"Lattimore said
Diaz attended the institute sessions
three times a week for nearly two
months, from mid-March through the end
of April. Lattimore said Diaz complained
constantly that the
anti-depressants he took didn't allow
him to sleep.
She said Diaz
talked about the problems with his
girlfriend and his drinking, but rarely
mentioned his daughter or that he was a
gulf war veteran, even though other Army
personnel were present at the sessions."
After his arrest for drunken driving
in March, Victor Diaz sat in a room
at the Institute of Living
psychiatric treatment facility three
times a week and told a bunch of
strangers how angry he was at
himself for the way he was treating
his girlfriend, Ciara McDermott.
"The love he had for her was obvious
- that's all he talked about," said
Arthurine Lattimore, a Hartford
pastor who was one of about 14
people in the counseling sessions
Diaz attended in March and April.
Lattimore said Diaz often talked
about the arguments he had with
McDermott.
"He was not happy with himself for
the way he was treating her,"
Lattimore said, adding many times
Diaz ominously said "something bad
is going to happen."
Diaz did not mention McDermott's
name often in the sessions, usually
referring to her as his girlfriend,
but Lattimore said she got a knot in
her stomach when she turned on the
radio on the morning of Nov. 22 and
heard that a state trooper had
killed his ex-girlfriend.
"I didn't even have to hear the
names and I knew it was Victor," she
said. "I had never met him before
and never saw him again after those
sessions but I could tell he was a
tortured soul."
What made Victor Diaz lie in wait
for several hours for Newington
police Officer McDermott to return
to her West Hartford house and kill
her may never be fully known.
But an examination of court records
and interviews with Diaz's friends
and state police authorities shows
that the Persian Gulf War veteran's
downward spiral began with the March
drunken-driving arrest in Cromwell.
Over the next nine months, Diaz
underwent counseling at the
institute; the mother of his child
sought to limit his visitation
rights and gain more child support;
and he lost his girlfriend -
McDermott moved out of the
Middletown condominium they had been
sharing.
In the days before the shooting,
Diaz learned he was about to be
arrested by West Hartford police for
illegally using a state police
computer to identify the owner of a
car parked in McDermott's driveway.
He also learned he would be the
subject of a second state police
internal affairs investigation - one
that probably would cost him the job
he loved.
West Hartford police are still
investigating the murder/suicide and
are expected to release a final
report early this week. Sources said
the investigation has been delayed
to obtain Diaz's cellphone records,
in an effort to determine whom he
called before the slaying, and to
get a toxicology report from the
state medical examiner's office.
And state police are reviewing their
actions involving Diaz since his DUI
arrest, state Public Safety
Commissioner Leonard Boyle said.
Among those actions was returning
the weapon Diaz ultimately used to
kill McDermott to his brother, Edwin
Diaz. State police had confiscated
Victor Diaz's .40-caliber Glock - a
private gun, and not his
police-issued weapon - after he was
arrested in Cromwell. They kept it
until his criminal case ended in
July, then on July 7 signed the gun
over to Edwin Diaz, who happened to
be living with Victor at the time.
Boyle said that because Victor Diaz
was a police officer he did not need
a permit for the off-duty gun, but
that once he was arrested he no
longer had police powers and
therefore could not keep it without
a permit. Although the criminal case
had concluded by July 7, Diaz was
still on administrative duty.
Boyle said it was likely state
police were unaware that Victor
Diaz, who had a gun permit, was
living with his brother.
"We have to look back and see if we
could have done some things better,"
Boyle said. "We're concerned about
the stress level of troopers. We
have an early intervention program
in place and we are in the process
of reviewing it. We're going to
improve the program to include a
more robust counseling portion to it
to make sure that troopers get the
help they need."
After Diaz was arrested in Cromwell,
Karen Roche, the mother of his
5-year-old daughter, went back to
Superior Court in Hartford to change
his visitation rights and to seek
more money, records show.
Diaz had been paying $100 a week in
child support since acknowledging
the child was his in February 2000.
As of July 2004 he also had almost
joint custody of the child, keeping
her from Wednesday night to Saturday
night. But Roche's action made it
likely that that was going to
change.
While some people who knew Diaz said
he was concerned about losing access
to his daughter, Roche's attorney,
David Mester, said the changes had
more to do with school schedules
than anything else.
"Karen recognized from the very
beginning that Victor and [the
child] were very close and she
always acknowledged that," Mester
said.
Mester said both Roche and the
child, who "clearly loved her dad,"
are having a hard time dealing with
Diaz's death. He said Diaz last saw
his daughter on the weekend before
the homicide.
Sources said Diaz attended the
counseling sessions at the institute
as a pre-emptive strike to help
resolve his drunken-driving case
more quickly. It apparently helped:
He received accelerated
rehabilitation, a special form of
probation, in April from a Superior
Court judge in Middletown.
Lattimore said Diaz attended the
institute sessions three times a
week for nearly two months, from
mid-March through the end of April.
Lattimore said Diaz complained
constantly that the anti-depressants
he took didn't allow him to sleep.
She said Diaz talked about the
problems with his girlfriend and his
drinking, but rarely mentioned his
daughter or that he was a gulf war
veteran, even though other Army
personnel were present at the
sessions.
Institute officials would not
comment on whether Diaz attended
counseling there. Boyle said state
police officials had no idea Diaz
attended counseling at the facility.
Diaz, 37, became a state trooper in
January 1998 after spending three
years as a state correction officer.
He was a 1987 graduate of Hall High
School in West Hartford, where he
excelled in football and was known
as a good student.
Not long after completing high
school, Diaz joined the Army and
fought in the gulf war. He returned
to his family's Hartford home and
became a correction officer.
McDermott, 30, followed in the
footsteps of her father, Peter, a
police officer for more than 25
years in West Hartford and Windsor.
She joined the Newington Police
Department eight years ago and was
appointed to the town's youth adult
council, groomed as a crisis
negotiator and, ultimately, became
the youth officer at Newington High
School.
Her death hit current and former
students at the high school
particularly hard. Many attended her
funeral; others wrote eulogies on a
website established by McDermott's
family in her memory.
"Officer McDermott was the most
compassionate woman I have ever
known," one former student wrote.
"I'm a 2003 graduate from Newington
High School. If it wasn't for her I
would have never made it out of
school.
"She wrote me a quote in my high
school yearbook: `We are about as
happy as we make up our minds to
be.' I keep it in a picture frame
which is always right next to me."
It's unclear how and when Diaz and
McDermott met, or how long they
dated. Many friends contacted by The
Courant were reluctant to share
those details so soon after the
tragedy.
At some point, they were living
together in a Middletown
condominium, and then in May 2005
she bought the Ridgewood road home
in West Hartford. It's unclear if
her plans to buy a house developed
after Diaz's arrest in Cromwell or
if they had originally planned to
buy the house together.
About three weeks before the murder,
Diaz noticed a new car sitting in
McDermott's driveway. He called a
state police employee at Troop H to
look up the license plate on the
car, an illegal action. He
discovered that the car belonged to
James DeLuca, a West Hartford police
officer.
Diaz began making harassing phone
calls to McDermott, who originally
filed harassment charges against him
with West Hartford police, but later
decided not to pursue them.
The criminal investigation
continued, because of the
computer-use issue, but why she did
not want to go forward with the
other charges is another mystery.
Diaz found out five days before the
shootings that West Hartford police
had a warrant for his arrest . It
could not have been much of a
surprise, as sources said he
admitted to West Hartford detectives
he had accessed DeLuca's license
plate through a state police
computer.
At nearly the same time, Diaz
received a letter from the state
police indicating he was going to be
the subject of another internal
affairs investigation for misusing
the computer. Because he was already
serving a 60-day suspension as a
result of the drunken-driving
arrest, Diaz probably suspected the
new probe would end his state police
career, a fact that acquaintances
said would have devastated him more
than being arrested.
"He was looking at losing his
daughter, losing his job and losing
his girlfriend. There was a lot of
pressure bearing down on him,"
another friend said.
Sources said police originally
wanted Diaz to turn himself in on
Nov. 18, a Friday afternoon, but
because his attorney, Jeffrey Ment,
was involved in a trial in Waterbury
and couldn't make it back to West
Hartford in time, an agreement was
reached to have Diaz come to police
headquarters at 6 p.m. on Monday,
Nov. 21.
Diaz instead drove his car to
Wolcott Park, far enough from
McDermott's home that she would not
notice he was there when she came
home from work. He then walked to
her home, entered it and logged on
to her computer sometime around 1
p.m. Then he went upstairs to a
second-floor bedroom and waited.
When McDermott came home about three
hours later, she grabbed her laptop,
but before she could finish logging
on Diaz shot her three times in the
head and chest with the Glock state
police had returned to his brother.
He then made at least three phone
calls from inside her house,
including one to Ment indicating he
would not be showing up at police
headquarters to turn himself in.
Then he went back upstairs and shot
himself once in the head.
Many of McDermott's friends have
been trying to figure out why the
tragedy happened and how the
relationship spiraled to such a
violent end, claiming the lives of
two police officers in their primes.
"There is something to be loved in
all of us and Ciara saw what that
was in Vic," a friend said. "No one
should ever underestimate the pain
of others and that sometimes love
isn't enough in a relationship, yet
sometimes it is too much."