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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.