A 30-year-old former manager at the Rialto Theater suspected in the theft of $26,135 from the Spanish Springs movie house, had been convicted in the 2008 death of his mother in Maine.
Matthew Normand Audet of Ocala had been arrested in January on a warrant charging him as an out-of-state fugitive after the missing money was discovered by Rialto Theater managers and reported to Lady Lake police.
You can read more about the theft of the money HERE
In 2009, Audet had been sentenced to 15 years in prison with all but five years suspended for strangling his mother.
Lewiston, Maine police said Matthew Audet called them shortly before midnight in March 2008 to report that 47-year-old Debra Audet had stopped breathing, according to the Sun-Journal newspaper in Maine.
An autopsy revealed that Debra Audet, who was suffering from cancer, had been choked to death.
Matthew’s wife, 19-year-old Kayla Stevens Audet, told police she had seen Matthew strangling his mother on a mattress on the floor, the Sun-Journal reported at the time.
“Kayla described Debra as lying on her back … and her skin looking pale,” according to an affidavit written. “Kayla said Matthew was above Debra with either one or both hands on Debra’s throat.”
According to the affidavit, Kayla was preparing to leave Matthew, and the pair had argued about it earlier in the night. After she saw Matthew strangling his mother, Kayla tried to leave the apartment, she told police.
“While Kayla was in the bedroom gathering her things to leave, she said Matthew came up to her and said, ‘I killed my mom, I killed my mom,'” according to the affidavit.
The following year at his sentencing, Justice Joyce Wheeler said the atmosphere of drinking, drugging and violence in which Audet had been raised led him down the road to homicide.
“This, in my mind, was a tragedy waiting to happen,” she said.
Audet suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of his mother, according to media accounts of the court proceedings.
Audet told the judge: “My mom was my best friend in the world.”
But when she was drunk, she became abusive, both verbally and physically, he said.
“I love my mother very much, despite the way she treated me in the past,” he said.
Wheeler said Audet showed resilience to his “horrendous” upbringing and could be successful in the future if he overcame his alcoholism and let friends and family help him build a new life for himself.
Raised by abusive alcoholics, he became an abusive alcoholic, she said. She sentenced Audet to six years probation after his release from prison.
Conditions of his probation would include substance abuse counseling, psychological counseling, completion of batterer’s program and refraining from drug and alcohol possession.
