Milo shocked by deaths of elderly pair Fatal shots fired in clash over pie

MILO – Inside their small, well-manicured home, a 75-year-old man shot his wife and then himself during a dispute over a blueberry pie Friday, police said.

“Shocking” is how one Medford Road neighbor described on Sunday the death of Pearle Cogswell, 66, at the hands of her husband of more than 20 years, Eugene Cogswell, who then turned the gun on himself and took his own life.

Police investigators said that before the incident they had never been called to the home for anything.

“This is a complete mystery as to why something so innocent has turned into tragedy,” said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

Investigators said the dispute began over a freshly baked blueberry pie that Mrs. Cogswell had made and wanted to give to a relative. Her husband didn’t want her to do that, and he threw a glass of wine in her face, said McCausland.

She called a relative and then the police at 4:24 p.m., telling a police dispatcher she didn’t feel her life was threatened.

When Milo police arrived about 13 minutes later, both were dead.

McCausland said the wife’s body was found in the kitchen and Cogswell’s was about six feet away in the living room with the gun at his side.

Neighbors on the winding Medford Road on Sunday were still trying to take in what had happened. One resident described them as the perfect neighbors, friendly, quiet and never intrusive. The neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said she never heard arguments coming from the home.

What sounds the neighbors could hear was that of Cogswell working on his home or in the surrounding woods. The neighbor heard what she thought was something pounding on wood Friday afternoon, but now thinks it may have been the sound of the fatal gunshots.

Little was known about the couple. Relatives reached Sunday did not want to comment.

But it was clear during a visit Sunday that the Cogswells worked hard on their home and its landscaping. Nine carefully placed saplings dominated a front lawn divided by a peninsula of evergreen trees.

A rusty wheelbarrow contained a small garden of green and gray leaved plants with red flowers.

The front of the home was lined with plants. A gnome relaxed on his stomach while a green frog took in the sun sitting comfortably on a lily pad nearby.

A placard on a metal plant hanger read “The Shanty.”