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TRUE CRIME: Lucie Paquette shot and killed her husband. But she doesn't remember it. 

When Lucie first met Gerry she squirted him with a water pistol. It was Gerry’s first day at work and what started out as a friendship, quickly turned into romance, and Lucie and Gerry were dubbed ‘the lovebirds’ by their family and friends.

Thirteen years after that first meeting, Lucie shot Gerry at close range and killed him.

Lucie doesn’t remember much about the night Gerry died and now, after serving five years in prison for his manslaughter, Lucie has returned to her old life without her common law husband.

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So how do you come back from the worst thing you’ve ever done when you don’t even remember doing it?

That’s the question documentary filmmaker and host Tally Abecassis is attempting to answer in the second season of her podcast First Day Back.

Abecassis has spent more a year following Lucie as she’s moved from prison to a halfway house, searched for work, and tried to build a stronger relationship with her daughter and grandson.

The podcast also explores how it’s possible that Lucie has no memory of the night Gerry died. In the first episode, Abecassis reveals that Lucie and Gerry were what you might call ‘functioning alcoholics’, and that alcohol and a black out on Lucie’s behalf, might have played a role in Gerry’s death.

first day back podcast
Friends called Lucie and Gerry 'lovebirds'. Image via YouTube.
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“It's like you fall asleep during a movie. You saw the beginning of the movie, and you saw the end,” Lucie says. “But what about the middle?"

At first Lucie thought prison would be her punishment, but on the outside she has to face the reality of what she's done every single day. She's not allowed any contact with Gerry's family and her relationships with her own family and friends are strained.

“It's like I'm in the middle of a big, big circle, and I don't know where to go,” she says.

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The podcast will track Lucie as she tries to rebuild her life and find some kind of forgiveness - from herself and from the people she's hurt the most.

The first two episodes of First Day Back are available here