Titanic Insanity

Port Angeles is a town of 19,888 people on the northern coast of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, in Clallam County, about two and a half hours north-west of Seattle and roughly two hours by water from Victoria, British Columbia. It grew from a whaling, fishing and shipping village settled in the 1850s, boomed with logging from 1914 and lost its last mill in 1997. In 1998 it was a blue-collar town where families worked in lumber, paper and fishing.

On 11 January 1998 Martin and Michelle McInerney, twenty-two and twenty, brought their three-day-old son Connor home from the hospital. A friend, Byron, came through a heavy snowstorm that evening to show them a board game. Michelle fed the baby on a reclining couch while the others played. Connor grew quiet, then still. Michelle asked whether he was breathing; he was not. Martin called 911 and began CPR just after 7.40 p.m. Paramedics arrived in under four minutes, intubated the baby and could not find a heartbeat. He was blue. this part of the story is covered for now Snow had grounded the helicopters that would have flown Connor to Seattle.

details of the account remain covered until revealed At 9.30 p.m. he judged Connor brain dead and, with the parents' consent, stopped resuscitation. Connor was pronounced dead.

Ten minutes later the emergency nurse Lori Boucher heard a gasp. Connor was breathing four to eight times a minute and his heart was beating. A second nurse, Vicky, counted ten breaths a minute, heard a soft high-pitched noise and watched him grasp her finger. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it On room air Connor's oxygen saturation was 95 per cent and his colour was pink, though he showed no neurological response. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Connor was pronounced dead a second time. The hospital chose not to tell the police, but the story spread and an investigation began. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed He was born in 1964 in Weiser, Idaho, the youngest of six children in a successful family. He was sensitive, self-critical and ashamed of feeling embarrassed by a sister with brain damage. By twelve he had considered suicide with a shotgun but could not think how to make it look like an accident. He did well at school, played football, was twice elected student body president and graduated in the top ten per cent of his class. In 1982 he enrolled at the College of Idaho in Caldwell, then went to the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle after graduating in zoology in 1986. He was lonely and depressed throughout, had crying fits, and spent time dressed in old clothes on Skid Row. In his second year he read the symptoms of chronic depression, recognised himself and was prescribed Prozac.

In the winter of 1990, during a paediatric rotation in Spokane, he reconnected with Debbie Fields, a girl from his home town. They had known each other at school. She was feisty where he was meek, and they balanced each other. He asked her to move in with him in Seattle and she did on 10 February 1990. That year, while she was away for a three-day weekend, he took Unisom in his car; he was found, had his stomach pumped, spent five days in a private hospital and afterwards moved with Debbie to Pennsylvania and then to Port Angeles. Their daughter Anica was born around 1996. In mid-1996 he took a contract job providing emergency physicians to hospitals on the Olympic Peninsula, and they bought a split-level house on five acres on Yellow Rock Lane in the foothills above town for $225,000.

On 1 March 1998 they hired a babysitter and went to see Titanic. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it One scene stayed with him: a deck officer, overwhelmed as passengers rush the lifeboats, shoots a man and then shoots himself. this part of the story is covered for now They came home around ten, having eaten only popcorn and sweets, and neither could sleep. Debbie called her sister Diana about eleven. details of the account remain covered until revealed He then fetched a small baseball bat bought that afternoon and beat her until her teeth broke. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He then cleaned blood from the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, put bloody clothing, bedding and paper towels into bags in the shed and turned the mattress over.

At one o'clock on 2 March Deputy Jefferson Davis found the Subaru sideways in the ditch with the engine running. Debbie had two deep gashes on her forehead and a cast on her leg, but no crutches. Detectives found blood in the car, heel drag marks in the driveway, blood throughout the house, a bloodstained lawn cart and bags of bloody clothing and bedding in the shed, along with a single-bladed axe and the small bat. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed At 4.30 the recorded interview resumed. He then went to the bathroom, took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed himself at least five times, later saying he had aimed for his aorta but missed. He told the officers the voices had told him to do it. He was sedated and put on a respirator. Once he recovered he described the killing in detail.

Prosecutors argued premeditation: the bat and the black bags bought that day, the crash staged to look like an accident, and a $500,000 life insurance policy on Debbie, whose premium he had paid on 23 February, which took effect on the day she died. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The defence argued that chronic depression had produced a psychotic episode and that he was incapable of forming intent. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed A hearing the following week committed him indefinitely to a locked ward at Western State Hospital. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Anica was adopted by Debbie's sister and raised in Colorado.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Connor's parents announced a wrongful death suit. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it