Mom tells of Maine victim's happiness

SUDBURY -- Dorothy Cabral sat in the spacious backyard of her modest, gray clapboard home yesterday and struggled with the fact that she would never again see the cheerful, loving daughter who she raised to womanhood here.

Cynthia Cabral Beatson , 43, was one of four people killed over the Labor Day weekend in Newry, Maine. She and two other women were dismembered after they were killed, and the body of a male victim was burned, in a killing spree for which Christian Nielson, a cook who worked at an inn in the area , is being held.

``What's wrong with him, to do this?" Cabral asked, alternately running her hands along a gold framed wedding portrait of her daughter and fingering a crucifix -- a gift from her daughter -- that hung from a rosary around her neck. ``I don't think he is insane. . . . This was too methodic. It was demonic. ."

Cindy, as she was known, chose good at every turn, her mother said.

``She was a happy, bubbly, effervescent beacon of joy," said Cabral, a retired buyer for Staples. She said her daughter's life was in many ways idyllic until its abrupt, brutal end.

Cindy grew up attending St. Anselm Church , where she was baptized, confirmed and, 13 years ago, married. She graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, studied at the School of Fashion Design in Boston and at Babson College, and was an avid skier and seamstress.

When she was in her late 20s, Cindy went skiing with some girlfriends at Sunday River, a resort near Bethel, Maine. ``She fell in love with it and decided to settle in Bethel," her mother said.

Over a year ago, Cindy went to work at Apple Tree Realty in Bethel, where she also helped her ski-buddy Selby Bullard get a job. Selby and Cindy were killed when they went to Black Bear Bed & Breakfast in Newry to check on Selby's mother.

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.