American homicide, methodically gunning down seven people in ten minutes on the bitterly cold morning after Christmas, 12/26/2000. A bulky, bearded man, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, he talked calmly about video games with a colleague at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, Massachusetts, where he had worked for the last year writing computer code and testing software. Just before 11:00 AM he took out an AK-47 assault rifle from his bag along with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol and headed for the Human Resources department. They had given him notice that his wages were to be garnished to pay back taxes to the IRS, plus he had been notified that morning that his 1994 car was being repossessed by the finance company. A long-term brooding fury had reached critical mass.
McDermott is the second of four kids of schoolteacher parents. At 22, he changed his name because he wanted to sound Irish, not Hispanic. He served in the Navy for four years in a stressful job, on a nuclear submarine in the Arctic ocean. He did well except for occasional flare-ups of temper and anxiety. He then worked for six years as a nuclear-reactor operator at the Maine Yankee plant.
On 2/08/1987, he made a “stress-related suicide attempt.” He brought legal action against his workplace by arguing that the way he was treated had brought on the depressed action. His attorney contended that stress created on the job “caused someone who was already fragile to go over the edge,” and plant officials agreed to pay McDermott a lump sum of $85,000, in addition to $12,832 already paid in medical benefits and $14,893 in lost wages.
He was married to a childhood sweetheart, Monica Sheehan, for three and a half years before she left him. A trim 6′ 2″ when he was in the Navy, McDermott had by now ballooned to 350 lbs.
While working for the corporation, every two weeks, faithfully, he donated blood. Intelligent and involved with the internet, McDermott has been treated for mental illness in the past.
His shooting rampage was not impulsive but the result of careful planning and execution. He blazed a trail through Edgewater Tech with such determination that he shot through the locked door of the accounting division to stalk and murder his final two terrified victims. Some were shot through the head, others in the back as they fled. He had fired selectively, not at random: his victims were: Jennifer Bragg Capobianco, 29; Janice Hagerty, 46; Louis Javelle, 58; Rose Manfredi, 48; Paul Marceau, 36; Cheryl Troy, 50; and Craig Wood, 29.
As the police arrived, McDermott surrendered without a struggle. His trial concluded on 4/24/2002 with a verdict of guilty of murder for seven counts. He had testified matter-of-factly that he had been given a mission by Michael the Archangel to kill Hitler and six German generals and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Link to Wikipedia biography