Man Sentenced to Life for Slaying of Dad and mom and Their Associates

The lady returned to her sister’s home for a forgotten sweatshirt and noticed two drops of blood on the entrance steps.

She opened the door to the Bowdoin, Maine, home and yelled, however nobody answered that April 18, 2023 day, in accordance with a later possible trigger affidavit reviewed by PEOPLE.

Pushing into the door, Lisa Shea noticed shattered glass and extra blood. Strolling into the kitchen, she discovered a person’s physique lined with a towel, who she believed to be her brother-in-law.

There have been additionally “a number of firearms laying out inside the house” and “bullet holes in all places,” in accordance with the affidavit. 

She additionally seen “drag marks” main to a different a part of the house, per the affidavit, however Shea stopped following them and known as 911.

When authorities arrived on the scene, Shea advised detectives that her sister and brother-in-law, Patricia and Robert Eger, and their buddies Cynthia and David Eaton had been awaiting the arrival of the couple’s grownup son, Joseph M. Eaton, from jail.

Each {couples} have been discovered useless on the house.

Lower than two hours after Shea’s 911 name, a trooper arrested Joseph on Interstate 295, following a number of 911 calls relating to a separate taking pictures on the freeway, per the affidavit. He had blood on his fingers, and authorities rapidly named him because the prime suspect within the quadruple murder.

On Monday, July 1, Joseph — who finally pleaded responsible to a string of greater than a dozen costs together with homicide, aggravated tried homicide and elevated aggravated assault — was sentenced to life in jail, in accordance with a courtroom doc obtained by PEOPLE outlining the phrases of his plea.

“I get up daily regretting what I did,” Joseph advised the choose at his sentencing listening to reported by The Related Press. 

“I truthfully assume I deserve worse,” he added of his life sentence, which was the utmost allowable. “All I can say is: I’m sorry.”

Kristina DeRaps, Patricia Eger’s relative, testified on the sentencing listening to.

“He killed the one 4 individuals on this world who truly liked and cared for him,” she mentioned per the AP, calling Joseph “a egocentric little boy.”

Joseph’s lawyer, Andrew Wright, says he pleaded to 17 of the unique 26 costs, agreeing to 5 life sentences. In Maine, a sentence of life imprisonment shouldn’t be a time period of years and there’s no parole “so life is life,” Wright says, noting that his shopper “agreed to a most punishment allowed by legislation.”

Along with the quadruple murder, Joseph admitted to taking pictures at automobiles on Interstate 295 and injuring three extra individuals, per The AP.

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At 10:48 a.m. on April 18, a person known as emergency providers, saying that there was “a suspicious male” who was “standing in the course of the highway waving his fingers with what seemed to be blood on them,” per the affidavit.

Joseph has by no means supplied a motive for the killings. (In December, he withdrew his declare that he was not criminally accountable.)

“He nonetheless doesn’t perceive his actions nor why he did them,” Wright tells PEOPLE. “The case is one with no winners, no classes, simply sorrow and loss for all concerned, together with Joseph.”

Wright says that that they had initially been planning a protection by motive of madness, however that the psychological well being protection within the state is “extraordinarily centered” and that “many individuals affected by critical psychological well being points don’t meet the authorized standards.”

He mentioned that Joseph had made “the morally right choice to take duty and finish the courtroom case so that everybody, together with himself, can start to course of the fallout.”

On the crime scene, authorities discovered an unsigned notice, which was not addressed to anybody, on the kitchen island. Per the affidavit, the author claimed they “needed a brand new life” and “talked about somebody being freed of ache.”

Within the days earlier than the shootings, Joseph posted a number of messages on Fb, wherein he wrote: “Life as a complete is struggling.” 

In a Fb Stay, beforehand reported by PEOPLE, and since taken down, he mentioned forgiveness and talked about his mom within the caption, writing partly: “Thanks for by no means giving up on me I really like u.”