“He was my hero,” Deborah Brown said in a soft voice, fighting back the tears. “He always treated me with respect.”

Mrs. Brown spoke at the memorial service for Donald R. Wood Jr., one of two men her former husband, Steven Brown, is accused of killing last weekend.

Nearly 150 family members and friends attended the morning Celebration of Life services at the church. Mrs. Brown, overcome with emotion, had to leave the sanctuary halfway through.

When the services had ended, Mrs. Brown made a short statement, flanked by her uncle, Kittery Police Chief Edward Strong.

“I want to thank everyone who helped rescue me from my ordeal,” she said. “We have a long road ahead of us. We must mourn in our own way. We want to leave Chris and Woody in peace.”

Christopher R. Brouillard also was killed during the kidnapping of Mrs. Brown allegedly by Brown and an accomplice, Patricia Teeter.

Brown is being held without bail at the York County Jail on two counts of murder, while Teeter is held in lieu of $1 million cash bail on a charge of kidnapping.

Both could face additional charges, including murder for Teeter.

Police said Teeter lied about car trouble to lure Wood and Brouillard out of their Lebanon mobile home, one at a time, late Sunday night.

Police allege Brown beat them and stabbed them to death, then kidnapped his wife when she came out of the home to investigate.

“God has made Donald Wood beautiful in his time,” Pastor Wayne Sawyer said during the short but moving service. “Let us not think for a moment Woody has ended. It is in our hearts where he will continue to live on.”

“He loved to help people,” Sawyer said. “He loved to help out all he could. It is ironic that he died doing a good thing. He died doing the right thing.”

Sawyer said there is obvious anger at the “senseless and meaningless” deaths, and expressed the hope “their killers are brought to justice.” But, he continued, to harbor the anger, to keep it alive, would mean “evil will have triumphed once again,” and that should not be allowed to happen. “The sooner, the better, we must be done with our anger.”

Mrs. Brown was rescued from a motel room in East Greenbush, N.Y., where police arrested Brown and Teeter.

Teeter told police she decided to go to Maine with Brown who had said he wanted to see his children and to talk to his wife without any interference from her family or friends.

While planning the trip, Brown specifically asked Teeter to bring her car with Pennsylvania license plates. When she picked him up, she noticed he had a bag with a knife and some rope along with a shotgun, which belonged to her.

According to police documents, Teeter told police as Brown was attacking Brouillard, she “walked away because she didn’t want to, or need to, see what Steven was doing.”

Teeter said she heard Brown tell his former wife the “two other guys were tied up and put in her father’s camper,” according to the affidavit.

Deborah Brown’s uncle, Terry Wood, had said his niece was tortured and beaten during her ordeal, but Chief Strong said Mrs. Brown was not physically harmed.

“She was a little shaken up, but she was in remarkably good shape,” he said. “She’s thankful to be alive and really grateful to state police.”

Strong said his niece left her husband in the fall and went to stay in a safe house for battered women because she was so afraid of him. She went back to him after he said he had changed. When she discovered he had not, she left for good and moved to Maine.

Mrs. Brown had not seen her husband until a hearing last week in which a judge awarded her sole custody of their two children, the spark that Strong said turned Brown “into a ticking time bomb.”