A 22-year-old man has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the drowning of his father during an exorcism-style baptism in a pond in Massachusetts nearly three years ago.
On Thursday, after an eight-day trial and about 25 hours of deliberation, a jury found Jack Callahan guilty in the killing of 57-year-old Scott Callahan, Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said in a news release.
According to prosecutors, in the early hours of June 28, 2021, police in Duxbury received a call to report that Jack Callahan, who was 19 at the time, was “acting erratically,” and that his father was missing near a pond at Crocker Park.
When first responders arrived at the scene, a residence on Sampson St., they found the son “distraught and hyperventilating.”
Around the same time, officers responded to another call and found the father submerged in the pond. He was pronounced dead later at a nearby hospital.
After an investigation, Massachusetts State Police and Duxbury Police detectives determined the young Callahan had traveled to Boston to pick up his father, who was being treated for alcohol abuse.
They hired a ride-share car to go back to Duxbury but were dropped off near Island Creek Pond “where a physical altercation took place between the father and son,” police said.
The teenager then submerged his father “under the water several times,” saying he was “baptizing” him because he saw the “demon” in his eyes.
The son “continued to submerge his father’s head until Scott Callahan no longer fought back or floated,” authorities said.
“[Jack Callahan] believed he was baptizing his father. He described holding him on his back like a baby, that he continually dunked the father’s head in the water four to eight times,” Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham said in June 2021, local television station WCVB reported. “He did so until his father was no longer struggling and floating.”
The victim’s cause of death was drowning, and the manner of death was homicide. The state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported Scott Callahan had water in his lungs and an abrasion on his head.
Jack Callahan was later arrested on a murder charge but pleaded not guilty.
He’s scheduled to be sentenced on May 3.
