First Chapter: Murderous Rage by Det. Lt. Bill Powers (Ret.)
The Deadliest Mass Shooting in Massachusetts History
When tragedy struck, the entire system answered the call.
On the morning after Christmas in 2000, the small city of Wakefield, Massachusetts, faced something no one could have expected: a workplace turned into a scene of mass murder. In just a few short minutes, seven people were killed inside a tech company office by one of their own—a quiet employee named Michael McDermott.
The shock didn’t end with the tragedy. It marked the start of the largest homicide investigation in state history. Murderous Rage follows the case from the first police radio call to the final court ruling. Told by one of the lead investigators, this book shows how detectives, prosecutors, and forensic experts worked side by side, piecing together evidence, interviewing witnesses, and staying focused through media pressure and public fear.
Through snowstorms, crowded courtrooms, and hundreds of interviews, the investigative team pushed forward. What they uncovered wasn’t just how the crime happened, but why—and what could have been done to prevent it.
This book isn't about heroes or villains. It’s about professionals doing their jobs with care, teamwork, and a shared commitment to justice for the victims. It’s a powerful look at how real investigations happen, far from the way they’re shown on TV.
1
T’WAS THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
It was Tuesday, the morning after Christmas, and it was brutally cold outside. The thermometer on the kitchen windowsill stayed locked on minus 1 degree. Greater Boston was stuck in an unusually cold weather pattern, and according to the weather folks, a return to normalcy was still days away. Unless skiing up north or playing pond hockey were your passions, it was a good day to stay home and open a book by the fireplace.
I downed two cups of hot coffee and a steaming bowl of oatmeal before I dressed in layers of my warmest clothing and headed out to work. I always enjoyed working the day after Christmas. The day was usually low-key, with a skeleton crew and very few phone calls or visitors. It was what we referred to on the state police as “holiday routine”: a time to catch up on paperwork and take a second or third look at a couple of unfinished investigations. Besides, I preferred saving my days off for a visit to the beach where I’d lather my face with suntan lotion, not Chapstick.
Traffic was thankfully light because the heater fan in my old and tired unmarked state police cruiser was balking and didn’t wheeze out any warmth until I crossed over the Longfellow Bridge, which separates Boston from Cambridge and lies just a few blocks from my office in the Middlesex County Courthouse.
I had my choice of parking spaces because, even though the administrative offices and district courts were open, there was little foot traffic and no superior court trials on the schedule. Once inside, I passed through the safety checkpoint, made a stop at the coffee shop in the lobby, and ordered up two larges before walking up the wide cement staircase to our office on the second floor.
The huge metal doors to the office featured the blue and white circular seal of the Massachusetts State Police, centered and positioned eye-high, leaving no doubt who was on the other side. One door was propped open, and the only one home was Duke Donoghue. He and I would be it for the day. Duke was the newest trooper assigned to the office, and as the “junior man,” it was the norm for him to have the duty call responsibilities for the day after Christmas. On the state police, seniority in rank dictates the bidding for almost everything, including vacations and time off. It has been the case since the inception of the department in 1921. Everyone knows it, and no one complains. As the boss and ranking officer, the reverse was also true: it was my responsibility to be there in case there were any events requiring supervisory decision-making. Duke and I were at the opposite ends of the family spectrum. He was single and without kids, and I was married with two. One was a college freshman, and the other worked as a dispatcher for the Wellesley Police. Therefore, the need to be home with young kids wasn’t an issue for either of us.
In the quiet of the morning, Duke and I had some time to sit and talk without worry of interruption or the need to be somewhere else. I had looked forward to a candid, private conversation about his thoughts and perspectives as he approached his one-year mark in the office. I wanted to know how he felt he was adapting to the world of death investigations, the increased and diverse workload of cases, and the added responsibilities that came with them.
As we sipped our coffee, we talked about the first time we met. It was during the summer of ’91. One weekday afternoon, they randomly assigned us to the same tee box at a state-operated golf course. I had been on the job for fifteen years and was on my first tour at Middlesex as a sergeant. Duke was a year out of college and working for a company doing title searches in the probate courts. As we walked down the first fairway, he started a conversation by asking me where I was a police officer. It pissed me off because identifying myself as a police officer while I was on time off was simply not something I ever did. He would later tell me it was a wild guess. He thought I looked too much like a cop not to be one. Duke looked like a high school kid whose face hadn’t yet known the feel of a razor blade. To make a long story bearable, as we talked, I learned that Duke’s dad was a state trooper who had passed away suddenly when Duke was only ten. I had known his dad. He was a gentleman and natural leader, one of those people that a young trooper could talk to and look up to for mentoring, guidance and instruction with positive feedback. In a para-military agency, that wasn’t always the case. As Duke and I walked the course, we talked and shared a few stories and a couple of laughs. I gave him my card and told him to stay in touch. Fortunately for both of us, he did. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, and I wanted to help him in any way I could. As the son of a cop who couldn’t wait to follow in his own father’s footsteps, I always looked out for others in the same situation.
In 1993, Duke entered the state police academy where, over the following six months, he learned about policing, personal commitment, and self-discipline. He grew and matured while excelling at every phase of the training. After a few years patrolling the highways around Boston, he transferred to the attorney general’s office. He spent his days working on public corruption cases and nights as a fixture in the Boston club scene, working undercover buying significant quantities of ecstasy and ketamine. Duke’s open and friendly style, coupled with his youthful looks, made his work almost effortless. Most nights the dealers looked for him and not the other way around. We spoke one afternoon at a chance meeting at headquarters. He mentioned that he enjoyed the corruption cases but the drug work had grown repetitious, and the challenges were diminishing. As he put it, “I feel like I’m shooting at ducks in a barrel every night at the clubs.”
I asked him if he was ready to take on homicide cases. His face lit up with a smile, and without hesitation, he said, “You know that is my goal. I will jump at the first opportunity.”
A few months later, there was a vacancy in our unit, and I reached out and encouraged him to apply for the position. A month later, after completing the application process and the interviews, Duke’s work address changed from Boston to Cambridge.
We began our impromptu year-in-review with Duke talking about the change in environment and responsibilities and the anxiety and self-doubt that everyone struggles with when they first arrive. He said he questioned whether he had the experience and ability to handle death investigations. He had arrived early in January, a time when things were relatively quiet. As is customary with any new addition to the unit, he shadowed the case officers and responded day and night to all of the reported suicide and unattended deaths in the county, and there were plenty of them. It’s a swift and total immersion into the work and creates a perfect opportunity to meet and learn from the other folks in the office as well as the crime scene specialists, the local detectives, and the crew from the medical examiner’s (ME) office. When he wasn’t going to death scenes, he reviewed old-and-cold homicide cases and just tried to learn and fit in with everyone.
“I had seen dead bodies at motor vehicle fatal scenes, so I knew I could handle the blood and guts part,” he said. “At the AGs, I did a lot of interviews and interrogations and wrote a few search warrants. My real goal was always to do homicides, and I really felt prepared to step up to the next level. But what I hadn’t thought about or realized was the intensity and the demands that are inherent in all homicide cases. Looking back, the drug work was interesting and challenging at times, but there was very little stress. Losing a case was never good, but it also wasn’t the end of the world or career ending. Homicides, though, are a completely different animal. I have to be on my game all the time. Seriously, if I ever lost a case because I messed up and did something wrong, I could never live with myself. The mental angst is by far the hardest part of the work.”
“You were barely here a month when you caught that horrendous murder in Everett,” I said. “What were the odds that your team would have the homicide call that day? That type of a case presents a once-in-a-career scenario, if ever, for most investigators; it may be the most extreme and intense homicide setting you will ever be in.”
“Homicides by explosion are extremely rare,” I continued. “This one was beyond horrific and challenging: a beautiful young woman’s life extinguished in a millisecond when she opened a package with a pipe bomb inside left on her doorstep by an a-hole she refused to date,” I said, shaking my head. “Not to mention that the day had the harshest weather conditions I can ever recall at a crime scene. It was freezing, and the wind was so strong it drove a stinging sleet storm sideways for hours. The MBTA kindly sent us a bus so we could take breaks and warm-up, and a nearby funeral parlor set up a tent with coffee and donuts and warmed it with a propane heater. It was brutal. Add to that a convoluted crime scene that was both inside and outside because the explosion blew out the ceiling, the outer wall, and the kitchen window sending debris, body parts, and evidence in every direction. While we got a quick lead on who might have killed her, the diabolical bastard was on the loose. I can tell you, unquestionably, that it was the most complex crime scene I had experienced in my twenty-six years on the job. I can also say, though, that with our crew, I never doubted we would solve it and every bit of it done right, from the interviews and the search warrants to the crime scene processing and beyond. It was a monumental team effort by everyone and every agency involved. We had him in custody by the end of the night. I couldn’t have been prouder of everyone’s efforts from the call through the conviction.”
Duke replied, “You have talked to me many times about the way things worked in the office, including the checkpoints that were in place to prevent big mistakes from happening and safety nets that provided a soft landing without much damage if you went a little sideways and lost your balance. I understood what you were saying then, but it wasn’t until that day that I actually experienced it. I learned more about teamwork and relying on others to get things done right in those first few hours than at any other time in my career.
“Seriously,” he went on, “I was the new guy, and I wasn’t sure how to take Eddie Forster and his constant ball-breaking. You know, introducing me to people as a college intern, calling me kid, and telling me to get coffees and all that stuff, but when I saw him in action that day, I was impressed. He had some incisive thoughts and ideas, and when we went to the guy’s house, he was very respectful to his mom and sister. In turn, they were cooperative and willing to answer questions and provided us with information that supported probable cause for the warrant. The same with Jimmy Connolly: he was so calm and composed I never doubted that we were going about things the right way. It was incredibly tragic, but it was also a great learning experience for me. Working with the assistant district attorneys and recognizing that we were equal parts of the same team was new as well. I wasn’t used to having them working alongside us from the get-go, but it really was reassuring to have them guiding us through a huge number of legal issues. Tom O’Reilly thinks and acts like us and his experience and explanations of why we do, or don’t do, certain things has not only opened my eyes to the process but also instilled some real confidence in the way I approach things.”
“The beauty of working in Middlesex County,” I explained, “is the diversity that comes with being the largest county in New England. Our jurisdiction not only covers fifty-four cities, towns, and twenty-one major colleges and universities but they are spread out over urban, suburban, and rural areas. Each is unique and different with their own police departments, a variety of political structures, demographics, and geographies. No two are the same. We usually respond to twenty-five to thirty homicides a year and hundreds of other unattended death scenes where the cause of death turns out to be a suicide, accident, natural causes, or in rare cases, undetermined. We get to see a lot of everything and can gather experience and insight quickly, and because of the variety in the cases, you learn to stay open-minded and always on your toes. You learn to follow the evidence and not be predisposed to how you think it might have happened or who must have done it based on a narrow assessment from your limited experience. You may see that kind of thinking in areas where almost all of the homicides are drug- or gang-related with predictable fact patterns, but you will never see that happen in our office.
“I was at the FBI National Academy back in ’95 and taking a class in behavioral analysis taught by one of the agency’s top profilers. One day, toward the end of the program, he stopped me as I was leaving class. ‘I haven’t figured you out,’ he said. ‘You are either the biggest liar I’ve ever met, or you are in the midst of a career that any detective would kill for. No matter what topic I bring up you have had a case or two that fits it. I honestly have never had that happen to me before, and I’ve been teaching this stuff for years.’ I assured him I wasn’t a liar and simply blessed to be constantly in the thick of psychological thrillers. After that exchange, he called on me all the time.
“I’m happy when the facts are simple and straightforward and we wrap up a case in a day or two, but I enjoy it a lot more when we are faced with a true whodunnit and we have to work hard to resolve it with an arrest. A good example is the fire this summer at the condo in Malden. Based on the crime scene and the amount of blood on the carpet and walls, our gut feelings tell us it is a murder, but without a body, we can’t prove it. It is frustrating as hell, but it takes a lot more than a missing body to deter us. I’m hopeful Eddie Forster was right when he said our victim will turn up in the spring thaw and we can move forward with an arrest and prosecution of our person of interest. Discovering a body in that manner may be atypical, but not unheard of, and with Adrienne Lynch as the assistant DA on the case, you know we aren’t going to file it away as a cold case. I am confident we will solve it.”
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