliber rifle he owned. The missing gun likely washed out to sea or sank after Wheaton shot himself, he added.

The couple had been married for less than a month, according to Maine State Police Sgt. Chris Coleman.

Wheaton grew up on Swans Island with his family and Carr had lived with relatives in Tremont before moving to Swans Island a few years ago, he said. The couple lived together for a few years before they got married on the island on June 27, five days after Carr had turned 18, he added.

Wheaton worked on Swans Island for Island Aquaculture and Carr worked at the Village Emporium in Bar Harbor.

McCausland said a note was found in Wheaton’s 1987 Chevrolet sedan, which was parked next to the lighthouse. The note asked for forgiveness, he said, but offered no explanation for stabbing his new wife to death. He said other notes indicating the couple was having problems with their marriage were found at their home.

“There was nothing even to hint at the violence that occurred” in those notes, McCausland said.

Lillian Pease of Dresden, who summers on the island with her family, takes morning walks up to the lighthouse at the southern tip of Hockamock Head where Wheaton’s body was found. She said his car was there at 8 a.m. Sunday when she and her husband walked up to the point, but there was no indication anything was amiss.

“This is just dreadful,” Pease said Monday morning as she stood a few feet away from where investigators had put tape across the road leading to the lighthouse. “When you’re young, you can get desperate,” she said.

Brent Smith, a carpenter who grew up on Swans Island, had taken advantage of Sunday’s fair weather by putting new clapboards on the porch of the town-owned lighthouse. He said he had seen Wheaton’s car parked there but had no idea his body lay at the bottom of the cliff. Smith said that Wheaton’s body must have been on the rocks below the lighthouse, which faces southeast toward Marshall Island and Isle au Haut, before the incoming tide floated it into view late Sunday.

Smith said he found out about the tragedy when his sister, who lives on Swans Island, called him Sunday night at his Mariaville home.

“I said ‘Christ Almighty, it can’t be!'” Smith said. “Some people can handle only so much.”

Because of the steep angle of the cliff, Wheaton’s body was recovered from the rocks using motorized skiffs launched from the fisherman’s wharf in Burntcoat Harbor, according to Cleaves.

Shaun Lemoine, a 21-year-old island resident who went to Mount Desert Island Regional High School with Wheaton, said the couple had not been getting along in the days before their deaths. A few days before that, he added, they had been getting along fine.

“They were like any new married couple,” Lemoine said. “They were working out their problems.”

Swans Island is roughly five miles southwest of Mount Desert Island and is accessible by a car ferry from Bass Harbor. The island has an estimated population of 350 in the winter and more than 1,000 in the summer, according to Town Clerk Gwen May.