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Hartford Courant

January 17, 2002

Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

Drifter gets 60 years for murder of priest

By Bill Leukhardt

A drifter bedeviled for years by paranoia and voices in his head was sentenced Wednesday to 60 years behind bars for beating a Bristol priest to death.

"I'd like to say I'm sorry. I never would have done this if I was in a right state of mind," said a sobbing Michael Ouellette. The three-judge panel, which convicted the stocky ex-Marine of murder in November, gave the harshest sentence possible for the killing of the Rev. Robert J. Lysz inside St. Matthew Church on June 24, 1999.

Parishioners of the Forestville church found Ouellette, disoriented and bloody, wandering around in the sanctuary the next morning, wearing Lysz's clothes. The body of the priest was found in a corner of the church, hidden under a curtain.

Judge Robert C. Leuba spoke for the panel, telling those gathered in New Britain Superior Court that although Ouellette, 35, may suffer from mental illness, his history of violent outbursts and chronic refusal to stay on medication makes him a public danger. Leuba also talked about the viciousness of the crime, how Ouellette beat Lysz to death with a heavy candleholder.

"It's very clear this was a horrific crime. He beat a priest to death in front of the altar of the priest's own church," the judge said. "This crime has had a great impact on the priest's family, friends, the 3,000 families in the parish and the community."

Leuba swept aside the defense contention that Ouellette was so mentally ill that he requires confinement in a psychiatric hospital, not incarceration. The murderer, he said, had enough consciousness of guilt to put a screwdriver in the dead priest's hand, then concoct an alibi that Lysz attacked him first when Ouellette barged into the church seeking shelter.

Before the judges pronounced sentence, they heard from prosecutor Scott Murphy; the victim's brother, Tom Lysz; parishioner Dean Kilbourne; Ouellette's father, Richard Ouellette; and defense attorney Kenneth Simon.

Murphy, Tom Lysz and Kilbourne asked for a long sentence. Kilbourne said the church -- the second-largest in the Hartford archdiocese -- is still grieving for Lysz. Parishioners who had begun working with Lysz to plan a party in 2000 to celebrate his 25th year in the priesthood instead had to bury the spiritual leader they loved, he said.

Richard Ouellette, of New Jersey, apologized for his son's actions on behalf of his wife, Sandra, and himself. He spoke briefly of the couple's struggles to help their son stay sane by getting psychiatric help and medication.

It was a losing battle, Richard Ouellette said, made impossible by medical and criminal justice systems that often do little to help mentally ill people until they commit some terrible act.

It's sad, Ouellette said, that Michael is now the most rational he's been in a decade. And that's only because of the intense help his son got in Connecticut's maximum-security psychiatric hospital.