Cassandra Harrington

In the winter of 1975, six-year-old Cassandra Harrington, a young White girl, lived in Detroit, Michigan, with her nine-year-old sister, Pamela, and their mother, Becky. Their lives were tragically cut short in an act of violence that would reverberate through their family and the city for decades to come. The person responsible was the one who should have been their protector: their father, Detroit police officer Paul Harrington.

On the evening of December 15, 1975, a devastating sequence of events unfolded. Paul Harrington, who had recently separated from his 28-year-old wife, Becky, went to the home where she and their two daughters were staying. Armed with his police service revolver, he shot and killed all three of them. Immediately after the killings, Harrington turned himself in to the authorities and led them to the scene of the triple homicide. He was arrested and subsequently fired from the Detroit Police Department.

The case against Paul Harrington centered on his mental state. A Vietnam veteran, Harrington was reportedly haunted by his experiences in the war, including a raid where he had killed a mother and her children. His family noted that he was never the same after returning from service. He struggled with alcohol and had sought psychiatric help, expressing fears that he might harm his family or himself. A psychiatrist had advised him to stay with his family over the holidays, a recommendation that proved fatal. After his arrest, Harrington was held in a psychiatric institution for 17 months leading up to his trial.

In 1977, in a decision that stunned many, Recorder's Court Judge Susan Borman found Paul Harrington not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment. However, his commitment was extraordinarily brief. After less than two months, doctors assessed him as no longer being a danger to himself or others, and he was released. A free man just over a year and a half after taking three lives, Harrington later sued his psychiatrist for not hospitalizing him prior to the murders and received a settlement.

For more than two decades, Harrington lived a new life. He remarried in 1982 and had two sons. By the late 1990s, however, his life was again unraveling. He was facing financial pressure, had lost his job, and was unable to afford the medication for his ongoing anxiety and depression. The cycle of tragedy was about to repeat itself in a horrifying echo of the past.

On October 15, 1999, Paul Harrington murdered his second wife, Wanda, and their three-year-old son, Brian. He had borrowed a gun from a neighbor the night before. Just as he had done 24 years earlier, he called 911 to confess. When police arrived, he told them, "The same thing happened in 1975. They should have put me away then." This time, the legal system would not be so lenient. Though his defense again argued insanity, prosecutors pointed to the premeditation of borrowing the gun. A jury rejected the insanity defense and found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. In late 2000, Paul Harrington was sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison without the possibility of parole, finally bringing an end to his capacity to harm his own family.