Police Eyeing Infant's Death
Was a son of man held in abuse case
By Caroline Louise Cole, Globe Correspondent
Originally published in The Boston Globe, June 23, 2001
The arrest of a Salisbury man earlier this month on charges that he raped his daughters and beat his wife and sons has prompted the Maine State Police to reopen their file in the death of the couple's 2-month-old boy nine years ago.
Patrick S. McMullen, 37, is being held on $105,000 bail in Middleton Jail on multiple assault and battery charges, including four counts of rape, possession of a stun gun, and disseminating obscene material to a child. He is accused of raping two of his three daughters and repeatedly beating his wife, Christine, and their four sons as he kept them in isolation.
Maine State Police spokesman Stephen H. McCausland said the death of the couple's child, Elijah, in 1992, was ruled as ''undetermined cause'' in an autopsy. Had the child lived, he would be 9 and the second youngest of the children, now 8 to 17.
''Basically, at the time, our medical examiner did not have enough information to determine the cause of death. But in light of what has happened in Massachusetts, we are asking the medical examiner to review his findings,'' McCausland said. He said they are sharing information with Massachusetts authorities.
The family was living in Thorndike, Maine, at the time of the child's death, he said.
The state Department of Social Services, which was granted custody of the children Wednesday, told the Associated Press it was unaware the family had a seventh child.
Salisbury police arrested McMullen last week after his wife left him and filed for a restraining order against him—including a sworn affidavit alleging that her husband had physically and sexually abused their children.
McMullen operated a ramshackle junkyard on the site of a former nightclub that doubled as the family home.
Police say the children—three daughters, ages 8, 13, and 17, and three sons, ages 10, 12, and 15—were all born at home, did not attend school outside the house, and had never seen a doctor in their lives.
Authorities say McMullen was able to perpetrate the abuse behind an 8-foot wooden fence shielding the rental property on Route 1 from the outside world. The windows of the building were covered with heavy blankets and the building was posted with several no trespassing signs.
Neighbors have said the family seemed unusual, but no one reported any evidence of abuse.
McMullen's sister, who lives in Salisbury, persuaded Christine McMullen to leave her brother after visiting the home.
In applying for a restraining order in May, she told Essex District Court that her husband held her and their children as virtual prisoners.
Investigators say Evans was active in the John Birch Society, a group that, according to its Web site, ''exists to preserve freedom by exposing and defeating those forces … which work to create a totalitarian one-world government.''
In Salisbury, the children were their own schoolmates and playmates behind the tall fence, sometimes staying indoors for weeks at a time. Christine McMullen had to ask permission to leave the home and was timed when she went grocery shopping, according to Salisbury police.
Last week, DSS confirmed it had interviewed the family several times in 1995 after school officials in Merrimac, where the family was living at the time, reported the family had not sought official permission to home-school their children.
State officials said social service investigators paid several visits and conducted interviews with the family in 1995, including sessions away from Patrick McMullen. But authorities said no one had reported any domestic violence or sexual assault at the time, the children seemed clean and well cared for, and Christine McMullen never spoke up.
DSS spokeswoman Carol Yelverton has said the agency was concerned that the family had been living in a store, but the family insisted they were living with Christine McMullen's mother.
Sometime in 1995, Christine McMullen connected with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Exeter, N.H.
According to police, she was only allowed to leave the property to go to the church, whose members are known as Mormons; her husband was raised as a Mormon.
Authorities believe church members suspected that McMullen was abusive to his family and encouraged her to go to police.
