“In an attack that was planned carefully, a medical specialist bludgeoned his wife with a baseball bat and then killed himself, police said Wednesday.
Raymond Lees, 50, made calls to ensure the couple’s five children would not be home. He even left a note on the door of the couple’s home at 1164 Creek Road: “Don’t come in. Call police.”
Authorities responded after one of the people Raymond Lees called became suspicious.
Despite the planning, the target of his rage survived. Debra Lees was found unconscious, lying in a pool of blood on her bathroom floor.
“There was clearly premeditation on the part of Raymond Lees,” state police Lt. Scott Coburn said at a Wednesday news conference. The couple had been having martial difficulties for about a year, he said, and police had been called to the home just last month.
The problems exploded sometime late Tuesday afternoon when Raymond Lees hit his wife, a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Amsterdam, several times in the head with a baseball bat. She suffered a skull fracture and brain trauma in the attack and is being treated at Albany Medical Center Hospital. Police speculated the fracture relieved swelling of her brain, keeping her alive long enough for help to come.
“She’s still alive,” state police spokeswoman Trooper Maureen Tuffey said late Wednesday afternoon. “We are hopeful she will make it.” Debra Lees was listed in critical condition, Tuffey said.
On Wednesday, police were trying to piece together a timeline of events and said they were not sure if the couple had a fight immediately before Lees carried out the brutal attack.
But, police said, Raymond Lees’ plan apparently began to show itself at about 3:40 p.m. Tuesday, when he called Duanesburg schools to notify them to not put his children on the school bus home. They had a ride with a family friend, he told the school. He also asked his next-door neighbor to pick up the children, who are ages 7 to 15, at school.
The children on Wednesday were staying with their mother’s brother, Tuffey said. He is the only family member living in the area.
Police speculated Raymond Lees made the calls and wrote the note because he didn’t want his children coming into the house and finding their mother after the attack.
NEIGHBOR SUSPICIOUS
They said it was the wife of the neighbor who Raymond Lees called who became suspicious when Lees didn’t want his children to go home. She called her husband, who called 911, and state police in Princetown were dispatched to the residence at 4:59 p.m. Tuesday to answer a report of an attempted suicide.
When police arrived, they discovered Raymond Lees unresponsive in his running vehicle parked behind his residence. He had run a hose from the exhaust pipe into the vehicle and had placed a bag over his head.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate him and he was taken by Esperance Ambulance to Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, where he was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. Tuesday.
Inside the house, police discovered Debra Lees on the floor of the downstairs bathroom. Police said it appeared she had begun decorating for Christmas.
Police said it wasn’t clear if Raymond Lees had a prior criminal record. There was no indication the couple’s children were physically abused, Coburn said.
Police described the couple as having “standard marital type problems” for about a year. On Nov. 14, state police were called to the home for a domestic complaint, but no physical violence was reported and the case was closed.
A neighbor, however, described the couple’s problems as dating back further. Joan Hyland said she didn’t know either very well. They had lived on the road about five or six years.
She quoted another neighbor as describing an incident where Debra Lees came outside screaming for help. However, Hyland said, she didn’t witness that herself.
“It was a known fact that they did a fair amount of fighting,” Hyland said. “But I didn’t think it would lead to this.”
Hyland said she invited the family over once, but didn’t do so again.
She also recalled one time, about two years after the Lees family moved in, that Raymond leaped in front of her husband’s car.
“He said ‘We’ve lived here for two years and we’re not friends, so I thought I’d meet you,’ ” Hyland said. “My husband said, ‘The way to meet me is not to fly in front of my car.’ ”
Police said Raymond and Debra met in New Jersey. They lived in Jackson, N.J., for several years and moved to Duanesburg about eight years ago.
Raymond Lees worked at Ellis Hospital as a respiratory therapist. He had been licensed by the state in that field since December 2001, state records show. Donna Evans, spokeswoman at Ellis Hospital, said Lees worked part time at the hospital for a year and a half and worked mostly weekends.
Debra Lees has been licensed as a registered nurse since 1979, state records show.
Both had previously been registered in New Jersey; their licenses expired there in 2002.
Debra Lees has worked at St. Mary’s for five years as a maternity nurse, hospital officials confi rmed in a statement.
“The staff of St. Mary’s Hospital at Amsterdam is saddened by the news of the recent tragedy involving Debra Lees and her family,” the statement read. “Debra has been an RN in our Maternity Services Department and has befriended many in her five-year tenure. Our thoughts and prayers are with Debra and her family at this most difficult time.”
PETER R. BARBER/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER A state trooper keeps watch over the house at 1164 Creek Road in Esperance, where an attempted murder-suicide took place early Wednesday.”
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Bryce, Jill and Steven Cook. Schenectady Daily Gazette 13 December 2007.