(2 of 2)
The second of Richard and Rosemary Martinez's four children, McDermott exchanged his Hispanic surname for a slight variation on his middle one (McDermod) in 1980, four years after he joined the Navy. He served on the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Narwhal, an assignment that required rigorous psychological screening. However, says Bruce Joy, one of his crewmates, "when somebody violated his personal space and got too close to him he responded by sneezing directly in the guy's face." Even so, says Joy, "in the bizarre world of the submarine community there was nothing that would suggest that he would do what he did." McDermott worked as a nuclear-reactor operator at the Maine Yankee plant after leaving the Navy but abandoned the highly specialized job after six years of training, just when it should have begun paying dividends.
It is unclear what he did for the next few years, but he eventually joined the Duracell company and married a childhood sweetheart, Monica Sheehan. McDermott summed up that experience in 1997 on a website for Narwhal veterans: "Well, I came back to the land of my youth and married a childhood friend. Lasted three and a half years before she split." His wife moved away to a Chicago suburb. In the meantime, the man who had met the strict weight limits to work on a sub ballooned to 350 lbs.
The answering machine at his one-bedroom apartment the day after the killing went, "Hello, this is Michael's computer. Here I am...brain the size of a planet, and what does he have me doing?...answering the phone." It was a playful reference to the sci-fi cult classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In his home, police found fuses, blasting caps and three gallons of nitric acid in a cardboard box labeled DANGEROUS: DO NOT MOVE. McDermott had a firearms-identification card for rifles and shotguns that expired in 1999. Neighbors remember him as an unsmiling presence, but by Christmas he seemed to be in good spirits. "I've never seen him cheery, but he was acting cheery on Christmas," says his neighbor Kevin Forzese.
"This was a methodical undertaking," insisted prosecutor Thomas O'Reilly at the arraignment, while McDermott's parents sat in the front row. "He specifically targeted the individuals we believe he shot." McDermott's lawyer pleaded not guilty on his behalf and, in a move that suggests he might pursue an insanity defense, asked that McDermott be allowed to continue taking his psychotropic medication.
It will be left to the court to map the journey of a blood donor turned life taker. Only last August, a man named Michael McDermott who used the handle "Mucko" was preaching peace in an Internet discussion about explosives. He reprimanded someone looking to buy land mines: "It would seem that some 'Christians' have forgotten the Sixth Commandment. It is hard to imagine Jesus resorting to land mines." The commandment is Thou Shalt Not Kill.
--Reported by Tom Duffy/Haverhill and Eric Francis/White River Junction