Murder in Massachusetts

More Witnesses

On February 9, Trooper Stephen Jones, who had been involved in the case since day one, along with Lieutenant Patricia Driscoll, brought in the father of Amanda's boyfriend. They had gotten word he had spoken to Patricia on a number of occasions. Why not see if he had any valuable information?

Amanda's boyfriend's father had run into some hard times recently, admitting in his statement that he had been a "recovering drug addict ... [who had fallen] off the wagon ..." He said he had returned from Bike Week a while back only to find Amanda staying at his house. At that time, Christopher, he said, was also living there.

"He owed my son a bunch of money, so I told my son to throw him out. I came home one day and found him packing a bunch of stuff. ..."

When he saw Christopher packing his things, he told him to put them back in the house. Collateral. Christopher could come and get them as soon as he paid his son back.

So the man then walked Christopher out to his car to be sure he didn't take anything with him.

"One of the things he had in his car," the man noticed, "was the gun. It was a .22 rifle."

Christopher, thinking the guy was going to ask him for it, said at that point, "Can I keep the gun?"

The man was a convicted felon as it was. He couldn't have guns in the house. "Keep it," he told Christopher.

When police asked him about Patricia, the man said she "upset Amanda a lot." He often saw Amanda crying after she'd had a conversation with her mother. On a few occasions, he said, he had spoken to Patricia himself on the telephone.

"She was kind of flirty with me on the phone." One time, Patricia told him, Neil "was abusive and beat me."

"Why don't you just leave him then?" the guy claimed he told Patricia. It seemed like the obvious thing to do. Divorce the guy and take him to the cleaners on grounds of the abuse. Women did it all the time.

"I can't because of our businesses," Patricia supposedly responded.

The day before detectives questioned the man, he said Amanda was in her room crying. So he walked in and asked her what the problem was; he hated seeing her like that. Amanda was routinely depressed. He knew it was Patricia causing it. He felt helpless. Now with Christopher and Patricia under arrest in connection with Neil's murder, Amanda was doubly shaken, but also confused about what to do.

In a tearful reply, Amanda looked at him and said, "I think my mom pressured Chris into killing Neil."

"Well," the man told her, "you should do whatever you can live with. If Pat had something to do with it, then it did not seem fair to let Chris take the full brunt of it."