CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 19 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts jury will soon get to decide whether a software engineer irate over an IRS tax debt deliberately murdered seven co-workers or was insane, believing instead he was killing Hitler and six Nazi generals to prevent the Holocaust.
Testimony in the case of Michael McDermott wrapped up Friday with the jury getting the case Monday after closing arguments in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge, Mass.
McDermott, 43, is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder for gunning down fellow workers at the Edgewater Technologies Inc. offices in Wakefield, Mass., the day after Christmas 2000.
McDermott does not deny firing the fatal shots, but his defense claims he is not criminally responsible because of mental illness.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington called three psychiatrists to bolster his argument that McDermott was schizophrenic and delusional at the time of the killings and had been diagnosed at various times in his life with personality disorders and depression.
Prosecutors, however, called their own expert witnesses to rebut McDermott's defense that he was insane when he went on the murderous rampage, believing that he traveled back in time to 1940 to kill Nazis, and that at the end of his mission he died in a Berlin police station.
Prosecutors allege McDermott made up the time-traveling story so as to appear insane to avoid responsibility for the crime.
"I don't believe it (the story)," Dr. Michael Annunziata, a psychiatrist, told the jury. "It's a very dramatic story and inconsistent with his history. I'd have to characterize it as quite difficult to believe."
The final prosecution witness Friday, psychiatrist Dr. Malcolm Rogers, said he believed McDermott faked his mental illnesses as part of an elaborate scenario he created.
The government alleges McDermott deliberately murdered his co-workers because he was angered his company had agreed to seize part of his pay to satisfy an IRS order for him to pay back taxes.
Two of the victims had been involved in trying to resolve the dispute McDermott was having with the IRS. Some of the others shot were in the company's accounting office.
The bushy-haired, bearded McDermott sat at the defendant's table, reading a Bible and paying no attention to the proceedings, as he has throughout the trial other than when he took the stand.
