Thursday, 4:30 PM
Friends: family in double murder and suicide never recovered from earlier tragedy
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
REVERE -- Peter A. Allouise Jr. was a caring shepherd to his family, who were scarred by a tragic fire that killed his daughter and in-laws in 1988 in East Boston, neighbors said.
On Monday, Allouise shot and killed his 55-year-old wife, Ann Marie, and his 26-year-old son, Peter M., in their Saugus apartment before turning the gun on himself, authorities said.
Along Pitcairn street, where Allouise grew up and routinely visited his elderly mother, neighbors said Tuesday they were stunned to learn that the gentle, polite 60-year-old man was responsible for the deaths of the two people seemingly closest to him.
But at the same time, they saw Allouise struggling for years with a daunting burden. His wife and son were so disturbed by the fatal fire that they relied solely on him for all their care, friends said.
"He had nobody else," said Ralph DiCicco, who has known the Allouise family for 20 years. "I don’t think he could take it anymore."
Ann Marie Allouise took a variety of medications and could hold only brief conversations before abruptly breaking off and starting to pace, neighbors said. Her parents, Michael and Anna Delprete, died in the fire on Everett Street in East Boston, as did two other women. Iris Allouise, who was 11, was revived at the scene but died a month later from burns over 97 percent of her body, officials said at the time.
Neighbors said that their son was not mentally challenged, as some believed. Instead, he was so damaged after surviving the flames that killed his older sister and his maternal grandparents that he seemed like an adolescent, not a man in his mid-20s, neighbors said.
"It was a constant strain," said James K. Quinn, who lived near Allouise’s mother, Florence, for the past decade. "They were very dependent on him. ... But you never thought anything like that would happen."
After 29 years working for General Electric as an assembler at its jet engine plant in Lynn, they said, Allouise was going to retire later this year. His mother, whom he visited every morning on Pitcairn Street after work, recently suffered a stroke and has gone to live with a sister, friends said.
According to a spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett, Allouise shot his wife and son inside their apartment in the Avalon at Stevens Pond apartment complex in Saugus shortly after 2 p.m. He then called Saugus police and asked that a cruiser be sent to his home and hung up on a dispatcher when asked why police were needed.
Police then made their grim discovery. Allouise left behind a note -- the contents of which authorities would not disclose -- and some 50 legally owned firearms.
