Jack Callahan Duxbury Mass. teen kills alcoholic dad while baptising him in a bid to exorcise demons. Son tracked dad at Boston bar before traveling to local pond.
A Massachusetts teen killed his father while ‘baptizing’ him in a pond in an attempt to exorcise his alcoholic father’s demons, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Jack Callahan, 19, was arrested Monday hours after his mother called Duxbury police at 2 a.m. to report that her son arriving home and claiming his father, Scott Callahan, 57, was missing, police said in a Facebook statement.
The son, who was in wet clothes, told his mother, Wendy, he didn’t know where her ex-husband was despite the pair riding in an Uber from Boston to Duxbury, the Boston Globe reported.
Jack Callahan initially claimed he blacked out when his father hit him several times at Crooker Memorial Park, where the father’s body was found in Island Creek Pond according to police.
Scott Callahan was later pronounced dead at a hospital, with prosecutors saying an autopsy found water in the father’s lungs and an abrasion to the back of his head.
Demon called ‘Dirty Dan’
‘He believed he was baptizing his father,’ Plymouth County District Attorney Shanan Buckingham said in court Tuesday. ‘He was holding his father in the pond on his back like a baby and that he continually dunked his head under the water about four to eight times.’
When Scott Callahan began to choke and started fighting back, his son allegedly hit him and pushed ‘his head back down’ into the water, Buckingham said.
‘He did so until his father was floating and no longer struggling,’ the prosecutor said.
The 19-year-old allegedly told cops he was exorcising a demon named ‘Dirty Dan’ and gave his dad a choice to go to heaven with him or hell as they were both in the pond.
‘I believe he chose hell,’ Callahan allegedly told cops.
Buckingham said Jack Callahan had earlier tracked down his father who wasn’t suppose to be drinking at a Boston bar. The father who left a treatment center for alcoholism, was discovered by the son, heavily intoxicated.
But there was more to come.
Fight spilled into pond where son proceeded exorcism
Scott Callahan, who had a previous traumatic brain injury that impacted his ability to make decisions, refused to drive a friend’s truck, so he and his son got into an Uber headed to Duxbury, she said.
But Callahan’s mother told him not to bring her ex-husband to her home, leaving the father and son to head to the park, near the mother’s residence according to WCVB.
Jack said his father while at the park, the father started to hit him, with the fight moving into the pond. Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham said Callahan told investigators he believed he was baptizing his father in the pond to exorcise his demons.
Callahan told investigators he blacked out and when he woke up his father was missing.
The father’s body was found in the water a short time later, about 50 feet away from the shore of the pond.
Callahan’s attorney said a psychologist had spoken with him and determined he was a threat to himself while asking a judge to order a mental competency evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital, the Globe reported.
No comment from a Duxbury teen’s mom, after her son Jack Callahan is arraigned for the murder of his father, found lifeless in a pond. More at noon. pic.twitter.com/Dldx8se70p
— Jonathan Hall (@JHall7news) June 29, 2021
Mental evaluation
‘He’s a very nice young man,’ attorney Kevin Reddington said, adding that the son had no prior criminal record.
‘He comes from a wonderful family … My client had a concern for his father, knowing that he would be drinking and knowing that he shouldn’t be drinking. He was going to try to take him back where he should be.’
The son was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation while in custody, with a Plymouth District Court judge refusing the lawyer’s request to have the son taken to a local hospital for evaluation, CBS Boston reported.
Reports told of the son previously living with a brother in Colorado, only to injure his back and leave a logging job before returning to Duxbury to live with his mother.
Callahan’s mother, who attended Tuesday’s arraignment along with the deacon of her church, declined media overtures when asked for comment.
The son remained held in custody after pleading not guilty to murder. Jack Callahan is scheduled to return to court on August 12.
