There's still no motive for the violent death of an Irish doctor and the suicide of his killer, reports Ian Kilroy from Boston
Staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston remain shocked and mystified by the violent deaths of two of their colleagues this week. There is still no clear motive to explain why administrative assistant Colleen Mitchell walked into the office of respected Boston-based, Dublin-born cardiologist Dr Brian McGovern and shot him several times before turning the gun on herself. What is now official is that this was a murder-suicide. Beyond that, the Boston Police Department says it is in the dark.
Last Tuesday it was a snowy, freezing cold spring morning in Boston city. Colleen Mitchell, a 51-year-old employee of the hospital, went about her day as usual, giving no sign to colleagues that anything was wrong. She had started work at the hospital as a temp in May 2001. She had moved to Boston from New Jersey, where she had worked as a social worker since 1974. Her move to Massachusetts was brought about by a desire for a change in her life, says long-time friend Chris McDonagh, and nothing more.
To all outward appearances, Mitchell was a happy, content worker at the hospital. She had performed so well as a temp that in December 2002, she was offered a full-time job as an administrative assistant in the electrophysiology laboratory - a section where Dr McGovern was co-director. Colleagues describe her as "capable", "confident", and having "a great sense of humour".
What colleagues didn't know was that in her small, red-bricked apartment in Boston's posh Beacon Hill district, a short walk from the hospital, Mitchell hoarded 40 rounds of ammunition for an unlicensed .38 calibre revolver, the gun that would eventually take both her and 47-year-old Dr McGovern's life.
"There seems to be nothing in her work record or behaviour here that could have led us to predict tragedy," says Jeff Davis, vice-president for human resources at the hospital.
What about Dr McGovern? Was there anything in his background or working relationship with Mitchell that may have led to this terrible tragedy?
Long-time friend, fellow-Dubliner and McGovern's colleague at MGH, Dr David Keane, says this was just an "unpredictable and horrific event".
Eager to refute any suggestion that Mitchell was obsessed with McGovern, as has been reported in some Irish newspapers, Keane says he knew nothing about an obsession. Indeed, Keane says McGovern hardly knew Mitchell.
The picture Keane paints is of a hard-working and dedicated cardiologist. McGovern was seen as one of the best in his field in the US, as well as a teacher at Harvard Medical School. He was, says Keane, close to his wife and two young daughters and was "the least likely person to upset anyone".
According to Keane, McGovern, a native of the Clontarf area of Dublin, was a very successful student at Belvedere College, before going on to study medicine at UCD, where he came first in his class.
McGovern then trained at the Mater Hospital, before moving to the US in 1981 for post-graduate training at MGH, where he stayed on to work. "He was really a family man," says Keane, who describes McGovern as an individual close to his American wife, Anne Jennings, also a doctor.
"This is just a tragedy and the loss of a great person," says Keane, adding, "as you might imagine, we are all still very shocked here".
With no suicide note and no apparent motive, we may never know what made Colleen Mitchell walk into McGovern's office at 10 a.m. last Tuesday morning and fire at him repeatedly. The only thing Boston police know for sure is that she was on the anti-depressant drugs Wellbutrin and Zoloft, which were found with her stockpiled ammunition at her apartment. One Boston Police Department source says that "this appears to be a mental health issue", before adding, "as for her being obsessed with him . . . we know of nothing to back that up".
This tallies with the official line from the police, as offered by spokeswoman Mariellen Burns, who says detectives investigating the case have still not come across a motive. "All we know is that both people are dead," she says. "What we are trying to do now is determine what led up to this."
Yet something must have pushed Mitchell over the edge. As her friend from New Jersey Chris McDonagh says: "something had to snap somewhere along the line".
Suicide is not uncommon among those suffering from depression, but murder is, and most who suffer from depression are helped by the kinds of drugs that Mitchell was on.
But whatever drove her to her crime, and whatever made her choose McGovern as a victim remains a mystery for the moment. At the hospital chapel, a simple inscription in the guest book marks McGovern and Mitchell's passing: "Please remember the two souls who lost their lives in this act of aggression in the hospital today".
- The funeral and burial of Dr Brian McGovern will take place at Saint Rose of Lima Church, Topfield, Massachusetts, on Monday at 10 a.m.