SOUTH PARIS — A man charged with murdering four people last year in the Bethel area said he wanted to buy a .38-caliber handgun for “home protection,” according to the man who sold him the gun just days before police say Nielsen used it to kill his first victim.

Christian Nielsen, 32, bought the handgun from a shop in Andover on Sept. 1, 2006, and chatted with the employee for about 15 minutes.

“We discussed what types of gun he was looking for,” the gun shop employee, Frank Lynch, testified during a pretrial hearing at Oxford County Superior Court this morning.

Lynch said Nielsen had a few hundred dollars to spend. “I told him that for the money, that was the most reliable (gun),” he said.

Prosecutors said Nielsen used that gun two days later to murder four people, one of them at a logging road east of Upton and three at a bed and breakfast in Newry where he was renting a room.

Nielsen doesn’t dispute that he killed the people, but he has pleaded not criminally responsible by reason of mental disease or defect, commonly known as an insanity defense.

Justice Robert Crowley is hearing arguments on whether Nielsen is competent to stand trial for murder. That trial is scheduled to start the second week of October.

Last September, Nielsen was working as a cook at a Bethel inn and rented a room at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast in nearby Newry. Nielsen has told police that he killed four people over the span of Labor Day weekend. The victims were Arkansas native James Whitehurst, 50; Bethel real estate agent Cindy Beatson, 43; innkeeper Julie Bullard, 65; and her daughter Selby Bullard, 30.

In court today, Nielsen, wearing blue jeans and gray and black striped dress shirt, watched attentively as he sat next to his lawyers, Ron Hoffman and Margot Joly.

If Nielsen is found to be incompetent to stand trial, he can be held by the state, and the case can be continued for further court reviews of competency.

If the judge rules that Nielsen likely never will be competent, the charges can be dismissed and he would be involuntarily committed to the state psychiatric hospital.