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NORFOLK - Authorities say a man believed to have had a history of mental illness may have beaten his father to death before killing himself in his parents' home on Stony Road.

Edmund J. Brabants Jr., 46, of North Attleboro, is suspected of killing his 68-year-old father and namesake at 3 Stony Road, a quiet cul-de-sac of three neatly kept homes off Beaverbrook Road, authorities said Thursday.

Authorities were called to the house about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, when the tragedy was discovered by another family member.

A distraught family member who lives next door declined comment Thursday.

Authorities do not have a motive. "This is just a sad and horrific event for the family to have to go through," Norfolk Police Lt. John Carroll said.

Carroll said the son was dropped off at the father's house Tuesday night to watch the Boston Celtics basketball game. His mother, Marie Brabants, was not home, Carroll said.

"We'll never know if there was an argument," Carroll said.

Preliminary autopsy results by the state Medical Examiner's Office determined that the father died of blunt force trauma, and confirmed the death was a homicide, said David Traub, a spokesman for the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office.

The son's cause of death remains undetermined pending toxicology tests.

Traub said final autopsy results are not expected for several weeks.

Carroll said investigators arrived to find that the father had been beaten about the head with a flashlight and was also stabbed in the torso and leg.

Neighbors said the elder Edmund Brabants and his wife moved into the neighborhood only six months ago - next door to another son, Mike, and his family.

Edmund Brabants Jr. was married and lived at 31 Cottage St. in North Attleboro with his wife, Hom.

The incident is believed to have occurred earlier on Wednesday, several hours before the bodies were discovered, authorities said. The Norfolk police department, state police detectives assigned to the district attorney's office and State Police Crime Scene Services investigated the incident.

Authorities did not leave the home until about 2 a.m. Thursday.

The apparent murder-suicide is the first homicide in town in about 12 years.

A 22-year-old Foxboro man, Jayson Linksy-Milhomme, was stabbed to death at a Halloween party on Campbell Street in 1996.

John Tague, then 26, of Bellingham, is serving a life sentence without parole for stabbing Linksy-Milhomme after Tague and his friends were kicked out of the party.