Software engineer convicted of killing seven co-workers in Massachusetts rampage

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Posted 3:29PM on Wednesday, April 24, 2002

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A man who gunned down seven co-workers at a software company in what he called a divine mission to prevent the Holocaust was convicted of murder Wednesday by a jury that rejected his insanity defense. Michael McDermott, a hulking 43-year-old with long, shaggy hair and a bushy black beard, stood impassively as the verdict was delivered in a courtroom packed with tearful relatives of the victims. The convictions on seven counts of first-degree murder meant an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. Massachusetts does not have a death penalty. Prosecutors said McDermott went on his rampage because he was angry about the company's plan to comply with an IRS order to withhold a large portion of his salary to pay back taxes. They said he concocted the Holocaust story after boning up on how to fake mental illness. During sentencing, McDermott sat at the defense table with his burly arms in front of him and read a Bible without looking up as relatives of the dead took the stand and sorrowfully recalled their loved ones. Some stole glances across the courtroom at McDermott, but he didn't meet their eyes. "His life is insignificant. He will die in a silent hell he has created for himself," said Scott Troy, whose sister, Cheryl Troy, was killed. "He has accomplished nothing." The defense claimed the software engineer was insane, suffering from depression and schizophrenia, and didn't know what he was doing at Edgewater Technology Inc. in suburban Wakefield on Dec. 26, 2000. The trial featured chilling testimony from workers who hid under their desks or ran out of the building after McDermott began shooting. Some said they heard co-workers begging for their lives before McDermott blasted them with an AK-47 and a pump-action shotgun. The jury deliberated for nearly 16 hours over three days. McDermott spent two days on the witness stand testifying in his own defense. He matter-of-factly told the jury he was given a mission by St. Michael the Archangel, who told him he could earn a soul and prevent the Holocaust if he killed Adolf Hitler and six German generals. In vivid detail, McDermott described being transported back in time to 1940 and entering a bunker where he heard Hitler's thoughts and saw men and women wearing swastika armbands. He described killing Nazis, one by one, as horrified family members of the real victims wept and eventually left the courtroom. "The last Nazi was there. I shot and killed him. And Hitler was there. I shot and killed him," he said. "My mission was complete. I knew at this point I had a soul." McDermott's defense presented medical experts who said he had a long history of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. He testified that he was raped repeatedly by a neighbor as a child and that he tried to commit suicide at least three times. He also said he heard voices in his head and even "clustered" them into different groups. "The major one I call the chorus," he testified. "The chorus continuously tells me what a bad person I am, what a waste of space and skin and air I am." The day of the killings, McDermott was suffering from hallucinations and delusions and did not know right from wrong, a defense psychologist testified. Prosecutors, however, said McDermott cooked up the story about killing Nazis in a desperate attempt to appear insane to the jury. McDermott even acknowledged buying the book, "Clinical Assessment of Malingering and Deception," a textbook for psychiatrists attempting to detect when criminal defendants are lying or faking mental illness. McDermott said he researched the subject in order to make himself appear sane and to make sure his doctors prescribed Prozac, the anti-depressant he preferred. Prosecutors also pointed out McDermott's genius-level IQ and steps they said he took to plan the killings, including test-firing his shotgun two days earlier and bringing the guns to work on Christmas, the day before the killings, when no one was in the office.