“Raymond and Debra Lees had been having marital problems for some time. Last month, troopers were called to the house where the couple lived with their five children to investigate a verbal dispute.
Neighbors said they were aware of discord in the home off Creek Road; but no one could have foreseen the tragedy that unfolded this week.
After arranging for the kids to be picked up at school and kept away from home, Raymond Lees repeatedly bashed his wife’s head with a baseball bat, then killed himself by attaching a hose to the exhaust pipe of his car, State Police said Wednesday.
The incident, which authorities said occurred sometime Tuesday afternoon, has left 49-year-old Debra Lees fighting for her life at Albany Medical Center Hospital, where she was listed in critical condition Wednesday, hospital officials said.
“She’s touch and go,” Capt. William Sprague of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation at Troop G said. The case is being handled as an attempted murder-suicide, he said.
Debra Lees was struck in the head multiple times, State Police Lt. Scott Coburn said. Despite severe head trauma, including cracks to her skull in several places, doctors are hopeful she pulls through, Trooper Maureen Tuffey said.
Raymond Lees, 50, was pronounced dead on Tuesday at 6:10 p.m. at Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown. He was a respiratory therapist at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. His wife is a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Amsterdam, officials said. The family lived at 1164 Creek Road.
Coburn said a neighbor called 911 around 5 p.m. after finding Raymond Lees in a car parked behind the house, Coburn said. State Police from the Princetown barracks arrived to find him unresponsive.
Not long after that Troopers found Debra Lees lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, Coburn said. A bat was recovered at the scene, he said.
The couple was married for several years and their children’s ages range from 7 to 15. The family lived in New Jersey before moving to Duanesburg about eight years ago, police said.
Investigators believe Raymond Lees methodically plotted the attack. He called the Duanesburg school district and told officials there not to let the Lees children board the school bus. Instead, he said someone would pick them up and then called two family friends and asked that they pick up the kids but not to take them to the house, Coburn said.
One of the friends did pick up the children, but the other friend — a neighbor — became suspicious and at 5 p.m. sent her husband to check the house. He found Lees in the car, which was parked in the back of the house with the motor running, and called 911, Coburn said.
On the door was a big sign “asking the kids not to come in and to call police,” Coburn said.
Neighbors who answered their doors Wednesday were reluctant to talk about the family. One, however, contacted by phone Wednesday evening declined to give her name but said, “They fight a lot, those two. I never dreamed he would go that far.”
Authorities had been to the home before, Coburn said. On Nov. 14 State Police responded to reports of an argument there.
“It’s absolutely tragic,” said Duanesburg Central School District Superintendent Christine Crowley. “For the entire district, from the school board and down to faculty and staff, our main concern is looking out for the students and what’s best for them. Our focus is on providing counseling and whatever we need to do for the children.”
The school district set up a fund for the children late Wednesday.
State Police said Raymond Lees’ family lives in New Jersey. Family members were on their way to the Capital Region Wednesday. Debra Lees has a brother nearby who is caring for the kids, but officials declined to release his name.
Carol Carlson, a civilian crime victims’ specialist who works for the State Police at Troop G is in daily contact with the children, Tuffey said.
Meanwhile, St. Mary’s Hospital released a statement saying the staff “is saddened by the news of the recent tragedy involving Debra Lees and her family. 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.”
Ellis Hospital spokeswoman Donna Evans said the only information she has about “Raymond Herbert Lees” is that he was a part-time respiratory therapist who had worked at the hospital in Schenectady for a year and a half. He had been a licensed respiratory therapist since Dec. 2001, records show.
Troopers spent Wednesday afternoon removing items from the house — a duplex converted into a single-family house that sits back from the rural road across from a large field with grazing horses.
Children’s bikes were stacked up against the house, and white Christmas lights adorned two tall shrub trees on either side of the house.
DeMare can be reached at 454-5431 or by e-mail at cdemare@timesunion.com.”
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DeMare, Carol and Lauren Stanforth. Times Union 13 December 2007.