Six years after her son's murder, Debbie O'Brien is finally going through the things he left behind, touching each object, carefully storing what she wants, and letting the rest go.
His baby shoes she will keep - she's had them bronzed. Winter coats and sweaters have been donated to the homeless shelters. His old stereo and guitar went out with the trash.
On Thursday, O'Brien and her husband, Jay, took care of one more thing. The mother and father from Kennebunk watched as the gun used to kill Devin O'Brien was cut into useless pieces by a state firearms examiner.
Staff photo by John Ewing
Jay and Debbie O'Brien, the parents of Devin O'Brien, watch as the murder weapon is sliced up.
Under a year-old law, handguns used in homicides must be destroyed when they are no longer needed as evidence. In the past they were auctioned off with other seized firearms. It was a change that Debbie O'Brien fought for in the halls of the Legislature, and was one of her biggest victories as an activist for Maine crime victims.
That phase of her life ended with the destruction of the gun. "I feel done," she said. "All the activism I have done has kept my son alive. Now I need to grieve."
The nickel-plated .22-caliber handgun looked harmless as it was clamped in a vise at the Maine State Police garage in Augusta. Slicing it in pieces took only a couple of minutes, and what was left would hardly be noticed when it is dumped in the trash. For the victim's mother, the tiny size of the handgun made it even more sinister.
Staff photo by John Ewing
Pieces of the .22-caliber handgun used to kill Devin O'Brien lay on a workbench Thursday at the Maine State Police garage in Augusta. The weapon was cut into pieces as required by a year-old state law.
"I expected some big ugly threatening object, but instead it looked like a toy," she said. "If my son ever saw this thing, he would not think this is a real gun."
Early one morning in April 1996, Steven Schoff of Alfred and Devin O'Brien, 20, two strangers who met in a Biddeford bar, drove to a gravel pit in Lyman. There, for reasons no one will probably ever understand, Schoff shot O'Brien to death and stuffed his body into the trunk of his car, where it was found when he was arrested a few hours later.
Schoff pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 28 years in prison, a sentence he is now serving. The O'Briens attended every court appearance from arraignment to sentencing. They also sued Schoff for wrongful death, and in 2000 won a $210,000 judgment they never expect to collect. They pressured prosecutors to punish Schoff for smuggling hacksaw blades into the York County Jail, adding six months to his sentence last year.
As the case worked through the system, Debbie O'Brien became involved with the families of other murder victims and attended countless hearings on their court cases, offering advice and support. The dining room of her home became an office where O'Brien worked the phone constantly, calling families, reporters and government officials.
Paula Baker was the victims' advocate for the Attorney General's Office back then. She remembers meeting a family that was "devastated and immobile," but said O'Brien seemed to gain energy and force each time she was asked to attend a trial or learn about the justice system.
Cheerful and outgoing, O'Brien became a courthouse regular. Her husband, who is quieter, supported her work behind the scenes. "When something horrific happens in your life, it almost gives you a certain authority to speak to the public, and you really feel almost obligated to use that," Jay O'Brien said Thursday. "And there is a therapeutic value in trying to make something good come out of it."
Baker said Debbie O'Brien, who has worked with the families of more than 300 murder victims, may have used her work to hide her pain. "Although she may smile," Baker said, "this is a broken-hearted woman who has suffered tremendously."
The O'Briens immersed themselves in every aspect of the case, even choosing to look at crime scene photos showing their son's body. O'Brien said the experience was not the horror she expected.
"When I saw the picture of Devin, his eyes were open and what I saw were his beautiful eyes and his hair," she said. "Yes, he was dead, but that's my handsome son."
O'Brien became a board member of Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence, and showed Devin's bullet-scarred jacket to a crowd at a Portland rally.
Her work with that group brought her to Augusta in 2001, to speak in support of a series of gun-control bills. During the testimony on one bill, she realized that the gun Schoff used to kill her son probably would be sold to a dealer when it was no longer needed as evidence.
"Are you saying to me that the gun that killed Devin is still around?" O'Brien recalled asking a state police official at the hearing. "I didn't quite get it until that moment. I knew about the bill, but I didn't think that they meant Devin's gun."
The Department of Public Safety opposed the bill, saying that seized guns are sold back to federally licensed dealers and used to cut costs for the state when it buys weapons for its officers. The Criminal Justice Committee gave the bill an unfavorable recommendation, and it appeared destined for the same swift defeat suffered by all of the other gun-control bills presented to the Legislature.
But O'Brien proposed amending it so only guns used in homicides would be destroyed. It was not a political strategy, she said. It was only meant to give peace to the relatively small number of people who lose a loved one to murder.
"I'm not against guns and wasn't before," she said. "Truly, I am against the violence, not the handguns. But I was sickened by the thought that that gun would be put back on the street."
Jay O'Brien said Thursday that he too wanted the gun destroyed. "The killer put that gun right to the back of our son's head and fired," he said. "This isn't about gun control; it's just the right thing to do. It has destroyed too many lives already."
Debbie O'Brien camped out in the halls of the State House, making her case to senators and representatives of both parties even after the measure fell four votes short in a preliminary House vote. An amendment, which would return a stolen gun used in a killing to its rightful owner, was added and the bill passed. Gov. Angus King signed it and it became law.
It remains the single legislative victory for the two-year-old gun-control group.
"It was a small symbolic step toward reducing gun violence in Maine," said Cathie Whittenberg, who represented Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence at the gun destruction Thursday. "We'll be back in Augusta next session."
They will be there without O'Brien. She will remain a member of Parents of Murdered Children, but will no longer serve as its chairwoman. For now she plans to leave the lobbying to others, and except for talking to groups of adult and juvenile prisoners, she plans to focus on her family. Her daughter, Erin, is finishing college, and her husband is battling prostate cancer.
And she will finally have time to finish going through the boxes in her attic. They are all she has left of her son, who would have turned 27 this summer.
"He was a good kid, not perfect, but good," she said. "He could make you laugh. We miss him every day."