With Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial now ending in a mistrial, veteran defense attorney Kevin Reddington is shifting focus to another high-profile Massachusetts murder case: that of Kelsie Cote, who is accused of fatally attacking her grandmother as part of an alleged effort to gain access to a $1 million estate.
Speaking to reporters on Sept. 4 outside the courthouse where Clancy’s case was heard, Reddington described Cote as a “very nice young lady,” according to his remarks to the media. “I’m ready to go on that too,” he said, adding that Cote and her family “have been very patient. So between Lindsay and Kelsie, I’ll get it done.”
Reddington has been Cote’s defense attorney since she was arrested in 2022, according to the Boston Globe.
Authorities allege that on Halloween night in 2022, Cote attacked her 74-year-old grandmother, Doris Cote, stabbing her with an open pair of scissors before striking her with a paperweight.
Cote was later charged with murder, assault with intent to murder and destruction of evidence.
At a May 2023 court appearance, she pleaded not guilty. During the hearing, Cote appeared to mouth “I love you” toward relatives while seated in a wheelchair because of a foot injury tied to an unrelated four-wheeler incident, according to The Berkshire Eagle.
The case began on Nov. 1, 2022, when Cote’s father called 911 after finding his mother dead at the bottom of the basement stairs inside her North Adams home, according to a police report obtained by iBerkshires.
“The investigation determined that Kelsie Cote was the last person to see her grandmother alive,” then-Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington said during a 2022 press conference. Harrington said Cote reported discovering her grandmother’s body the next morning and was one of only two people, aside from Doris herself, who had access to the residence.
Prosecutors said parts of Kelsie’s story were unusual—and didn’t match their evidence.
Kelsie told police that she had left her grandmother’s residence at 7:30 p.m. on Halloween, but prosecutors determined that she stayed until after midnight.
She allegedly claimed to have discovered Doris at 10 a.m. on the following morning, but waited approximately six hours before calling for help.
Inside the house, investigators found evidence of a violent assault in an upstairs room and found evidence that suggested Doris’ body had been dragged to the stairs, according to Harrington.
Detectives wrote in the police report that they found “apparent bloody footprints and drag marks…leading from the main living level hallway through the kitchen and down the basement stairs.”
A pile of bloody clothes and potential weapons were also found in trash bags inside Kelsie’s car, Harrington said.
An autopsy showed Doris suffered seven wounds, primarily to her head, including a sharp-force injury to her thumb that Harrington said indicated a defensive wound.
Timothy Shugrue, Berkshire County’s current district attorney, said there was evidence that Kelsie planned her grandmother’s death.
“We have a lot of significant information from the Google searches that she was planning out how to kill her grandmother,” Shugrue told The Berkshire Eagle in May 2023, pointing to alleged searches for the “soft parts of the head” and about the role of a medical examiner.
Shugrue told the outlet that Kelsie was allegedly addicted to the painkiller oxycodone and had been stealing money from Doris. He said Kelsie had moved in with her grandmother after her grandfather died and arranged for Doris to make her the beneficiary of her financial assets—which were valued at over $1 million—instead of her father.
According to Shugrue, Kelsie’s father had installed Ring cameras inside her home which Kelsie turned on and off and mved after the killing.
“She was already taking money out [Doris Cote’s] safe, out of her accounts,” he told the outlet. “Her grandmother probably found out.”
Kelsie will next appear in court on Sept. 28.
Reddington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Oxygen.
