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A successful US banker was drowned in a pond during an alledged “exorcism” by his son, who believed his father was possessed by a demon called ‘Dirty Dan’.

Jack Callahan, 22, has now denied murdering his father, Scott Callahan, 57, whose body was found floating in water around 50 kilometres from Boston, Massachusetts.

At the time of his death, Scott Callahan had been receiving treatment for an alcohol addiction but had checked himself out, and travelled to a bar in Boston. After the son’s arrest, the boy claimed that he had plunged his father’s head underwater in a bid to rid him of ‘Dirty Dan’, telling officers: “I left him there to decide, you can come to heaven with me or hell. I think he chose hell.”

The son had travelled in an Uber to collect him and return him to the family home, but asked the driver to pull over for him to smoke a cigarette when they were near a pond. The younger Callahan then claimed his father had begun to attack him by repeatedly punching him.

“He went on to state that in this incident at the pond, he believed he was baptising his father,” Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham said at Callahan’s arraignment.

“He described that he was holding his father in the pond on his back like a baby, that he continually dunked the father’s head in the water about four to eight times, that when the father started to cough and choke, he would lift his head up,” Buckingham said. “And then when the father started to fight and strike him, he would push the head back into the water.”

Jack’s mother contacted the police after he arrived home in soaking wet clothes and informed her that his father was missing. The kid claimed that he had “blacked out” during the ordeal.

Callahan’s attorney had previously asked the judge for the then-teenager to be sent to a hospital for a mental health evaluation, warning that he was a danger to himself. He has pleaded not guilty to his father’s murder.

The whole ‘demon’ story sounds a bit far-fetched. The boy obviously has issues, and his father’s drinking after leaving rehab might have just pushed him over the edge. There’s no reason to drag Dirty Dan into this.

[source:independent]