The first sign that a lifelong grudge wouldn’t occur between two families came the same night as the murder-suicide at the Steeplegate Mall.
That’s when Lori Desmarais called Cherri Thorne so the two mothers could grieve together, try to make sense out of the events on Sept. 25 in the mall parking lot.
Thorne’s 22-year-old son, Alex Thorne, had shot and killed Desmarais’s 21-year-old daughter, Zoe Desmarais, then killed himself. Yet there was Lori Desmarais, drawn closer than ever to Cherri Thorne, reassuring her that they were in this together, both their lives forever altered.
More recently, Desmarais saw Thorne begin to cry, so she reached across Thorne’s kitchen table to hold her hand.
“I don’t have room in my heart for hate,” Lori said at Cherri’s home in Dunbarton. “So there is no hate in me. A lot of sadness, and I am angry, but I don’t hate.”
She’ll leave the hatred to others, those who don’t know the background to this horrible story, those who never knew Zoe or Alex, or their plans to marry and spend their lives together.
On the surface, it seemed this crime followed a tragic pattern – two young lovers in what Zoe described, innocently enough at the time, as an “up and down” relationship, then two shots fired, two lives lost, two families shattered.
More domestic violence. A growing trend.
Cherri and Lori know the police and media, by definition, consider this a crime of domestic violence. But they have a different story to tell. They see it as an extreme example of mental illness gone untreated, a loved one suffering in silence, delusional to the reality around him.
They want their message about mental illness heard, how it ambushes you from the shadows, how people are afraid to reveal their sadness, how what happened last month happened only after Alex had started showing disturbing signs just a few weeks before the shootings.
They said he spoke of unseen forces, dangerous and world-wide, and he checked and re-checked locks on the doors and windows during the wee hours of the night. His sense of reality had left him, and he felt killing Zoe and then turning the gun on himself would, in some way, lead to a happier end for both.
Once, there was little to suggest that Alex had placed the world’s troubles on his shoulders, or that he was suicidal. The human body was simply a cage for the spirit, he’d like to say, one day free to see the other side.
Last weekend – nearly a month since the shootings and weeks after each mother had put a child to rest – they met at Cherri’s house in Dunbarton, built in 1851. Their bond was palpable, which might not make sense to some. But it’s a bond that was clearly unshakable, like the sorrow that permeated Cherri’s kitchen, with its wood everywhere, floors, beams, table.
Alex’s sister, Taylor Thorne, sat with us, sometimes staring out through dark-rimmed glasses, no doubt seeing something no one else could see. She helped broker our meeting, and she’s in lockstep with her mother and Lori.
“You need to look at cases where there was domestic violence so they can recognize those true signs,” she said. “This relationship, there was nothing that happened prior to this.”
Cherri and Lori didn’t want this to be called a case of domestic violence. They wished it was something else, using Alex’s clean criminal record to bolster their argument, although later they realized there was no way around it.
“I understand from talking to a victim advocate and talking to the police from how they explained it to me, that they have to call it domestic violence,” Lori told me. “It’s because of how the laws are written or whatever, how they have to classify this. I get that. But what it’s classified as and how I want to perceive it are two different things.”
They wanted to talk about the warning signs of mental illness that sometimes take years to show themselves, making it difficult to get ahead of the problem. They were adamant it’s past time to address our healthcare system, with the high premiums, high deductibles and high co-pays attached to insurance, making it hard for some to afford the care they desperately need.
They agree we all need to get past that annoying, long-lasting stigma, still connected to mental illness as if it’s something to cause shame. They, like many others, strive for a day when it can be discussed as a medical condition, no different than cancer or diabetes.
Can their voices help others? Will you listen?
These two women are sure Alex was bipolar, and a date to seek professional help was on the horizon, Cherri said, as soon as they made their upcoming trip to Concord to secure state assistance.
Lori and Cherri have seen bipolar disorder up close. They’ve seen what it can do. Lori’s husband lives with it now.
“It took me a lot of years to come to terms,” Lori said, “with being married to someone who was bipolar.”
Cherri’s father was bipolar as well, and he took his own life when she was 13.
“He went quite a few years with bipolar before he did that,” Cherri said. “I really didn’t know Alex was that delusional. We had time to do something, to work on this.”
Maybe. But Alex kept things hidden. From his mother until about two weeks before the shootings. From Lori until, well, she never had a clue. Lori mentioned that she believed Zoe was merely protecting her, considering the hell Lori had already been through because of her husband’s mental illness.
Shockingly, they’re now joined in sorrow, after years of an alliance based on happiness and hope, watching their children’s relationship evolve, from start to finish.
Zoe and Alex’s relationship goes back to early grade school. It seemed like a great American romance. The story about the little girl’s older brother who becomes best friends with another boy, bringing the three together after they’d get home from school.
“Alex would come over to our house,” Lori said. “It started out with Zoe being the annoying little sister, the tag-along. She was a tomboy. She loved to climb trees, catch frogs.”
Eventually, Zoe and Alex started texting each other, right there in the living room. They laughed at the little private conversations they were having with Zoe’s brother, Zachary, sitting just a few feet away, totally unaware that his best friend and his sister were nuts about each other.
They kept it quiet for a while. They were an item, midway through Goffstown High School. Alex played football.
“They hid their relationship from Zachary,” Cherri said. “I was so naive. She would come to the football games and sit next to me and I never knew she was coming to watch Alex. She was by herself, and I thought she just liked football.”
Both Cherri and Lori said the relationship was great, that their kids were soulmates. They said he was romantic, giving her flowers nearly every week. They said she served as his anchor, grounding and stabilizing his undisciplined nature.
Alex had ADHD. He was bored with school, but had a voracious appetite for reading self-help books like The Secret, which Cherri said she bought for him when he was 10. He’d buy books written to nurture the spirit and hand them out to friends, and balance that with humor.
“He was the life of the party, the class clown,” Cherri said. “Zoe was serious, studious, straight A’s and Dean’s List.”
Zoe graduated from Southern New Hampshire University last May, earning a business degree in just three years. She landed a job as an accountant for a giant wholesale grocery distributor. Alex was unemployed (and thus had no insurance, a sore spot for Cherri), but everyone says they were happy.
There was, however, the issue of their weight. Cherri said they were once “obese.”
His size served Alex well as a lineman on the Goffstown High football team, but he no longer wanted to carry 260 pounds on his 5-foot-8 frame. They both appeared heavy in photos in Cherri’s kitchen.
Early in 2018, they found a personal trainer, a fitness instructor named Kayla Layton, who actually was a few years ahead of Zoe at Goffstown High. They followed her program online. They changed their diet, changed their mindsets. The moms said they both lost 70 pounds.
Layton, who lives in Merrimack, said it was more.
“They lost more than 80,” she said by phone. “They were by far the best clients I’ve ever had on my team.”
Layton and Zoe became close. They had their nails done together, attended house parties, texted, emailed. She got to know Alex, too.
“Both of them were the nicest people that I have ever met,” Layton said. “Alex was a sweetheart and so kind, and with (Zoe’s) passion, she would set a goal and achieve it no matter what. They were madly in love.”
They were fit, trimmed down, people who cared about their appearance. There was a marriage to plan, potential to be fulfilled, children to raise.
Then, recently, over the past few weeks, Alex began acting strangely and saying bizarre things to Zoe, and later to Cherri. There was the time he moved around the house at 5 a.m., making sure everything was locked up tight.
The time he lamented about World War III having already started. And about an evil force coming soon to ravage the planet.
And, suicide.
“Alex wasn’t in his right mind,” Cherri said. “He was a delusional person. He was talking suicide. Zoe was saying ‘please don’t leave me,’ and you could see he was worried about leaving her here to be shredded by the demons that are ready to take over the world. I could feel those thoughts in his head, but all we can do is speculate.”
Cherri argued with Zoe, told her the man she loved, Cherri’s own son, needed professional help, told her not to forget what bipolar disorder had already done to both families.
And then, Alex came back. Just like that. No explanation. He looked ahead with optimism. He’d seek medical help, he said, maybe get evaluated, medicated, something.
“Two days before (the shootings), everything was normal,” Cherri said. “He had Zoe fooled also.”
In hindsight, Cherri said that her instincts were correct, that shortly before the incident, a tight hug from Alex and his tears felt as though something lay within him, something troublesome and sad.
“It makes sense now,” Cherri said.
The moms say Alex bought a gun legally shortly before the shootings. A day or two in advance. They had no idea. (Police later found the gun box and receipt tucked deep in Alex’s closet, Cherri said.)
Alex wanted to work out. On Sept. 25, they grabbed their gym bags and drove to the new fitness center at the mall.
They parked among other cars in the lot. Zoe got out and moved to the back, to the hatchback to retrieve the gym bags, while Alex pulled the gun from the back seat. He shot Zoe from behind, then shot himself. He died there, at the scene; she was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Lori heard the news first, from a cop who went to her house. Cherri was awakened by a knock on the door at 11:30 p.m., when an officer explained that one of her children had died. In seconds, before Alex’s name had emerged, Cherri looked out to the driveway to see whose car was home and whose wasn’t.
“You’ve seen it in the movies many times, when a cop shows up like that and you know it’s not good news,” said Cherri, control of her emotions gradually fading. “You dread hearing these words come out of their mouths.”
Then Lori called Cherri, less than an hour later. “Alex was like my son,” Lori said, “and the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Oh my God, Cherri’s lost two people too.’ ”
Soon, the family began reading and hearing reports, speculating about what might have been happening behind the scenes, leading up to the killings. A pattern of violence. A woman afraid to come forward. Call this number for help.
The families were caught off guard by a Facebook post on the page for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, written by Amanda Grady Sexton, the organization’s policy director.
“Our hearts go out to the family of 21-year-old Zoe Desmarais, who lost her life to a senseless act of domestic violence,” it read.
The impact of those words stung them because that’s not how they viewed Alex.
“Alex had a mental health issue, that’s the problem,” his sister, Taylor Thorne said.
Grady Sexton said her role is to educate and inform when a case of domestic violence surfaces. Similar posts are made after every domestic violence murder in the state, which are becoming more common.
“The job of the coalition is to reach out to the community anytime there is a murder-suicide or domestic violence-related death,” Grady Sexton said by phone, “and that is how we would classify this one.”
Call it what you want. Blame it on what or who you want. Two young people are dead, and the ramifications are here to stay. Lori said she hears things from people. Disturbing things.
“I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Oh my God, I’m praying for you,’ and I say, ‘Pray for Alex, too, and pray for Alex’s family,’ ” Lori told me. “I get the response, ‘What do you mean,’ but it’s like I lost my son, Cherri lost her daughter. If you’re going to pray, pray for both of them, please.”
Nearby, there were photos on shelves and walls. A digital picture frame took turns sliding photos into view, some showing the couple dressed up, looking fit, big smiles.
Cherri began to cry again, touched by her friend’s support, and touched in another way as well.
“It’s not in me to hate,” Lori said. “Give me your hand, Cherri.”