Karl Ek, right, appears in District Court yesterday, charged in the killing of his longtime roommate.

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The Providence Journal / John Freidah

NARRAGANSETT — With his roommate bleeding and slumped over a computer, 65-year-old Karl R. Ek called the police Monday night and told a dispatcher that he’d just fired a gun and blown his friend’s “head off,” a prosecutor testified yesterday in District Court.

Ek said he’d killed his friend, that he “had to kill him” and that “he killed him with a .22-caliber handgun,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Regine told the judge.

A longtime Narragansett resident who graduated from Brown University and later became a lobsterman, Ek was held without bail yesterday on charges of murder and discharging a firearm while committing a crime of violence, murder.

The victim was Ek’s longtime friend and roommate, John M. Capuano, 46, who according to friends and neighbors had lived with Ek for decades in the shingled ranch at 69 Circuit Drive in Narragansett’s north end.

Before that, Capuano had worked on Ek’s lobster boats, and Ek took him in after selling the boats, neighbors said.

“He took care of John,” said Ed Holden, who has lived across the street since 1978.

But if the two were friends, it was a friendship marked by bickering, fighting, yelling, drinking and calls to the police, neighbors said.

In one 2004 incident, the police said a drunken Capuano threatened Ek with a loaded M-11 9mm machine gun.

Capuano later pleaded no contest and was placed on five years’ probation, according to court records. He was also ordered to get alcohol counseling and mental-health counseling, and, for a time, to stay away from Ek. Police Chief Joseph T. Little Jr., recalling that incident yesterday, said officers had to surround and enter the house in a SWAT-like manner before they arrested Capuano.

It was that sort of behavior, with Capuano abusing the man who was letting him stay in his home, that made Monday night’s incident all the more shocking, friends and neighbors said.

“I thought for sure, if anybody got hurt, it was going to be Karl,” Holden said. “But I think he just took as much as he could.”

According to the Narragansett police log, Ek’s call to the dispatcher came in at 9:59 p.m. Minutes later, firefighters pronounced Capuano dead at the scene, Little said. He had been shot in the back of the head, according to Regine.

Officers recovered the gun, a Colt semiautomatic, but Little said he was not sure yesterday who owns it.

Taken to court shortly before noon yesterday, Ek wore a white, one-piece jumpsuit provided by the police because his own clothes had been seized as evidence. He answered yes when Judge Walter Gorman asked him if he understood the charges, but he wasn’t sure when Gorman asked if he wanted to hire a lawyer or have the state provide one.

“I haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I think I probably should go with the public defender to begin with. Is that possible?”

Gorman said he would refer Ek to the public defender’s office with the understanding that he will be represented if he cannot afford his own lawyer.

Gorman then scheduled a bail review hearing for next Wednesday.

Each of the charges against Ek carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, said Michael Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, which is working with Narragansett police in the investigation.

Healey said the case might be tried as a domestic-related murder, given the domestic-assault charge against Capuano in the 2004 incident and what was, at times, a romantic relationship between Ek and Capuano.

While Ek owned lobster boats for many years and employed crews that included Capuano, he started out with journalistic leanings, and reported for The Providence Journal during the summers of 1966 and 1967.

According his February 1966 job application, he graduated from the East Providence school system in 1960 and graduated from Brown University in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. His application also indicates that he worked for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette for 20 months and worked as a reporter for Reuters International in South Africa, for two months.

The application also indicates that he was a member of the Narragansett Boat Club.

It was because of his lobster boats that Ek would find himself in the news in 1979. At the time, the Navy was investigating the theft of an estimated $7,000 to $14,000 in lobsters and equipment that one of Ek’s boats had placed 100 miles offshore. Two Navy officers were later found guilty.

Neighbors said the house on Circuit Drive has been in Ek’s family for at least three generations. His father restored antique furniture and taught the trade to his son, who in turn had taught it to Capuano, with the two of them working in a garage next to the house, neighbors said.

But Doreen Parente, a visiting nurse who cares for one of Ek’s friends, said it was her understanding that their friendship had recently taken a turn for the worse.

“I know Karl was very depressed over the whole situation,” she said.

Little, who responded to the scene Monday night, said officers arrested Ek without incident.

“He came out of the house and readily gave up,” he said.

—With reports from staff writer Donita Naylor.

redgar@projo.com