Thursday, December 28, 2000
Alleged gunman once worked at Maine Yankee
By JOSHUA L. WEINSTEIN, Portland Press Herald Writer

© 2000 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. He is a monster now, a man whose name will be lumped with Klebold and Whitman.

But before Tuesday, before he was accused of killing seven of his colleagues at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, Mass., Michael McDermott was a fairly normal guy – a U.S. Navy veteran who worked for Maine Yankee in Wiscasset in the 1980s.

"He wasn't necessarily outgoing, but he was a sociable enough, amiable fellow," John Harvey, who was in maintenance for 25 years at the nuclear power plant, said Wednesday. "I can't remember anything negative about him."

John McArdle, a New Hampshire resident, also confirmed McDermott's employment at Maine Yankee. He served with McDermott aboard the USS Narwhal, a submarine, and remembers him well.

"He was an average guy, he was a good sailor, he did his job . . . he was very competent," McArdle said.

"All I can tell you for a fact is, he is an individual who, in an earlier life, was willing to put his life on the line for the rest of the people in the country in the Cold War and go into harm's way and to uphold the Constitution of the country and he did that voluntarily.

"Something has happened to him, and I'm not going to defend what he allegedly did, but the man that I knew and I served with was an upstanding man."

When McArdle left the submarine, his colleagues aboard signed a photograph for him.

"John Henry," McDermott wrote, "good luck in civ land. McDermott." Civ stands for civilian.

McArdle last saw McDermott in 1987, when McDermott was working for Maine Yankee.

McArdle was working for Yankee Atomic Electric Co.'s Nuclear Services Division, and was in Maine as a consultant to Maine Yankee.

He was at the company's office in Augusta one day when he saw McDermott.

"He said, 'Hey, John Henry, how are you?' " recalled McArdle. The two reminisced for a while and McDermott explained that he was working for Maine Yankee.

About 10 years later, in 1997, McDermott posted a notice on a Web site for the Narwhal, remembering the encounter:

"I ran into John Henry McArdle about ten years ago," he wrote. "I was working at Maine Yankee and I think he was with Yankee Atomic (?) . . . I do research and development for Duracell Batteries now. . . .Well, I came back to the land of my youth and married a childhood friend. Lasted three and a half years before she split."

Eric Howes, a spokesman for Maine Yankee, said a Michael McDermott worked at the plant from 1982 to 1988 as an auxiliary power plant operator. He said plant officials could not confirm that it was the McDermott accused of the murders.

But McArdle is certain it's the same person.

He remembered him from the submarine and remembered him from the encounter in Augusta. He also remembers McDermott's nickname – "Mucko."

"It's sad," McArdle said. "I hear people saying they ought to kill him . . . If this had been somebody else I did not have a personal knowledge of, I'd probably be saying the same thing. But I go back to knowing something happened to this guy.

"Something happened, and sadly . . . the results of this are seven people that aren't coming home again."