WEST BATH, Maine — A man who confessed to killing both his parents and two of their friends before shooting at motorists on a highway plans to enter a confession Monday that will settle his criminal case, his attorney said.

Joseph Eaton withdrew his insanity defense late last year, and his defense attorney told the Associated Press they expected to “resolve” the quadruple murder charge and other charges during a change of plea hearing.

The public prosecutor's office did not want to comment on a possible agreement before the court hearing.

According to law enforcement officials, Eaton confessed to the killings on a property in rural Bowdoin and wounding three other people as he shot at vehicles on Interstate 295 in Yarmouth. The shootings occurred days after Eaton was released from prison for other crimes. Eaton has been back in prison since his April 2023 arrest near the tumultuous scene along the highway, where traffic came to a standstill as heavily armed police searched for the gunman.

Killed were Eaton's parents, Cynthia Eaton, 62, and David Eaton, 66, and their longtime friends Robert Eger, 72, and Patti Eger, 62, the couple who owned the Bowdoin home where they all lived. The family dog ​​was also killed, leading to animal cruelty charges.

Shortly after the bodies were discovered on April 18, 2023, three people were injured when shots were fired wildly on I-295 in Yarmouth, about 12 miles outside of Portland, Maine's largest city. Eaton faced separate charges because the two shootings occurred at the Bowdoins' home and on the highway in different counties.

Maine State Commissioner of Public Safety Michael Sauschuck called the shootings an “assault on the soul of our state.” But the crime's gravity was surpassed months later when an Army reservist who also lived in Bowdoin killed 18 people at two locations in Lewiston, the state's worst mass shooting.

Eaton's motive for the murders is still unknown to police.

An unsigned note found at the scene, according to an affidavit from the writer, spoke of “someone being released from their pain and that the writer of the note wanted a new life.” Eaton told the Portland Press Herald in jailhouse interviews that he was not in control of his actions at the time of the shootings and did not know why he did them.

Eaton, 35, had a criminal history in Maine, Kansas and Florida and had just finished a prison sentence in Maine for aggravated assault. Eaton's parents were staying with friends in Bowdoin after Cynthia Eaton picked up Joseph Eaton from a Maine prison on April 14.

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