Home Scandal and Gossip Did what I had to do: Middleborough man, 21, stabs parents to...

Did what I had to do: Middleborough man, 21, stabs parents to death

SHARE
Ryan True Middleboro
Ryan True Middleboro  Massachusetts man, 21, stabs parents, David & Renee True (pictured) to death.
Ryan True Middleboro
Ryan True Middleboro  Massachusetts man, 21, stabs parents, David & Renee True (pictured) to death.

Ryan True Middleboro Massachusetts man, 21, stabs parents, David & Renee True to death following home altercation. Son sent for mental evaluation. 

A 21-year-old Massachusetts man accused of stabbing his parents to death has been ordered held without bail pending a 20-day mental health evaluation.

Ryan True during a Friday arraignment was ordered by a judge to be evaluated at Bridgewater State Hospital, a day after authorities found his parents dead in the Middleborough home they shared.

True was arrested without incident around noon Thursday after police found the bodies of Renee True, 55, and David True, 52, in their Highland Street home earlier that morning. Prosecutors said the couple’s son admitted stabbing his parents to death. The motive remains unknown. 

True has since been charged with two counts of murder boston.com reports.

Middleboro police made the gruesome discovery after responding to the home for a well-being check. Police Chief Joe Perkins said Thursday that coworkers called them around 6:30 a.m. because one of the victims had not shown up for work. An officer forced entry into the home and found the bodies. The scene was described as, ‘brutal and very bloody.’ 

ryan true middleboro
Pictured, Ryan True Middleboro, Mass. man accused of stabbing parents, David & Renee Truth to death at the family home. Image via police bookings.

‘I did what I had to do’

Prosecutors said one of Ryan True’s half brothers claimed he had spoken to him over the phone Thursday morning and that Ryan told his half brother something bad had happened and he was in his mother’s car not far away.

‘Ryan told him he was the only one who left the house alive,’ prosecutors said in court Friday.

Another half brother reported to police that he had been unable to get in touch with his father. He said he had spoken to Ryan as well, who told him he had gotten into an altercation with his father on Wednesday.

Ryan allegedly claimed he was playing video games Wednesday afternoon, just on 5pm, when his father who he said was drunk ‘started harassing him’ and that, ‘he had had enough’ so he ‘did what he had to do.’

The son told of taking out his pocket knife ‘to defend himself’ and that he caused bodily harm to his father, stabbing the man multiple times.

He said his mother came home sometime later, and he said he stabbed her as well when she went upstairs to get a gun. The cuts the son had on his hands, he said, were from the times he missed and accidentally stabbed himself versus his father.

Prosecutors said Ryan fled the scene in his mother’s car. He returned to the home on Thursday morning where he was arrested. Investigators said they found two large suitcases, a cell phone and a bloody folding knife inside the vehicle.

Ryan True Middleboro
Pictured the family Middleboro Mass. home where Ryan True allegedly stabbed his parents, David & Renee Truth to death.

Bipolar disorder? 

Psychologist Daniel Richard told the court there could be an autism spectrum diagnosis and that the defendant told him he had been prescribed lithium in the past, which Richard said is usually used to treat bipolar disorder. Richard said that Ryan True told him he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the past but that the 21-year-old disputes both of those diagnoses.

‘This is a tragic and horrifying situation for, obviously, the family of the deceased and also here in the town of Middleboro,’ Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said Thursday. ‘This is a beautiful little community and this doesn’t happen here very often.’

David True worked for a paving and excavation company in Easton, was described n a Facebook post by his employer, MCE Dirtworks as a ‘truly one of the best men we have had the privilege of knowing.’

Renee True drove a bus for kids in town with special needs since 2007 according to a Facebook post from the district.

The double stabbings left the normally peaceful community unwound.

‘I don’t think anybody knew there was anything going on, any issues,’ Sarah DaRosa told NBC10 Boston. ‘Nice, wonderful people, you can’t say anything bad against them.’

The investigation is ongoing as the son remains held without bail. 

SHARE