ROCKPORT — The Greater Rockport community gathered atop Beech Hill on Thursday night to remember Elizabeth “Buffy” Krause, a woman known for generosity and kindness who police say died at the hands of her son last week.

With views of Penobscot Bay islands to the east and mountains to the west, more than 150 people turned out to honor Krause, one of the four people whom police say 22-year-old Orion Krause killed on Sept. 8.

Bob Cleveland, a deacon at St. Brendan the Navigator church in Camden, said Beech Hill was a place where Buffy Krause, 60, loved to spend time.

“I can imagine on a cool evening, Buffy walking up the path, perhaps alone, sitting in the silence of the stones and looking out over the vast beauty of the world and finding some solace,” Cleveland said.

He called on those who gathered for the commemoration of her life to harness their power for healing in the wake of the devastating crime in which she; her parents, Frank Darby Lackey III, 89, and Elizabeth Lackey, 85, both of Common Street in Groton, Massachusetts; and the grandparents’ caretaker, Bertha Mae Parker, 68, of Groton, were killed at the Lackeys’ home.

The victims were bludgeoned to death, the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office said, and the bat believed to have been used in the attack was recovered at the crime scene.

“We come together to share the experience of pain and suffering that we never saw coming and can never understand,” he said.

Cleveland said that those in attendance are not powerless, but need to claim the power that is within them through the gift of healing, for the community and for the family ripped apart and the lives lost.

After Cleveland spoke, there were several minutes of silence and the sun set as people lit candles. The silence was broken only by the sound of peepers, crickets and leaves rustling in a gentle breeze.

After a few minutes, a man in the crowd spoke.

“God bless you Buffy. God bless you Lexi. God bless you Cooper. And God bless you Orion,” he said.

Orion Krause is being held at Bridgewater State Hospital in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, without bail, where he will undergo a psychiatric evaluation. He is next scheduled to appear in court on Oct. 30, but could appear earlier if the competency evaluation is done before that date.

A motive for the killings has not been revealed, and the police report about the case was sealed by Judge Margaret Guzman at a hearing this week in Ayer District Court in Ayer, Massachusetts.

The district attorney’s office said the Rockport man left the family home in Maine on the evening of Sept. 7 and made a telephone call to his mother that raised unspecified concerns to the point that she called police in Rockport.

He left in his vehicle, but later called his mother from the Boston area saying he needed a ride back to Rockport.

She picked him up Sept. 8 at an unspecified location in the Boston area and while initially planning to return to Maine, they instead decided to go to the grandparents’ home about 40 miles northwest of Boston in Groton, the district attorney said.

Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said Orion Krause made a telephone call Friday afternoon to someone he knew, and that person, whom she did not identify, was sufficiently concerned to contact Krause’s family members. Soon after, Groton police received a call from neighbors of the Lackeys reporting that the 22-year-old Krause was at their home.

Various media outlets in Massachusetts reported that the neighbors said Orion Krause arrived at their home naked, covered in mud, with some blood on him, and admitted murdering four people.

Though the district attorney did not identify whom Orion Krause had called, a law enforcement official who spoke to the Courier-Gazette in Rockland said Krause called a professor at Oberlin College & Conservatory in Ohio, the school he graduated from in May. The official was not authorized to disclose the information and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Orion Krause grew up in Rockport, and graduated from Camden Hills Regional High School in Rockport in 2013 before attending Oberlin, where he majored in music, specifically in jazz and drums.

He has no criminal record in Maine. Chief Randy Gagne of the Camden and Rockport departments said Monday that the Rockport department has had two involvements with Orion Krause, neither of which was criminal in nature. One was the call last Thursday night from his mother concerned about his well-being and the other was a year ago. The chief said he could not offer any additional information on the prior call.

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