Kevin M Duggan

Diagnoses

Passions

Vocation

American homicide; committed murder on 10/25/1992 while on a drug binge. An unemployed carpenter, for 12 years he lived "off and on" next door to Clark University genetics professor Margaret Comer. He often did handyman jobs for the 50-year-old professor. In recent months he had moved back with the neighbors after he broke up with his girl friend. A crack freak, he was on a binge the night he broke into Comer's house to rob her, or steal what he could for drug money. When the professor discovered him in the house, he bludgeoned her with a baseball bat and strangled her with a stereo wire. Agonized and remorseful, he went out to her car and made a half hearted effort to kill himself. Three days later, he was arrested. He had stolen her car and checkbook and his fingerprints were everywhere. Duggan was diagnosed as seriously depressed and suicidal, drug-addicted but not mentally ill. As a kid, a few months before his seventh birthday, his mom, dad and brother had all died in sequence, and loss was always painfully difficult for him to handle.