Murder in Massachusetts

Caught in a Trap

As Christopher talked, detectives asked him when he saw his mother last.

"Last night," he answered, "because I heard what happened and I wanted to see if she was all right. ..."

He then talked about what he did on the day and night Neil was murdered. At one point, he said he went down to Mrs. O's. The feeling he got when he walked in was that something terrible had happened. "They were looking all glum."

"Smile," Christopher told Rosa and Casey Nicola, hoping, he claimed, to cheer them up.

"Neil's dead!"

"You're fucking kidding me," Christopher claimed he said.

"Hannah crushed his head."

From there, Christopher explained to detectives what he had done for the reminder of the day.

When he was nearly finished, detectives asked him straight up: "Did you have anything to do with Neil Olsen's murder?"

"I had nothing to do with Neil's death," Christopher said defiantly. "We would get into a fight, but I would disappear until he cooled off. Then we would get along again ... The only thing I know about how Neil died is that Hannah stomped on his head. I've known her and she is old. ... All I know is what they told me about Hannah and how they found him."

Later that day, at 4:10 p.m., state police detectives caught up with Christopher again—but this time his story changed. He claimed to have more information he wanted to include in his original statement. Investigators knew Christopher had lied to them earlier. They had seen blood all over Christopher's motel room, in his car, on his clothes.

"Come on, Chris," said one of the detectives, encouraging him to fess up.

We're not stupid.

Christopher looked around the tiny interrogation room. "OK," he said, explaining how he took $50.00 from the restaurant cash drawer, got a motel room on Sunday evening, and left his room at about 10:30.

"I drove up to Skyline," the golf course next to Neil's house.

From there, he parked his car at the top of the driveway, on the edge of the golf course. He walked across the driving range and hopped the fence near the horse field, and then snuck into Hannah's stall.

"I went in through the open garage door [and] stood by the second door. ... I waited until I heard the breezeway door open." That sound was Neil going into the barn to feed Hannah. "I put the butt of the gun on my right shoulder and waited to hear the door open. Then I heard the door open and I closed my eyes and pulled. ... He couldn't see me because it was dark back there but he was looking right at me. I heard a loud bang and then a thud and then I came to and I was walking toward the black truck and down the hill. That truck is Neil's truck. All I remember is pulling the trigger once. ..."

Pressing further, detectives learned Christopher "bought the rifle at a Wal-Mart in New York more than a couple of months ago."

For about the next hour or more, Christopher described the events leading up to (and shortly after) Neil's murder. In pointed detail, he remembered times and places, and the amount of money—"I thought I must have got it from Neil"—he had taken from Neil's pocket: "$186.00." But he continued to tell detectives that he had "blacked out"—"I do that sometimes"—for much of the night. He couldn't recall, for example, going into Neil's pocket and taking the cash; but said he must have, because he didn't know where else the money would have come from.

Then, "at 12:00 ... [on] Monday, I called my mom. ... She said that she thought I should get out of here and leave. She assumed that I had done it. I didn't say anything about that. That was it. I said, 'I'll just talk to you later.'"

Since he had indicated that his mother knew he had murdered Neil, detectives were curious. Was Patricia simply trying to protect her son? Go, get out of here before they catch you. Or was she saying, in not so many words, she was relieved her son had finally done the job?

"When I went to the garage [to kill Neil]," Christopher explained further, "I went there because I wanted to help protect my mother. ... I was first asked about it after my daughter was born, so it would have been towards the end of May [2004]. My mother was saying how she was so upset and wished that things were better and that she wishes me and my sister were back in her life. ... He wasn't violent with her until recently. She never really told me that he hit her, but she portrayed it as if it happened. This last time, beginning on Friday afternoon, he did hit her repeatedly on the back of the head. She told me this."