A Mother's Duty

Molly McIntyre was put to the ultimate test: to choose between loyalty to her family and her strong sense of justice.

Correspondent Susan Spencer reports on an unusual case involving family members who found themselves on both sides of the law.

But never in her darkest moments did she imagine what would happen when they grew up.

In 1974, her husband was killed by a drunken driver. "When I lost him, I lost my best friend and my partner. It was tough," she recalls.

She had two young boys to raise on her own. "Patrick was a year and a month to the day," she recalls. "And Todd was just shy of 5."

So McIntyre got a job, a very demanding one: she became a cop. "I just loved it," she says. "I wanted to be a superhero."

With her passion for cracking tough cases and getting bad guys off the street, McIntyre became a hero in her tight-knit community of Vero Beach, Fla.

But in 1997, McIntyre's sense of duty and justice was put to a cruel test. A murder case pitted her lifelong commitment to law and order against her love for her child.

On Oct. 7, at 3:15 a.m., a fire broke out in the top floor of a building. Her son, Todd, then 28, was sound asleep in his apartment below.

"I woke up to a bright light coming through the window," says Todd McIntyre. "I heard some noise outside. I thought maybe it was rain falling."

He tried in vain to get to his neighbor and friend Nicole Damatt on the floor above him.

"By the time I got to the apartment, it was engulfed in flames," says Todd McIntyre. "It was amazing."

So he just had to escape to save his own life.

Not only was Damatt dead, but when Molly McIntyre's fellow officers investigated, the evidence held a surprise: Damatt had been strangled before the fire was set.

Because Todd McIntyre was at the scene, suspicion first turned to him. "My alibi was I was sleeping from 1:30. That's when I remember going to sleep," he says.

Police looked as well at his younger brother Patrick, who also knew Nicole and who had a troubled past.

"Fingers started being pointed at my brother," Todd McIntyre says. "I started getting it from all sides, and I didn't want to hear it....In my mind, my brother wouldn't do that; he wouldn't set that place on fire with me asleep downstairs."

Both Todd and his mother had long been protective of Patrick - even five years ago when he was convicted of raping a woman he knew.

This time, Molly McIntyre's instincts were different. From the beginning, she had gnawing doubts about Patrick. "Maybe in the back of my mind, I may have had a suspicion that first day," she says.

As her colleagues investigated, McIntyre's experience as a detectiv made her suspicious of her son's behavior and of a cut on his finger.

When did she start thinking her son was guilty? "It was a point of maybe, an imprecise bit of recognition coming through from a subconscious type of thing, like, Is this possible?" she says.

The fire in Damatt's apartment had been so intense, there was virtually nothing left to link Patrick, Todd or anyone else to the scene.

"The heat was incredible," says Sgt. Danny Cook, a long-time colleague of Molly McIntyre's. "There's a few metals that were completely melted."

For two months, Molly McIntyre kept quiet. With no hard evidence, the case was at a virtual standstill until Patrick McIntyre was brought to the county jail on another charge: attempted rape. Suddenly, the worried mother decided she had to talk to her son.

"The only thing in my mind was he did this, and I need for him to tell the truth," says Molly McIntyre. "He needs for him to tell the truth."

She shared her plan with her other son. "I agonized over telling Todd because I didn't want to break his heart," she recalls.

"I'm totally...denying he would set that fire with me asleep downstairs," says Todd McIntyre. This was "first and foremost in my mind talking to detectives, to friends, talking to relatives."

Recalls his mother: "He looked at me. He said, 'Do you think Patrick killed Nicole?' and I said, 'I don't think that, Todd. I know that.'"

"He broke down," she adds.

The next day a distressed Molly McIntyre went to a jailhouse conference room to meet with her troubled son.

"I told him...that I loved him," she says. "And this is something I've told both the boys their whole lives. I may not like what they do. But they're my sons, and I love them. And they could trust me above all else."

Patrick McIntyre seemed to know the reason for the visit, according to his mother. "I told him that...that he needed to tell the truth...to try to keep him off of the electric chair...to save his soul."

"Without the truth, he had no prayer," she says.

"I was a mother," she says. "That was my primary job. Sometimes I just failed to recognize that. But at this point in time, that was my only job." Heartbroken, she still perceived him as her son, she says.

Says her son Todd: "When I got in there, he was, you know, he was a wreck. And I immediately broke down, and we just, you know, we held each other as we never had before."

"And just cried for a long, long time," he adds.

McIntyre's colleague Sgt. Cook took Patrick McIntyre's confession. "I left that room, and I approached Molly," he says. "I really didn't know what to say - other than 'I'm sorry.' What do you say?"

Of course other parents might observe: She was sure but there was no evidence. And absent her doing anything, maybe this would have just blown over.

"t could very well have," she says. "But for how long? Until he did it again."

With a confession given, Damatt's mother had answers to agonizing questions. And prosecutors had a case - a death penalty case.

"Our biggest concern was they're going to - just hang him," Todd McIntyre recalls.

Read on to find out Molly McIntyre's role in Patrick McIntyre's trial.

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