Mike Peters’ worsening mental illness and anger over losing his license may have sparked the Auburn tragedy.

AUBURN – Months ago, the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles questioned James Michael Peters’ competence to drive.

A paranoid schizophrenic, Peters was prone to delusions and raving tantrums when he didn’t take his medication – and he often didn’t, Paul McGrath, his uncle, said.

Peters ignored the first BMV letter. He didn’t ignore the one he got a couple of weeks ago.

“They sent another letter telling him he was going to lose his license on his birthday because he hadn’t responded,” McGrath said. “And he just went off the wall.”

Normally, Peters could be calmed by the solitude of his basement bedroom or soothed by his mother, an often-ill 70-year-old. But his behavior had become increasingly erratic, and this time he could not be placated.

He ranted in the background while his mother called the BMV to plead his case for mental competency. And he later raged while she spoke to McGrath, her brother, for an hour on the phone Thursday night.

“He was all upset. He was screaming and hollering because he lost his license,” said McGrath, who lives in Massachusetts.

The next morning – Peters’ 42nd birthday, the day his license expired – police say he shot his mother in the head with a shotgun. While her body lay in their driveway, he held off Auburn police, tactical officers and a negotiator. He had a number of weapons at his disposal, including an AK-47.

Despite Peters’ long history of mental illness, his refusal to take medication and his volatility, March 30 marked the first time he’d become violent, friends and family say. It was also the last.

After a 17-hour standoff and at least one exchange of gunfire, police raided the tidy Minot Avenue home and found Peters dead.

‘Really nice people’

Margaret, James Michael Peters’ mother, was a smart, artistic child with a spirited streak and a sense of adventure. After graduating from Mount Ida College in Massachusetts, she worked as a medical secretary for the CIA in Washington D.C., in Germany and throughout Europe.

“An indomitable spirit. That’s what she was,” McGrath said in an interview Wednesday.

In Washington D.C., Margaret met Wilbur “Pete” Peters, an equally intelligent, equally adventurous young man who was training to be an electrical engineer. The two fell in love and married in 1955.

In 1961, the couple had their first son, John “Scott” Peters. In 1965, they had James Michael. Growing up, he was known as Michael, or simply Mike.

In 1975, the family bought an old farmhouse on a rural stretch in Durham.

“They were really nice people, awfully nice people. You couldn’t ask for better neighbors or anything,” said Wesley Bennett, who lived down the road. “If you needed anything they were willing to help you.”

Maynard Sprague, another Durham neighbor and friend of the family, knew Pete as a hard worker who traveled a lot for business but enjoyed taking his family hunting, fishing and camping. Sprague knew Margaret as an easy-going woman who liked to bake and spent years working at L.L. Bean.

Sprague regarded young James Michael Peters as “very slow.”

“Michael, he needed more close attention,” said Sprague, whose children often played with the Peters boys. “She (Margaret) wondered if anything ever happened to them, what would ever happen to Michael, who would take care of him.”

As a teenager, Michael was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, his uncle said. When he was on his medication, the mental illness was nearly undetectable. He graduated from Auburn’s Edward Little High School in 1984.

“He always seemed pleased to see you, and friendly, and would enjoy watching the football game with you,” McGrath said.

But it was often a struggle to get Michael to take the drugs. For decades, his father handled the situation.

“He was able to control the son somewhat and make sure he took his medicines,” McGrath said.

But in 2005, a few years after moving to Auburn, the father choked to death. A year later, oldest son Scott died.

Suddenly, Michael and his mother were alone.

“She was very easy going. I don’t think she could control him,” Sprague said.

Tantrums

Margaret was often ill before her husband died, and things only got worse afterward. In recent years she had operations on her back, hip and legs. Home health-care workers came every day to help her get up, take a bath, get dressed.

Michael lived in the basement.

When he was lucid, the arrangement worked. Margaret couldn’t drive, so he would take her to doctors’ appointments and shopping. She made his meals and looked after him.

The little Minot Avenue house was neat, clean, put together.

But when Michael’s mental health declined, life wasn’t so easy.

“He became more and more difficult all the time. That was a tough thing,” McGrath said. “But she was sort of tough, in the sense that she could ride out his temper tantrums, which were becoming more and more frequent, and wait for him to settle down. And then usually he would do what she said after he settled down.”

Auburn neighbors sometimes heard Michael screaming at his mother or shooting a gun behind the house. Some friends of the family have said Margaret referred to her son as an alcoholic, and several Auburn neighbors said they thought he had a drinking problem.

McGrath says Michael wasn’t an alcoholic, that his problems were purely related to schizophrenia. McGrath didn’t know there were guns in the house, but even if he had, he never dreamed Michael would become violent.

“When I was there, and I visited her a lot lately, he would just kind of go into an anger tantrum and them go downstairs to his quarters down in the basement,” McGrath said. “I don’t think he ever hit her or threatened to hit her or anything like that.”

If Margaret did feel threatened, she had a number of places to turn. The state offers an elder abuse hotline. Health-care workers came to the house every day. Her brother called and visited, often taking her out to eat without Michael around.

Everyone agrees that Michael was at least intimidating, though. In recent months, McGrath said, he started refusing to drive his mother anywhere. His outbursts became more frequent. He often claimed that someone was out to get him.

But no matter what, Sprague believes Margaret would never have kicked Michael out.

“You know, when you get elderly, what did she have left? That was her life, her son. I don’t think she wanted to turn her son in or call police and say he’s got a mental disorder,” Sprague said.

Because Margaret could not force Michael to take his medication, friends and family say, his mental health continued to deteriorate. At one point, someone – it had to be a doctor, police officer or family member – called the BMV to say Michael wasn’t competent to drive.

The bureau flagged his license and asked him for a medical evaluation.

Michael didn’t respond to the first letter, McGrath said. Then, shortly before his 42nd birthday, Michael was told his license would be suspended.

The state set the suspension for April 7. But without renewal, his license was scheduled to expire on Friday, March 30, his birthday.

“He just went berserk over that. She called them, called the place (BMV), and said he’s perfectly mentally capable to drive. And in the meantime he’s screaming in the background. He thinks they’re all conspiring against him,” McGrath said.

When McGrath called his sister on Thursday, March 29, he could hear Michael ranting in the background.

Michael was still upset about the license.

“That was kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s back, I think,” McGrath said.

Standoff

The next morning, police got a 911 call about a decapitated body and a man with a gun at 1806 Minot Avenue.

When they arrived just after 10:30 a.m., they found Margaret’s body in the driveway near the garage, a bloody pool around her head.

Michael was inside with the guns.

By 11 a.m. the street was in lockdown. By 1 p.m. a state tactical team covered the house and a police negotiator began talking to Michael over a loudspeaker

“We need to work out what’s gone on and figure out what goes on from here. Let’s do that,” the negotiator said.

Michael came out of the house at least once, holding a gun. Police say he never talked to the negotiator.

McGrath learned about the shooting from another family member. He drove up from Massachusetts, but there was nothing he could do.

Just before 5:30 p.m., there was an exchange of gunfire. Around 3:30 the following morning, when rounds of percussion grenades and tear gas failed to produce a response, police stormed the house. They found Michael dead near a back-room window where he and police had exchanged gunfire that afternoon.

Shortly before dawn, 20 hours after the shooting, police removed Margaret’s body from the driveway.

No blame

Sprague, the Durham neighbor and family friend, didn’t expect violence from Michael. But he also wasn’t surprised.

“I told my wife ‘I can guarantee you that’s Michael in that house.’ And I was 100 percent right,” he said.

McGrath, on the other hand, was stunned.

“He never was violent toward her or anything like that,” he said. “So it was just kind of unbelievable.”

The Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Margaret was killed by a shotgun. It found that Michael was shot in the abdomen and killed by police.

On Wednesday, McGrath drove back to Auburn to make arrangements for his sister and her son. They will have a double funeral Tuesday.

Sprague plans to attend. He doesn’t blame Michael and he wants to say goodbye.

“It’s a mental illness. I have no ill feelings,” Sprague said. “I feel that she’s where she wants to be now. She’s going to be with Pete (her husband) and the son will be right there with them.”

McGrath also refuses to lay blame in the shooting, though he wonders if he could have prevented it.

“Maybe we should have seen the continuing hostility was something that should have been paid more attention to,” he said.

Like Sprague, McGrath won’t place the guilt on Michael.

“How can you blame anybody for it?” he said. “I think if her husband hadn’t died it wouldn’t have happened because he would have made sure he kept his meds. And he would have been able, maybe, to control his anger a little bit more. That’s about it.”