The Belfast woman who was allegedly killed by her husband in Readfield last month had only recently gotten married and moved to Maine with him, according to one of her relatives.
Police have accused Samuel Whittemore, 34, of murdering Margaux Whittemore, 32, while on a trip to visit his parents in central Maine. Her body was found outside their Readfield home on the morning of Feb. 19, but authorities have not released more information about how she died.
Margaux Whittemore, whose maiden name was Nguyen, grew up in France and first met her future husband in 2021 while she was working as a yoga instructor in French Polynesia, according to her cousin, Roger Risley, who lives in Texas.
Risley did not know what may have gone wrong in their relationship, although he noted they did go through a period of separation at one point after they first met.
Now, Risley and Margaux Whittemore’s other relatives are mourning the tragic circumstances of her death. They are also trying to raise funds to return her body to France, where she will be laid to rest in the coastal city of Saint-Malo, according to Risley. That’s where her father is currently buried.
Risley remembered his cousin as an adventurous world traveler who spoke multiple languages, taught herself skills such as singing and playing the ukulele, attended music festivals with friends and eventually started her own clothing line, called Le Boyfriend Paris, after obtaining a master’s degree from SKEMA Business School in Paris.
“I think she just knew she had a higher purpose in life to just go out there and chase life in a different way,” Risley said. “She was amazing.”
Risley identified with his cousin, he said, because they both diverged from the paths of law and engineering that some of their other relatives took.
“She and I were just like, ‘Yeah, school backgrounds we could get a good job and all that,’ but we decided we just kind of wanted to live life off the beaten path and just live a life of purpose and adventure,” Risley said.
Samuel Whittemore attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and formerly worked as an engineer for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other high profile companies. He is a world traveler who, according to his LinkedIn page, owned and captained a 50-foot sailing boat across the world.
He also allegedly attacked his mother, Dorothy Whittemore, and left her in critical condition during the same trip when his wife died. A superior court justice has now ordered him to be held without bail pending an evaluation of his competency.
His attorney, Walt McKee of Augusta, did not respond to a request for comment.
According to Risley, it was a mark of his cousin’s adventurous spirit that she eventually agreed to move to Maine, a rural state where her husband was from. She had been making progress in her new life in the U.S., attaining her green card and slowly learning how to drive.
“I think it takes a lot of courage to do what she did with her life,” Risley said. “And that’s to take a chance to leave the place of your home, to chase a dream that you have in your mind.”
Reflecting on her death, he added, “It just feels like reality messed up somewhere and the universe is just wrong. It went wrong somewhere.”