A now 22-year-old man was convicted of involuntary manslaughter on Thursday in the drowning death of his father in a Duxbury pond as he attempted to “exercise … ‘demonic spirits’” from the older man, prosecutors said in a statement.
Jack Callahan was found guilty by a jury after 25 hours of deliberation and an eight-day trial, Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz’s office said in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter. Callahan had been charged with murder but was not convicted on that charge, with the jury instead finding the man guilty of the lesser charge.
At around 2 a.m. on June 28, 2021, a caller reported Jack Callahan, then 19, was “acting erratically” and his father, Scott Callahan, 57, was missing in the area of Island Creek Pond at Crocker Park, Cruz’s office said. Police went to the Callahan’s Sampson Street residence and found Jack Callahan distraught and hyperventilating.
“He’s missing. I don’t know what happened. I blacked out,” Jack Callahan told first responders, MassLive reported.
Around the same time, first responders found Scott Callahan submerged in the pond. They attempted to save Scott Callahan’s life, and he was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital – Plymouth, where he was pronounced dead, according to Cruz’s office.
Investigators found Jack Callahan had gone to Boston that night to meet up with his father and return to Duxbury, according to the statement. The pair took a ride-share vehicle to Duxbury and were dropped off in the area of the pond, where they got into a physical altercation.
Jack Callahan told investigators that he was trying to exorcise his father’s demonic spirits, one of which he referred to as “Dirty Dan.”
“He went on to state — in this incident at the pond — that he believed he was baptizing his father. He described that he was holding his father in the pond, on his back, like a baby,” prosecutor Shanan Buckingham said. “He continually dunked the father’s head in the water, about four to eight times … When the father started to fight and strike him, he pushed the head back down into the water. He did so until his father was no longer struggling.”
Scott Callahan’s cause of death was drowning, and he had water-logged lungs and an abrasion on his head, prosecutors said.
Jack Callahan will be sentenced on the involuntary manslaughter charge on May 3, according to Cruz’s office.
