Trial begins for man accused of killing father

CARIBOU – The murder trial of a Masardis and Ashland man charged in the shooting, beating and stabbing death of his father nearly 18 months ago started Monday morning in Aroostook County Superior Court.

Michael D. MacDonald, 27, has pleaded not guilty to the charge as well as a charge of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. He has also pleaded not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. He has been held in the Aroostook County Jail at Houlton since he gave himself up in the early morning hours of April 22, 2004, just hours after his father’s body was found.

It is alleged that he shot his father, Michael E. MacDonald, 58, in the elder MacDonald’s home on the evening of April 21. It is alleged that after shooting his father with his own 20-gauge shotgun, he beat him with the butt of the firearm, and then stabbed him in the back more than a dozen times.

Police found the elder MacDonald lying facedown in a large pool of blood on the off-white linoleum next to the cabinets in the kitchen of his modest Route 11 bungalow in Masardis. He had been shot in the side of his face, his head was bashed and his back was covered with stab wounds.

Both MacDonalds worked at the Levesque Sawmill in Masardis.

The alleged killer got rides with several friends before making it to the Aroostook County Jail a few minutes past midnight April 22. One friend drove him from Ashland to his father’s home, and others gave him rides from Sheridan, just north of Ashland, to Presque Isle and then to Houlton.

The state medical examiner has said that the elder MacDonald died of a shotgun wound, blunt force trauma to the head, and multiple stab wounds.

A friend of MacDonald Jr., Billy Jack Curtis, 31, who is serving time for violation of bail, said he gave the younger MacDonald a ride to his father’s house in Masardis from Ashland on the pretense that MacDonald was going there to get some clothes. The elder MacDonald had thrown his son out of the house days earlier.

While waiting for the younger MacDonald in the driveway of his father’s house, Curtis said he heard a “loud noise … that sounded like a slamming screen door or a gun.”

“A minute later, I saw him [through a window] standing, with something long and black, bashing something on the floor,” he testified. “He did that 10 or 15 times.

“It seemed unusual,” he testified. “I did nothing. He turned off the lights in the house and came to the car. I noticed blood on his hands.”

He testified that MacDonald also had dark stains on his clothing.

After dropping off MacDonald at a friend’s house, Curtis said he went to his own son’s house, where he called 911.

He said MacDonald seemed out of breath when he came out of his father’s house. He also said MacDonald had no clothes with him – the original reason for the visit – and that he would get them at a later date.

In his opening statement, Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson said MacDonald has been found to have a schizo-effective disorder, but he had “consciousness of guilt,” and it was “anger that made him kill his father.”

Benson said he has 19 witnesses to be presented in the jury-waived trial that could last until Thursday.

Defense Attorney James Dunleavy of Presque Isle said his client was diagnosed with schizophrenic disease and that he was also “delusional … had hallucinations … and was hearing voices” at the time of the incident nearly 18 months ago.

His attorneys, including Eugene McLaughlin, also of Presque Isle, told the court their client was on medication, three different ones, and that he had been hospitalized at both Presque Isle and Fort Fairfield because of his mental illness.

MacDonald, dressed in gray T-shirt and pants from the Aroostook County Jail had manacles on his feet and sat in court nearly motionless through the first day. He watched the proceedings with large eyes, his mouth agape most of the time.

It was contended several times in court that MacDonald may have been molested by his father as he grew up.

Other friends and acquaintances of the younger MacDonald testified that he had asked them for a bullet or some steel – meaning a gun or knife – and that they remembered seeing him with dark stains on his clothing and shoeless.

Police believe he left his hiking boots inside his father’s home because they were stained with his father’s blood. A seven-minute video made by detectives at the scene showed a large number of bloody shoe prints in the elder MacDonald’s home.

Several friends described MacDonald as a person who joked around and was friendly. After the incident at his father’s home, he became quiet, saying little.

At one point, Dustin Oaks, another friend who drove MacDonald from Sheridan to Presque Isle, asked if the Maine State Police cruisers they met on the drive had something to do with him.

“He said, ‘yes,'” Oaks testified. “He would not tell me why. He said we would find out in the morning.”

Several Maine State Police troopers and detectives testified about what they found at the elder MacDonald’s home, the firearms they gathered, the blood samples they found and a pair of hiking boots found in the living room area of the house.