A Massachusetts man allegedly drowned his banker father in a pond during a baptism-style execution three years ago, believing his dad was possessed.
Jack Callahan, 22, stood trial last week for the heinous crime and is accused of killing his father Scott Callahan, Senior Vice President of Texas Capital Bank, in June 2021.
The younger Callahan, who was 19 at the time, claimed his father suffered from alcoholism and had to pick him up in an Uber after suspecting the elder Callahan had been drinking at a Boston bar.
During their ride back home to their Duxbury home, Jack Callahan asked the driver to drop the pair off at the Island Creek Pond pond so he could have a late-night smoke break, but an altercation between the father-son duo broke out.
“He indicated that the victim had been punching him in the face,” Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham said at Callahan’s 2021 arraignment, according to Boston.com.
Jack Callahan told police he thought his father was possessed by a demon called “Dirty Dan” and believed it could be exorcised by dunking his father underwater multiple times.
“He went on to state that in this incident at the pond, he believed he was baptizing his father. He described that he was holding his father in the pond on his back like a baby,” Buckingham said.
Callahan allegedly dunked his father’s head in the water between four eight times before the older man started to cough and choke, that’s when the son brought him out of the water.
“He would lift his head up, and then when the father started to fight and strike him, he would push the head back into the water. He did so until his father was no longer struggling and floating,” the District Attorney said at the time.
Police found the younger Callahan “worked up and distraught,” and at times became so hyperventilated he passed out.
Scott Callahan was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth.
Jack Callahan was arrested and charged with murder.
He has since pleaded not guilty.
