Episode 151: The Murder of Alexandra Ducsay
Alexandra "Zandra" Ducsay was born and raised in Connecticut. She was a magnum cum laude from Albertus Magnus College and had been working as a systems analyst for People's Bank for the last ten years. She was also a licensed real estate agent and had a passion for the arts. She was a professional dancer and looked forward to the weekends when she had time to dance. She also loved to sing and was an aspiring actress and model. Alexandra was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, appearing in an episode of Law and Order in 2006.
Alexandra took great pride and got great joy from giving back to her community. She ran her own charity and holiday gifts drive for children throughout Connecticut to make sure they would get Christmas presents, and she would personally deliver them on Christmas Eve.
On May 19th, 2006, 26-year-old Alexandra’s body was found by her mom in the basement of their family home in Milford, Connecticut on Boothbay Street. The basement had been converted into a separate apartment and living space where Alexandra lived, and her mom found her at the bottom of the stairs.
She had been badly and brutally beaten, so brutally that she was almost unrecognizable.
Police arrived at the scene to what was described by one detective as “probably the worst I’ve ever seen.” There was blood splatter on the walls, ceiling, all over the floor and on the radiator. There was a kitchen knife blade found next to her body, but investigators noticed that one of Alexandra’s childhood trophies was missing from her collection, and they felt that this was the murder weapon. Among the chaos of the scene, there was a small piece of black vinyl tape found stuck to Alexandra’s cheek. Her cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma, solidifying that the murder weapon was likely the trophy.
Alexandra’s parents were shocked and heartbroken, but amidst all of this they were convinced that they knew who was responsible. When Alexandra was 16, she met a man named Matthew Pugh in a bookstore. He was 24 at this time, but the two started dating. The relationship was tumultuous and Matthew was very toxic and manipulative. An example of his behavior from Alexandra’s mother Linda is that Matthew stood Alexandra up on the night of her junior prom, leaving her waiting in her prom dress all night.
Eventually Matthew got arrested on drug offenses and was sent to prison. At first Alexandra would visit him and keep up communication, but it got to be very stressful for her and was a strain on the relationship, so she broke things off. From inside his cell, Matthew continued to be toxic and escalated to abusive behavior, calling Alexandra’s house and writing her letters. At one point, Matthew called the Ducsay household and Linda, Alexandra’s mother, picked up the phone and told him to leave her daughter alone. Matthew responded by stating “Be careful what you say and do.” Alexandra’s brother had also told Matthew that she was trying to move on and to leave her alone, and Matthew threatened him as well.
In letters he wrote to Alexandra, he threatened her, tried to intimidate her and scare her. In one letter he wrote “Maybe you need to get your [expletive] kicked…you’re gonna regret you ever met me…I will make your life a living hell.” Alexandra filed a written complaint on January 23rd, 2004 to the Connecticut Department of Corrections after enduring years of his threats and abuse. When he was released in 2004, two years before her murder, he began to stalk Alexandra. The threats and harassment continued and only got worse. A month before Alexandra’s murder, she had told her brother that she was afraid of what Matthew might do to her.
Despite all of this, there wasn’t concrete evidence to pin the murder on Matthew, and her case went “cold.” A Governor’s award for $50,000 was eventually put up for anyone with any information leading to the conviction of the person responsible for Alexandra’s murder.
Two years later on June 19th, 2008, Matthew’s cousin, Anthony Pugh, spoke to the Milford police. He shared with them that a year before Alexandra’s murder in 2005, Matthew had told him about his plans to kill Alexandra. He said he was going to inject her with drugs and cause her to overdose, then hide the evidence using items he would steal from the place where he and Anthony both worked, which was essentially a hardware outlet store. Anthony also said that Matthew told him that he used to sit outside of Alexandra’s house, watching to see where she was going and with whom, and made this part of his routine at least weekly.
In addition to DNA evidence linking Matthew to the Ducsay home on the day of the murder, examination of the calls made from his cell phone at 11:47 a.m. and 12:07 p.m. on May 19th placed his cell phone in the very same part of Milford where Alexandra lived. The piece of black vinyl tape found on Alexandra’s cheek at the scene of her murder was also finally explained. Matthew worked at one of the only three outlet stores to carry that specific kind of tape, and a roll was later found inside his house.
Finally, six years after Alexandra’s murder, Matthew Pugh was arrested in September of 2012 at the age of 40. He was held on $2 million dollar bond after being charged with one count of murder and one count of first-degree burglary. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, but a jury convicted him of murder and burglary in March.
In 2017, Judge Denise Markle sentenced Matthew to the maximum sentence allowed in court, 60 years for the murder of Alexandra Duscay and an additional 20 years for burglary, to be served concurrently. Judge Markle said that rehabilitation for Matthew was out of the question, saying that the brutality of the crime was a large factor in her decision with sentencing.
Alexandra’s father, John Duscay, spoke at the sentencing hearing and told Matthew that he hopes he lives a long time, stating “Think about me, and don’t forget my face. I will be in your dreams, agonizingly, day after day.”
Eric, Alexandra’s brother, stated “It took years, but that’s what gave my family the peace to actually start moving on and where we could start to heal. The old saying that time does heal the wounds - it’s true. You will feel better. It’ll never go away. They’ll never come back. You’ll always miss them. You’ll always have a little bit of a void, but that void gets smaller because ultimately life is short and hopefully you will see them again.”
Matthew Pugh remains in prison.
Image sources:
findagrave.com - “Alexandra Marie ‘Zandra’ Ducsay