Christina “Chris” Simonin was murdered in Bangor more than a year ago, and her family wants people to know that she was more than a homicide victim – she also was a daughter, a sister, a mother, an aunt and a friend.

They want people to know that her death created a void in their family that can never be filled.

“We miss her very deeply,” sister Dawn Harvey, 46, said Wednesday.

The jury waived trial of the man accused of raping and beating her to death in March 2007 resumes today before Superior Court Justice William Anderson in Penobscot County Superior Court in Bangor. Prosecutors say Ashton Moores, 60, used a wheelbarrow to dump Simonin’s body a block from his First Street apartment.

Her family occupied the first two rows of seating on the right side of the courtroom during Monday’s and Tuesday’s court proceedings.

Court was not in session Wednesday, but family members gathered in Stetson. Harvey was with her daughter Erin Connor, 25, cleaning the kitchen of her and Simonin’s mother, Harriett Ross, 70, who is staying in Brewer for treatment of a foot injury.

A cow-themed welcome sign given to her mother by Simonin greets those entering the Ross kitchen, and Ross’s bed is covered with a cherished maroon, blue and white afghan that her deceased daughter made.

Chris Simonin was born Sept. 13, 1963, in Massachusetts but was raised in Maine. Her family moved to Stetson in 1978. Simonin, who loved to fish, garden and make crafts, attended Central High School in Corinth. She dropped out in her junior year.

After high school she moved to Connecticut, got married and had a son, who is now a teenager, and later divorced before moving back to Maine, her family said.

One of the treasured items that remains at the Ross household is a white handmade picture frame that Simonin created. It features pictures of her, her son and former husband. It’s decorated with purple flowers, and the words “I love you” are printed on it.

Running around the Stetson home was a yellow tiger-striped cat named Sassy-doodle that Simonin gave to the family as a kitten, and a gray-and-white cat named “Cowie” in memory of Simonin scratched at the door to be let in.

“Every time we went by a pasture, she would point and say, ‘Cowie,'” said Connor, adding that her aunt loved cows and even had a cow costume for Halloween. “I’m going to get on my shoulder a cow tattoo with her date of birth and the date she died” to honor her memory.

Simonin is survived by five sisters, two of whom are stepsisters.

Harvey and Connor said Simonin was always bubbly, was a giving person and was a bright light that was extinguished too early.

“No matter if it was her last dime, if you needed it, she would give it to you,” Connor said. “She was a kind-hearted person.”

They recalled Easter 2006, which is the last time the family gathered with Simonin, when she put olives on her fingers and pretended to be an alien.

“Once in a while, I find myself doing that,” Harvey said, a weak smile on her face. That Easter “was really fun. We had a house full of people.”

“She always had music on and a smile on her face,” said Connor, who saw her aunt four months before her body was found and who was the last family member to see her alive. “It’s those memories that we need to remember. It’s those memories we need to keep alive.”

Simonin liked to drink beer, and her downfall was the people she chose to drink it with in the time before she died, her sister said.

Simonin was living with the man accused of killing her in the weeks before her body was found behind a Union Street apartment building.

The two Stetson women stressed that what happened to their loved one could happen in any family.

“You hear about other people going through it [losing a family member by murder], but you don’t realize it could happen to you until it happens to you,” Harvey said.

“Chris could have been your daughter, your sister, your aunt,” Connor said. “She could have been your mother.”

nricker@bangordailynews.net

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