• Drinking becomes partner in crime
• When parent drinks, children can suffer nightmarish neglect
• Homicide victims, 1991-97

The May birthday celebration began just after supper with a case of beer and a bottle of cinnamon-flavored schnapps. It ended a few hours after midnight with a deadly threat and a shotgun blast.

After eight hours of drinking, Eric Stack's birthday revelry soured when his wife refused to give him the car keys just before 2 a.m.

Stack, police say, struck his wife Joan in the face and pushed her to the ground a couple of times in the back yard of their Westbrook home.

Frightened, Joan Stack ran from her husband and went inside. Her 16-year-old son Nate listened from his bedroom, police say, as Stack came into the house, loaded a shotgun and threatened to kill his mom.

''Run,'' Stack told his wife, pointing the gun at her. ''You're so stupid.''

''I prayed for God to stop this,'' Joan Stack wrote in her May 17 police statement. ''When he told me to run, I was afraid he was going to shoot me.''

Stack fired out the window instead. As he got in his car and left, his wife and a neighbor called police.

This wasn't the first time her husband had assaulted her, Joan Stack, 41, told police.

''His drinking has gotten bad this winter,'' she explained. ''Worse than ever before.''

Police later found Stack at a friend's apartment at 3:45 a.m. They spotted him through a second-story window. He sat at a table, his hands gripping a half-gallon jug of vodka. His blood-alcohol level 0.15 percent, Stack, 29, was jailed and has since been indicted on charges of assault, criminal threatening and two counts of reckless conduct.

As in the Stack case, police routinely find alcohol abuse in homes where partners punch, kick, beat and threaten each other with guns.

''Virtually every domestic case we see, there's alcohol involved,'' says Meg Elam, Cumberland County deputy district attorney. ''The victim will often tell us, 'He's a really nice guy when he's not drinking.' ''

Nationally, alcohol is found in 50 to 60 percent of domestic violence cases. Studies show that one-third to one-half of all batterers are reported to be problem drinkers.

The Press Herald reviewed 230 domestic violence police reports during the first six months of 1997 in Westbrook and the initial three months of the same year in Portland to see how often alcohol played a role in family assaults. In 161 of the cases, or 70 percent of the time, the person accused of assault had been drinking. In 74 cases, or 32 percent of the time, the victim had been drinking as well. There were four cases in which only the victim had consumed liquor.

While domestic violence experts say alcohol is not the cause of abusive behavior, it can foster aggressiveness and irrational thinking.

''Alcohol distorts emotions, thinking patterns and puts people out of control,'' says Larry Tyler, director of a Rockland intervention program for batterers. ''A person who's drinking is more apt to act impulsively, without thinking through the consequences of the behavior.''

Alcohol also helps wash away the batterers' guilt and remorse, allowing them to continue their abusive assaults.

''If they drink after they've been abusive, they don't have to reflect on their behavior in a responsible way,'' Tyler says.

When batterers get drunk, it often takes very little for them to lose control.

They misinterpret conversations. They break into a rage over the weather, losing their nasal spray or being denied sex.

• On an April night earlier this year, a pregnant woman's fiance beat her bloody for mentioning his cousin, who just got released from prison.

  Just after 1 a.m., Portland Police raced to the Pine Tree Shopping Center after receiving reports of a woman bleeding in the parking lot.

  Eight months pregnant, a steady stream of blood poured from Sharon Parker's head. Her fiance, Timothy Stanley, staggered away from her as police arrived. He reeked of alcohol and his shirt, pants and hands were saturated in blood.

  When an officer asked him what happened, he replied: ''I don't know.''

  Parker explained that she had been driving Stanley and his cousin to Westbrook.

  In conversation, she remarked that his cousin had just gotten out of prison.

  Upon hearing his relative's name, Stanley struck her in the face.

  ''He slapped me in the right eye,'' she said. ''I pulled over in the parking lot. Then he went crazy, punching me over and over in the face and in the stomach. I was scared because I thought that the baby might be hurt.''

  Stanley was later convicted of assault and was placed on probation for a year.

• On a gray, cold January evening, a Westbrook couple beat each other bloody after listening to the television weather forecaster predict more rain and snow.

  When police arrived at the Seavey Street apartment, they found Bill Reardon, 40, with cuts on his face, neck and nose. His live-in girlfriend, Janice Kullman, 37, washed blood off her hands in the bathroom.

  She told police they'd both been drinking all day and began brawling after the 6 p.m. weather forecast.

  Reardon got annoyed and started cursing when he heard the weatherman say more rain and snow was on the way.

  ''He got hostile,'' Kullman told police. ''He grabbed me, threw me to the floor and pulled my hair out.''

  She hit and kicked Reardon, she said, trying to get him off her.

  Westbrook Officer Michael Brown charged each of them with assault.

  ''There is a long history of a these two assaulting each other and never cooperating with police,'' Brown wrote in his report.

  This case would be no diffrent. The charges against the couple have since been dismissed.

• Drunk and unable to find his nasal spray, a 39-year-old Portland man erupted into a rage and threatened to kill his wife on a cold January day in 1996.

  Greg Corey, according to police reports, kicked the wall, pulled out a knife and a bat and told his wife:''I'm going to kill you.''

  Before leaving the apartment, he kicked the kitchen wall where his 6-year-old daughter stood in terrified silence. Then he stomped out the door.

  ''When he blacks out from drinking, I believe he really could kill me,'' his wife, Tammy Corey, told police.

  A terrorizing charge was filed against Greg Corey, but the prosecutor agreed to dismiss the case if Corey stayed out trouble for year.

She hears the same refrain over and over from women who call the police after their partners harm them. They tell her: ''If he hadn't been drinking, he wouldn't have hit me.''

''I don't know if that's true or not,'' Beecher says. ''But I do know there is an awful lot of alcoholism out there and because of it there's a lot of women and children that are hurting.''