Bethel reeling over three grisly slayings in one year

BETHEL — Murder doesn’t often show up in this quiet corner of Fairfield County.

In the seven years between 2011 and 2017, there was exactly one murder.

The downtown of this sleepy hamlet of about 19,000 people is better known for its statue of P.T. Barnum – the famous showman who was born here – than for violent killings.

But in the past three months two grisly slayings have shaken this “quaint, eclectic, and awesome” Connecticut town, as its Chamber of Commerce website proclaims.

“Second one in three months — Bethel’s getting crazy,” said a bartender at J.Lawrence Downtown in the village’s old Opera House.

The two killings in town also follow the January shooting death of Emily Todd, a local woman killed in Bridgeport by a man she met on an online dating service.

The bartender, who declined to give his name, said he went to high school with Matthew O’Dell, the 40yearold resident police arrested Wednesday after authorities say he shot his brother in the head at the Apollo Road home owned by their mother.

He described O’Dell as a quiet guy in high school who didn’t play sports, and hung around with a small group of friends.

“He wasn’t a troublemaker,” the bartender said.

He added that he hadn’t seen O’Dell in about a decade. He said he didn’t know Richard O’Dell, the 42yearold brother Matthew is accused of killing.

John Fulton, the proprietor of a jewelry store in the town’s center, appeared unperturbed by the backtoback murders

“It’s just the human condition... our whole culture is crazy,” said Fulton, standing in the November cold outside his shop.

“I feel bad for the parents, and the other guy,” said Fulton, who said he heard about the killing on the radio.

Before this year, homicides were uncommon in this picturesque suburb next to Danbury. The last occurred in 2016, when a 56yearold man shot his brotherinlaw and sister with a homemade gun before turning the weapon on himself. “Obviously it’s concerning,” said First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker. He said he did not know the family personally, but extended his condolences to the O’Dells’ mother.

“I’m sure that losing one son and then having her other son arrested for the murder… must have been difficult,” he said, “and I understand she also lost her husband recently.”

He said the common thread in all three of the killings was that they were domestic disputes in which the victims knew the person accused of killing them.

“Personally, I worry about people’s access to help when they need it,” Knickerbocker said.

The details that emerged in this year’s killings seem ripped from ancient Greek theater, or drawn from the works of Alfred Hitchcock.

On Monday, police were called to an Apollo Road home on the northside of Bethel around 6:30 p.m., where a mother told authorities her son had killed himself.

But police soon realized the son’s death was no suicide, and cordoned off the house and its surroundings as a crime scene —a homicide.

As men and women wearing white dust covers over their shoes slipped in and out of the two story home the following morning, Tuesday, neighbors passing through in the street slowed their cars to watch as bags of evidence were taken to the waiting black Major Crimes state police van.

“Do I need to be worried?” asked one woman who stopped and rolled her window down.

“Do you know what’s going on?” asked another.

A young woman who answered the door about a block from the crime scene said her motherinlaw had been texting her updates about the crime as she heard them on a police scanner.

It was a murder, she said. On Wednesday, Bethel Police charged Matthew O’Dell with the murder of his older brother at the Apollo Road home.

The state medical examiner’s office said Richard O’Dell, died from gunshot wounds to the head.

The arrest follows a bizarre series of events in which O’Dell was apprehended by two people in New Milford after he allegedly tried to steal their car.

O’Dell drew a gun during the confrontation, which police later said matched the caliber of spent shell casings found in the Bethel home.

Unarmed, and on the phone with police, the two people overpowered O’Dell, took the alleged murder weapon from him and held him until authorities arrived, Lt. Lee Grabner of the New Milford police said.

It was not the only time a Bethel resident was found slain in their home in recent months.

In August, a man dressed only in a pair of gym shorts and covered in blood walked into the Bethel police station and told a dispatcher he had just killed someone.

The man, later identified as 34yearold David MacDowell, was promptly arrested.

When police arrived at a Plumtrees road home they found a woman lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs with deep stab and laceration wounds. She was pronounced dead at the hospital a short while later.

A Kitchen knife blade, bent and covered in blood, was found in the kitchen.

The bloody knife handle was found near the woman’s body.

MacDowell later told police he had been drinking, and that the woman began making fun of him. He said he could not remember stabbing the woman “but he knew that was what happened,” police said.

In early September, police found MacDowell dead in his cell from an apparent hanging.

Matthew O’Dell