Courant
February 14, 2015
Linda Ducsay said she knew something was wrong when she returned home from work on May 19, 2006, to find an open gate and her dog still sitting in the yard.
“I just had this feeling,” Ducsay told jurors Tuesday in Superior Court at the start of the murder trial of Matthew Pugh, the man accused of killing Alexandra Ducsay, a 26-year-old bank systems analyst and aspiring actress.
Linda Ducsay said she immediately went to her daughter’s bedroom in the basement of their home in the Devon section of Milford. She said she saw drops of blood on the radiator baseboards.
“I thought maybe she was hurt, maybe she hit her head,” Ducsay said.
But when she turned the corner and saw Alexandra lying on the floor covered in blood, Ducsay said she feared the worst.
“My mind sort of split in two. One part of me…” Ducsay said, taking a long pause as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “…saw that she was as stiff as a board, her long blonde hair was caked in blood. I knew she was dead.”
The other part of her was hopeful — perhaps she was unconscious or had “passed out,” Ducsay said.
“I didn’t want to believe it.”
Ducsay was the state’s first witness in the case against Pugh, 42, who faces a maximum of 80 years in prison if convicted of charges of murder and first-degree burglary.
Alexandra Ducsay was found beaten to death in her home. An autopsy showed she died of multiple blunt force trauma injuries to her head. She also had “multiple sharp and blunt force injuries to her upper extremities.”