CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 22 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts jury Monday began deliberating whether a software engineer was mentally ill when he shot and killed seven co-workers or if he was a "cold-blooded killer" who concocted a bizarre tale of being a time-traveling Nazi-killer as alleged by prosecutors.
The defense claims Michael McDermott, 43, is not criminally responsible for the bloody rampage at Edgewater Technologies Inc. in Wakefield, Mass., on Dec. 26, 2000, because he was schizophrenic and delusional.
"This man was insane at the time of the killings," defense attorney Kevin Reddington told the jury in closing arguments Monday.
Prosecutors, however, alleged McDermott planned the attack because he was angered that Edgewater officials agreed to seize part of his wages to satisfy a $5,600 IRS debt, and that he was "faking" his mental illness.
"There's no doubt that Michael McDermott knew exactly what he was doing that day, and knew what he was doing was wrong," said Assistant District Attorney Thomas O'Reilly. "He was a cold-blooded killer."
The case was given to the jury Monday afternoon after closing arguments in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge, Mass. The jurors will be sequestered until they reach a verdict.
The government alleged that McDermott, in order to appear insane and dodge responsibility for the crime, fabricated a tale that he had been transported back in time to 1940 and believed he was killing Hitler and six Nazi generals in order to prevent the Holocaust and gain a soul so he could go to heaven.
Reddington denied his client was lying.
"He is not lying," Reddington said. "He is incapable of lying."
The lawyer told jurors to find McDermott not criminally responsible because the state had failed to prove he was not insane at the time.
"It is the government's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this man was not suffering from a mental defect at the time of these killings" and was "unable to appreciate the criminality of the act," Reddington said.
As he has done throughout the trial, McDermott paid no attention to the proceedings. The bushy haired, bearded former nuclear submariner sat at the witness table, reading his Bible.
"This is, up close and personal, a very sick man," Reddington said, tracing his history of mental illness back to when he was a teenager and his increasing use of antidepressant drugs up to the time of the shootings.
"He was suffering from a significant mental illness," Reddington said. "He was in a full blown delusion" when he began shooting other employees at Edgewater.
McDermott was "coping with his life" until the IRS sought to seize his pay, O'Reilly said.
The prosecutor said McDermott felt the seizure was unjust, and as the defendant had testified himself, "drew a line in the sand and took a course of action" to prevent any money from coming out of his paycheck and going to the IRS.
Because McDermott couldn't take his anger out on the IRS, he took it out on company workers with an AK 47 assault rifle and a shotgun, O'Reilly said.
O'Reilly described in detail the multiple wounds to each victim and how McDermott methodically shot and killed those in the company who had been involved in the pay dispute.
As he spoke, many relatives of the victims in the courtroom wiped tears from their eyes. Some had to leave.
The prosecutor said McDermott had "concocted" an elaborate tale and "even planned how to surrender."
There was no schizophrenia, no psychosis, O'Reilly said, just an "angry, self-centered, narcissistic man."
The victims were Cheryl Troy, 50, Janice Hagerty, 46, Louis Javelle, 58, Craig Wood, 29, Jennifer Capobianco, 29, Paul Marceau, 36, and Rose Manfredi, 48.
During the trial, defense psychiatrists testified they believed McDermott was not faking mental illness, but has schizophrenia and was delusional at the time of the killings.
Prosecution psychiatrists, however, testified that McDermott's story of killing Nazi on a time-traveling mission inspired by St. Michael the Archangel was simply too bizarre to be believed.
When McDermott took the stand, he claimed he had died in a Berlin police station and was now in purgatory waiting to go to heaven.
