By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Eric Sweeney’s childhood of harrowing abuse, instability, and extreme poverty is the basis for his request of a 40 years to life prison sentence for the murders of his sister-in-law, Kassandra Sweeney, and nephews Benjamin, 4, and Mason, 23 months.
Sweeney’s lawyers, Lauren Prusiner and Morgan Taggart-Hampton, filed a redacted sentencing memorandum Thursday in Merrimack Superior Court a day before the scheduled hearing where Judge John Kissinger will determine Sweeney’s punishment. The portrait the defense team paints is that of an extremely damaged child, broken by his addicted mother’s choices.
“When Eric was Benjamin’s age, he slept on the floor in urine-soaked apartments, next to [Heidi Sweeney’s] drug-addicted paramours. He stood on the street at six years old asking bystanders to buy him food. He wore shoes with the soles coming apart, and worried that any toys he received for Christmas through Toys for Tots would be sold for drug money. Living with [brother] Sean [Sweeney] and Kassandra was so different than the way he grew up, it must have been like entering another world,” the memo states.
Eric Sweeney had just turned 16 when he shot and killed Kassandra and the boys on the morning of Aug. 3, 2022. The shocking crime happened as Sean and Kassandra Sweeney were considering placing Eric in state care after months of tension over his increasingly defiant and aggressive behavior, according to the memo.
The defense team tried to keep their whole memo sealed from the public, but filed the redacted version after prosecutors objected. The State is asking for a sentence of 115 years to Life in prison, effectively a life sentence for three murders.
When Eric was 13, Sean and Kassandra Sweeney filed an emergency petition to take custody away from Heidi Sweeney. Eric grew up without a fixed home, moving between apartments with his mother’s abusive boyfriends, as well as the homes of relatives in Florida. Heidi Sweeney was in and out of jail for much of his young life, and Eric was physically and sexually abused, malnourished, and neglected, the memo states.
Sean and Kassandra tried to get Eric away from his mother previously, but she took her son to Florida in an effort to prevent that, the memo states. The couple decided to act again in 2019 after seeing Eric at the funeral for a family friend where he appeared dirty and malnourished, wearing clothes that were too small and begging different relatives to take him away from his mother.
Even though he was finally in a safe and stable environment, Eric’s behavior worsened after Sean and Kassandra bought a house in Northfield. The move from Laconia separated Eric from the therapists he was seeing, took him away from the friends he had started to make, and required that he change schools.
The defense memo makes the case Sean and Kassandra were ill-equipped to deal with a child with Eric’s complex trauma. Their attempts to instill order often backfired and resulted in worse behavior, leading the couple to consider giving Eric up.
In the months before the murders, Eric got in trouble for ruining $1,000 worth of power tools, for secretly binge eating hundreds of dollars of food every week, and for running away, the memo states. After he ran away in June of 2022, Eric was placed in Hampstead Hospital for a short time.
After Eric left Hampstead, Sean called police in July of 2022 to report Eric had been making strange comments, and that the couple found homemade weapons, pieces of wood with nails or screws driven through them, around the house. Kassandra told one of Eric’s therapists in late July 2022 that his depression seemed to be getting worse.
But days before the murders, Eric told one of his counselors that things were getting better despite the conflicts in the home.
“On July 29, 2022, the FSS worker went to pick up Eric at the house. Eric said he had gone swimming that day and jumped on the trampoline. Because of the tool incident, he was ‘no longer allowed to listen to music, watch television, play video games, or take a walk,’” the memo states. “Eric told the FSS provider that when he came home from Hampstead, he realized how lucky he was to be living with Sean and Kassandra. When he came home ‘his nephews kept telling him how much they missed him and loved him making him tearful.’”
The defense memo does not blame Sean and Kassandra, but argues they were not the right people to take in such a troubled child.
“Sean and Kassandra were simply not equipped to handle a child with thirteen years of trauma built up in him. It would have been difficult for any foster parent. But Sean and Kassandra were in their early twenties. When they took in Eric, they already had a young son, and a year later they had another. They both worked full time, with no child care. At one point, Eric was seeing therapists from three different agencies at the same time: Waypoint, Genesis, [Redacted.] He had appointments five days a week. That would have been overwhelming for any parent,” the memo states.
Throughout his life, Eric’s mental health would generally improve during periods he was not living with Heidi Sweeney. But the mother and son were never separated for long enough, according to the memo. Even after he started living with Sean and Kassandra, Eric would sneak out at night to see her.
“Despite his deep desire to escape the chaos of life with his mother, he found it difficult to cut ties completely,” the memo states.
Even with decades in prison ahead of him, Eric is not escaping his mother. She’s resumed sporadic contact with her son, according to the memo. The court has already ordered that Eric is not permitted to have any contact with his family, except for his mother.