The father of a Bedford woman who allegedly killed her mother and herself in a car Thursday morning had been open about his struggles with mental illness, and on the day of the killings, a ceremony was scheduled to be held in his memory at an annual event at Bedford’s Community Mental Health Center, according to social media posts.
Jessica Cavallaro is accused of shooting and killing her mother, Thelma Tatten, and her father, Mark Cavallaro, Thursday morning with her live-in boyfriend’s gun. The suspect and her parents had been planning to go out to breakfast when the shootings occurred. According to a police report filed in Concord District Court, Cavallaro had left work early that morning and told her boyfriend’s father she was having a panic attack.
The “TJ Tatten and MC Cavalaro” Facebook page, which featured photos of Jessica Cavalaro, began raising funds in April for a walk organized by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in which Mark Cavalaro was registered to participate. In posts and fundraisers on the page, Mark Cavalaro wrote that he has suffered from social anxiety and bipolar disorder since he was 12 years old.
“Being around people is a huge struggle for me,” Cavallaro wrote, adding that she found refuge at the Edinburg Center, a community mental health center in Bedford. She wrote that the sessions she attended taught her “how to feel better about myself in real, positive ways,” and that she began teaching a guitar group there.
“Without their support, none of this would have been possible,” Cavallaro said.
Mark Cavallaro was killed just hours before he was to be honored at the center’s annual “Night of Shining Stars” on Thursday.
A Facebook post on Wednesday included his name, along with 19 others, on a list of the center’s shining star recipients.
Jessica Cavallaro was arraigned Thursday afternoon in Concord District Court on charges of murder, assault with a dangerous weapon causing serious injury and two counts of possession of a firearm without a license.
Cavallaro is being held without bail pending a pretrial hearing in August, where he will undergo a mental evaluation at the request of his attorney.
During a brief court hearing, Assistant District Attorney Susan Weisman said Bedford police were called to Washington Street around 9 a.m. Thursday by the owner of the home where Cavallaro lived, who reported the incident.
The homeowner told police the gun used in the murder was still in the car Cavallaro’s parents were in.
When police arrived at 11 Washington Street, they found two people, later identified as Mark Cavallaro and Thelma Tatten, unconscious in the two front seats of a car with gunshot wounds to the head.
Tatten was pronounced dead at the scene, while Cavallaro was taken to a local hospital where he later died.
Wiseman told Judge Lynn C. Brendemuhl that Jessica Cavallaro had gone to work “as usual” early Thursday morning and then suddenly returned home.
Cavallaro then got into a car to go to breakfast with his parents, where he shot and killed them, prosecutors said.
“She came back home and confessed to killing her parents,” Wiseman said.
Prosecutors said Jessica Cavallaro has no criminal history.
Her attorney, Lorenzo Perez, did not oppose prosecutors’ request to hold her without bail.
Speaking to reporters after the indictment was filed, the defendants called the incident a tragedy but said little information was immediately available.
“It’s really mind-boggling and difficult to comprehend because there is absolutely no information,” Perez said. “There is just a lack of information here. It’s a heartbreaking tragedy, but there is a lack of information.”
Daniella Teixeira, who now lives in Billerica, told MassLive on Friday that she lived near the Cavallaro family on Gennetti Street in Bedford for about five years, and during that time, she said the Cavallaros seemed like a “normal family.”
“There was nothing strange about them,” she said.
