PORTLAND – A Portland woman sentenced to 35 years for murdering her friend had no answer when the judge asked her why she did it.

All that Mary Hanaman could say, in a letter read Wednesday in Cumberland County Superior Court, was that she stabbed Anne Caouette to death and she was sorry.

Hanaman, 26, agreed to a plea-bargained sentence but hadn’t said in court what had led to the slaying.

“It might bring some comfort to the Caouette family if you could give, not a justification, because there is no justification, but an explanation for why you stabbed Anne Caouette,” Justice Paul Fritzsche said.

Police found substantial evidence to charge Hanaman with murder, but they also can’t explain it.

“It’s simply an unanswered question,” said Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese. “We never know what’s going on inside someone’s head.”

Caouette, 36, was found dead in her Sherman Street apartment on May 3, 2002. She had been stabbed nine times, with deep wounds in her chest and back, and some that went right through her arms.

Hanaman, who was charged three months later, was scheduled to go to trial on Nov. 17, but pleaded guilty instead.

Fritzsche’s unusual question pointed to one of the few unknowns about Caouette’s murder. Witnesses said they saw Caouette and Hanaman out drinking that night, and later saw them stumbling into Caouette’s apartment.

Later a friend said Mary Hanaman came to her door, hysterical, saying she had been in a knife fight with “another girl,” and may have killed her. Another friend said she helped Hanaman destroy bloodstained clothes. She said Hanaman, who is African-American, told her that she “snapped” after Caouette referred to her with a racial slur.

Hanaman told another friend that she had killed Caouette over drugs, and still another that the motive was robbery.