-Caveat Lector- These news articles blame 'mental illness', but it this *really* the reason behind these incidents?
==== http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20020925/localnews/152979.html Wednesday, September 25, 2002 Attorney argues abuse defendant is mentally ill By KATIE N. JOHANNES Tribune Staff Writer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cascade County's chief public defender does not deny that former Great Falls resident Richard Arthur Sandrock sexually abused two young girls for seven years, but argues that he is innocent because he is severely mentally ill. During opening arguments Tuesday in Sandrock's District Court trial, Eric Olson said Sandrock was "in another dimension when he was committing these acts." However, a team of doctors at Warm Springs state hospital, who observed Sandrock for more than three months, said that he is not suffering from any mental disease, and that he displayed "grossly exaggerated symptoms or totally fabricated symptoms," Deputy Cascade County Attorney Gina Bishop said. Sandrock's charges include 12 counts of sexual assault and three of rape of minors. The abuse started in 1989, when the girls were 8 and 10, Bishop said. The 62-year-old also is charged with two counts of tampering with witnesses for allegedly writing threatening letters to his victims in attempts to dissuade them from testifying against him. Sandrock sat at the defense table doodling on a yellow legal pad. His thin gray hair fell over the strap of a black eye patch that covers his left eye. His movements were slow and silent, and he did not react to arguments or testimony. In an initial evaluation in November, private Missoula psychologist Dr. William Stratford diagnosed Sandrock as a paranoid schizophrenic. Then Judge Thomas McKittrick sent him to the state hospital in Warm Springs. To convince victims not to tell anyone about the abuses, Sandrock sent them letters, one of which listed defenses he was considering if the matter went to trial: "Religious freedom, mental disease, pretrial indictment delay. I shall wait and see which best suits the needs of our world." Tuesday, Olson asked jurors to find Sandrock "not guilty because he is seriously mentally ill and needs help." Sandrock told his victims that he was "the high lord of Yawe," and that he had the power to move objects across the room with his mind. He also told them "there is an invisible ship from the vortex that would carry him to where God was," Olson said. He argued that Stratford's diagnosis resulted from valid testing, and Sandrock had a psychotic episode during an interview. Olson said one of the prosecution witnesses, Warm Springs psychiatrist Dr. Virginia Hill, testified before ever seeing Sandrock that he is not mentally ill. He also said that a private psychiatrist from Billings, Dr. Joseph Rich, will testify for the prosecution that Sandrock is mentally ill, but that his illness wasn't active at the time of the assaults. Bishop said Sandrock molested the girls as part of a daily routine. He would try to hypnotize them before assaulting them, she said. She told jurors that Sandrock called himself "the Fourth Son of God," and told the girls that it was their purpose to satisfy God's sexual pleasures through him. They would go to hell if they didn't, he allegedly said. He allegedly forced the girls to have anal and oral intercourse, and ordered a woman, who he also allegedly threatened and "brainwashed," to teach one of the girls sexual maneuvers and to have herself and the girl tattooed. One girl showed police tattoos on her lower abdomen, including one of a ram's head with the words "Richard Sandrock." He allegedly called the girls his wives and gave them gold rings to show that they were his property. The prosecution's first witness, one of the victims, identified a crushed and burned ring as the one he had given her as a child. She said she had taken off the ring as a sixth-grader and forgotten about it. Uncovering it among her personal things one day, she tried to destroy it, she said. The trial is expected to last most of the week. ==== http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3358507.html New Hope woman found mentally ill, not guilty of killing son Jim Adams Star Tribune Published Oct 11, 2002 JONE11 A New Hope woman who admitted to stabbing her 8-year-old son to death will be committed indefinitely to a high-security state mental hospital, officials said Thursday. Hennepin County District Judge Lucy Wieland found that the state proved that Latrice A. Jones had committed second-degree intentional murder. Jones, 29, was the only one home when police found her son, Quentin Jones, dead in the kitchen of their apartment the evening of Aug. 11. But Wieland accepted the finding of several doctors, including a prosecution expert, that Jones had paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the stabbing. On the basis of their testimony, Wieland found Jones not guilty by reason of mental illness because she didn't know her actions were wrong. Jones and her attorney, Hersch Izek, waived her right to a jury trial and agreed that the events alleged in the charges against her were true. After the brief hearing, prosecutor Mike Furnstahl filed a petition in Probate Court to commit Jones as mentally ill and dangerous to the Minnesota Security Hospital at St. Peter. Court records said Jones told authorities that the devil's spirit came through her home's fireplace and into her body. She said voices told her to invoke the devil by saying "666." While in jail she said she responded to the voices by banging her head against the wall and by trying to strangle herself with her socks tied together. She was put on a suicide watch. A Minnesota Security Hospital expert, Jennifer Service, said she supported the mental illness defense because Jones had a history of paranoid schizophrenia and had its symptoms when she killed her son. She heard voices and had intense religious delusions, Service's report said. She noted that Jones felt compelled to determine whether her son was the devil by seeing if he had a heart. She told police she cut out his heart, but authorities said she had removed the left lung, which was found in the kitchen garbage can. "Ms. Jones was laboring under such a defect of reasoning due to her psychotic disorder [schizophrenia] that she was rendered incapable of fully knowing . . . the wrongfulness of her actions," Service wrote. She said clinical tests showed that Jones has low intelligence and was dependent on marijuana. Police were called to her apartment by a relative who was concerned about her ranting on the telephone and was concerned for the boy's welfare. They found her naked and wet after taking a shower, and she admitted killing her son. She had been treated the first week of August at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale for her mental disorder, which she had had for about five years, court records said. She left the hospital with prescriptions to control her ailment, but she told officials she never took her medications consistently. Attorneys said it is rare for defendants to use a mental illness defense and rarer still for them to be acquitted by reason of insanity. Paul Scoggin, who supervises adult-violent-crime prosecutions in the Hennepin County attorney's office, said that in his 20 years as an attorney, he has seen only a few murder defendants use a mental illness defense. No statistics are kept, but the last successful such defense he can recall in Hennepin County was in 1998, in the case of Lenard Johnson, who killed a man in Eden Prairie. Joe Friedberg, a Minneapolis defense attorney, said he has used the defense before juries six times in his 36-year career and won twice. He recalled three other cases tried before judges who ruled in favor of his clients. ==== http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=965108&nav=0s3dBgIM 10/08/02 - 5:30 pm Marino To Use Insanity Plea First he confessed. Now he says he was insane. There are twists and turns in the Achim Marino capital murder trial. It is a case that spans 14 years. Nancy DePriest was raped and killed inside an Austin Pizza Hut in 1988. Prosecutors thought they solved the case when they charged two suspects only to find out years later they had the wrong men. This time prosecutors say they have a confession and a list of physical evidence that proves Achim Josef Marino is the killer. While out on parole for an unrelated crime, Achim Josef Marino claims to have been possessed by demons when he killed Nancy DePriest. DePriest was a 20-year old wife, daughter and mother. "Nancy DePriest didn't know it, but the minute she opened the door, she was literally a dead woman walking," Assistant District Attorney Bryan Case said. Assistant DA Bryan Case says Marino posed as a repairman to get inside the Pizza Hut after hours, where DePriest was working alone. It's then, Case argues, Marino handcuffed, raped and shot DePriest in the back of the head. Marino's DNA was found at the crime scene and Marino doesn't deny killing DePriest, but his attorneys say they still have a defense. "I think my client definitely suffers from a serious mental illness, and so we're going to present that to the jury," defense attorney Larry Sauer said. Sauer says Marino suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, stemming from when he was just five years old. Marino is already serving three life sentences for unrelated crimes. His defense attorneys say that he won't plead guilty because he has a right to a trial and the prosecutor and defense couldn't agree on a punishment. ==== http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E911992%257E,00.html Insanity ruling angers Families of Rifle shooting victims berate the system By Nancy Lofholm Denver Post Western Slope News Bureau Wednesday, October 09, 2002 - GLENWOOD SPRINGS - Angel and Modesto Toscano left the Garfield County Courthouse on Tuesday tearfully clutching two brown paper bags. Inside the bags were the jeans, the shirt, the worn sandals and the fancy hair clasp their daughter Angelica was wearing when she was shot to death by a mentally ill man last year. Inside the Toscanos' hearts, they said, was an anger that spilled over following the verdict that Steven Michael Stagner, the man who shot Angelica Toscano, was innocent by reason of insanity. "If he had killed a dog," Modesto Toscano said in Spanish, "he would have been subject to more justice." Stagner shot Angelica Toscano, 19, and six other Hispanics in a Rifle RV Park and a grocery store parking lot on July 3, 2001. The others who died were Juan Manual Hernandez-Carrillo, 44, Melquiades Medrano-Velasquez, 23, and his brother, Juan Carlos Medrano-Velasquez, 22. Those injured were Rudolfo Beltran, 30, Efred Marinmotes-Ortega, 18, and Medel Ortega-Venzor, 24. Stagner's two-day insanity trial left many family members and surviving victims angry at the American justice system. It also left Stagner's mother, Myrtle Stagner, vowing to fight for legislative change in the mental health system that left her son on the streets in spite of 20 years of mental illness and threats to do violence, and 20 years of her trying to get help for him. "I'm going to try every way I possibly can to get the law changed. We have lived through hell the past 20 years. It's been a long nightmare," Myrtle Stagner said before she was overcome by tears. At the same time that she was quietly expressing her sorrow for the victims and their families, they were crying out their anger and pain at Garfield County District Attorney Mac Myers in a room across from the courtroom. The testimony of the most high-profile forensic psychiatrist in the country, Dr. Park Dietz, did little to sway those who lost loved ones or who are still recovering from their gunshot wounds. Rafael Rico, a representative of the Mexican Consulate in Denver, said that lack of understanding is going to quickly reverberate across Mexico. "The Mexican population is going to have a hard time understanding the decision of the court - a very hard time," Rico said. Myers said there was no other possible outcome of the case: Five psychiatrists who interviewed Stagner or reviewed his records determined that he suffers from schizo-affective disorder - a diagnosis for those who suffer from both schizophrenia and bipolar illness. All found that he was suffering an acute psychotic episode when he dressed in black clothing, tucked a .38-caliber Charter Arms revolver in the back of his belt, then started shooting strangers. Dietz, known for his work on cases including the Unabomber, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the patricidal Menendez brothers, laid out a detailed picture of Stagner's mental illness that spanned more than 20 years. The episodes of mental illness had a recurring theme: Stagner was an avenging angel on a mission for God. That mission was to destroy people he deemed evil. Dietz said Stagner's illness first manifested itself when he returned from a stint in the Army in 1981 and began referring to himself as Michael the Archangel. He was hospitalized for the first time in 1983 and spent from several days to several months in mental wards 19 more times before he committed mass murder. In 1987, Stagner told physicians at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Grand Junction that "I have so much anger inside me, I'm afraid I'll hurt somebody." In 1995, he was investigated by the Secret Service after making threats against President Bill Clinton. He also said that year that he had a list of other people he was going to kill. In the days and hours before the shootings, Stagner exhibited bizarre behavior that included telling officers in the parking lot of the Grand Junction Police Department that he was going on a turkey shoot, jumping in and out of traffic at a busy Grand Junction intersection, howling with insane laughter as he passed a stranger on a Rifle street, and yelling at a clerk at a storage facility, "I hate people. I hate people. I hate people." ===== http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pcmorgan03oct03,0,1848003.story?coll=sfla-news-palm Insanity ruling likely in murder By Paula McMahon Staff Writer October 3, 2002 For a year before Ron Morgan beat his father to death with a baseball bat, the mentally ill teen wrote a journal that reveals his tormented mind. The straight-A student and star baseball player thought he was letting down his parents and wondered what he could do to try to help other people. Four psychiatrists who have met with him on several occasions agree that he was insane when he murdered his father in Pembroke Pines last year. The crime came just 10 days after administrators released him from the South County Mental Health Center in Delray Beach against the advice of two doctors who said he thought the TV was telling him what to do. Morgan was charged with the first-degree murder of his father, Rick, at his Pembroke Pines home in May 2001. Today it is expected that he will be found not guilty by reason of insanity and that a Broward Circuit judge will commit him to a secure psychiatric facility where he will be treated for his bipolar condition and paranoid schizophrenia. Under Florida law, it is very unusual for a defendant to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Few killers meet the strict legal standard required to prove someone was insane at the time of the crime: an inability to distinguish right from wrong. "We're very, very happy that the case is being resolved in a humane way and that the prosecution and the judge accept that Ron was not able to prevent what happened," said Morgan's mother, Rose Marie Morgan. She hopes that her son, now 19, will be sent to a secure state hospital in Gainesville and said she plans to move from her Boca Raton home to an efficiency in Gainesville to help with his treatment. Prosecutor David Frankel said the resolution of the case, reached with defense attorney Robert Udell, is appropriate. "For any layman, it's hard to understand how a person can believe the TV was telling him what to do," Frankel said. "The thing that finally convinced me -- in addition to the four psychiatrists and his prior commitments to psychiatric facilities for his delusions -- was the journal he kept for about a year before the murder." "This was a kid who was tortured by his mental illness," Frankel said. "He loved his dad, adored his father." Morgan lived a normal life until his mid-teens, when mental illness began to turn his world around. He began to suffer from delusions and had trouble continuing to attend classes, according to court records. His parents struggled to help him and sought psychiatric treatment. He was committed to mental health facilities for treatment several times. The strain of trying to cope with the mental illness caused the family to break up, but they continued to care for one another and both parents did everything they could to help their son, Rose Marie Morgan said. In heartbreaking court appearances since his arrest, Ron Morgan said he wanted to represent himself at trial and to plead guilty to the murder. But psychiatric experts said he was incompetent to do so and needed treatment. In September 2001, he appeared in court with bandages on his wrist from a recent suicide attempt and politely insisted on reading aloud to the judge from a book on astrology, saying he thought it would help her to understand him. "My job here on Earth was to take care of the lost souls, but I got confused with the music and the TV," he told Broward Circuit Judge Susan Lebow at the time. "I'm guilty of my crime. I'm shaking right now; I'm scared. I just don't want to go to hell." Staring over at his family, Morgan told them he was dead. They replied that they loved him and were praying for him. After that hearing, Lebow sent Morgan to a secure psychiatric hospital to try to restore him to competency. After eight months of treatment, he returned to the Broward jail system, where he has remained while the prosecution and defense tried to resolve the case. Udell planned to argue that Morgan was insane if the case went to trial. Rose Marie Morgan said she hopes that her son will one day be well enough to be released. "He is doing very well. He worries about me," she said. "He is talking good and taking his medication." No matter which state psychiatric hospital Morgan is committed to, his mother wants him to get the best treatment available. "We just want a future for him," she said. Paula McMahon can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 954-356-4533. ===== http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=5554831&BRD=988&PAG=461&dept_id=141265&rfi=6 Teen killer will get psychiatric care By Chad Halcom, Macomb Daily Staff Writer October 01, 2002 A Roseville man whose murder case languished two years in the system will now remain in state psychiatric care on a long-term basis, for attacking his grandparents with a roofing hammer. "I committed murder of my grandfather, and I attempted murdered (sic) my grandmother," Stephen Samuel Lenich, now 21, said in court Monday of the July 2000 attack in St. Clair Shores. With that, prosecution and defense both allowed Lenich to plead not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of murder and assault with intent to murder. The plea allows Macomb County Circuit Judge Edward A. Servitto to order Lenich hospitalized at the state Center for Forensic Psychiatry, at least until the court and/or a review board finds he is suitably recovered from his schizophrenia. "This court does have reasonable doubt about his sanity at the time of the offense," said Servitto, who had previously sought a special evaluation of Lenich by a psychiatrist. "This is part of the reason I'm acquiescent in this plea." No one disputes that Lenich, then 18, came to the home of Samuel and Mary Zerilli in St. Clair Shores and brutally attacked them with a roofing hammer. Killed in the attack was Mr. Zerilli, 80, while Mrs. Zerilli, 79, was unconscious and wounded but survived. Much more debatable has been Lenich's sanity, since he had a long history of mental illness even before the attack. "He's really just going to do what he's been doing for the past two years -- remain at the forensic center under evaluation," said Brian Legghio, his defense attorney. "The benefit to society is that he doesn't go to prison, because there's no real amount of psychiatric attention there. At best he would just get medicated." Original examination reports found Lenich incompetent for trial after the crime, but he apparently improved with medication and later examinations have now found him lucid. In past proceedings, officials have claimed Lenich acted on a kind of telepathic instruction from Mrs. Zerilli, his grandmother, to attack the couple at their home and "he could feel it." "Given the choice to obey the law or his grandparents, that's not a hard choice. He'd obey his grandparents," said Eric Kaiser, chief trial attorney for Macomb County prosecutors. "That's part of the dilemma. He has no hard feelings about his grandparents, they've never done any wrong to him. And you don't kill someone you don't have any problem with, unless something is wrong with your thinking." Prosecutors said they proceeded with the assumption he was sane because he refused to attack a young woman prior to the incident, despite the so-called instructions, and he also seemed to realize he'd committed a crime afterward when he tried to flee to Canada. But Lenich's relatives, who have requested penalties ranging from treatment to a short prison sentence, apparently backed the plea, officials said. "And, such is the nature of schizophrenic thoughts. They've very disorganized thoughts. One will be rational and the next may not be, and there's no organization," Kaiser said. Officials said Lenich will come under periodic review by a review board at the forensic center and by the courts as well. If he is apparently cured of his illness and can remain under supervision outside the center, he may eventually be allowed to return home. "But this is a long process they handle carefully," Legghio said. "It's not like in a year, or two, they'll just say 'here's your pills and now go home.'" �The Macomb Daily 2002 ===== http://www.theindychannel.com/ind/news/stories/news-170634620021007-091032.html Woman Convicted Of Killing Boyfriend During Sex Woman Found Guilty But Mentally Ill Posted: 9:33 a.m. EST October 7, 2002 LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- A jury has found a woman guilty but mentally ill in the stabbing death of her boyfriend during an act of bondage sex. After a six-day trial, jurors found Anastazia M. Schmid guilty but mentally ill of murder and six other felonies in the death of Tony W. Heathcote, who was stabbed 39 times on March 4, 2001. Jurors deliberated four hours before returning the verdict Saturday. Schmid, a 29-year-old former exotic dancer who worked as a body piercer, faces 45 years to 65 years in prison at her sentencing Nov. 7 before Judge Thomas Busch. Defense lawyers said Schmid killed Heathcote during a psychotic episode when he asked her to play out a sexual fantasy in which he was the "daddy" and she was the "little girl." The killing occurred two days after Schmid was told by her mother that Heathcote had been accused of molesting Schmid's 6-year-old daughter. The allegation was not confirmed. Prosecutor Jerry Bean argued that Schmid, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had her mental illness under control in the weeks before Heathcote's killing. Three of four psychiatrists who examined Schmid concluded she was legally insane -- too mentally ill to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions at the time of the attack. Bean said Schmid tied Heathcote to their bed during sex, blindfolded him and stabbed him with a dagger-like knife. Afterward, Schmid drove to her mother's home and told her she had killed Heathcote, said her attorney, David Hennessy. The mentally ill designation in the verdicts was little solace to Hennessy, who said guilty but mentally ill is little different from a guilty verdict. "It gives people the impression that it's a more humane sentence," Hennessy said. He plans to appeal the verdict. Schmid and Heathcote, who also was an exotic dancer, operated a tattoo and body piercing business in Lafayette. She also had been studying phlebotomy, the practice of drawing blood, at Ivy Tech State College. ===== http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100local/page.cfm?objectid=12270683&method=full&siteid=50081 Lover killed in knife frenzy Oct 10 2002 By Steve Kennedy, Evening Chronicle Knife killer Christopher Moxon hacked his lover to death after being tormented for months by mental illness. The paranoid schizophrenic knifed Natalie Scott 25 times as she lay on her bed at the home they shared because he thought she was trying to kill him. He repeatedly plunged the knife into her chest, neck and back with such force the blade pierced her heart and lungs. And after getting up to wash the blood off his body after the first attack, he returned to the bedroom with a second knife and began stabbing the 21-year-old again, even slitting her wrist to make sure she was dead. The Gateshead-born schizophrenic, 24, had been plagued for months by the idea his girlfriend was trying to kill him. He also believed he was being pursued by a hit squad of Russian assassins who, he claimed, had made five attempts on his life. Today he was being held in a secure mental hospital after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Moxon was born at Gateshead's Queen Elizabeth Hospital on October 15 1977. His mum Ann, who was from Stannington, near Morpeth, Northumberland, and his Londoner dad Peter, were both teachers in Gateshead. But their lives changed when the family moved from Furrowfield, Felling, where Christopher grew up, to Burgess Hill, West Sussex, when his parents found new jobs. Moxon met Natalie, an insurance worker from Chichester, Sussex, when she visited the company where he was a metal worker to sell a policy in March 2001. By Christmas they were living together in Bognor, not far from his parents' home. Moxon had a long history of illegal drug use, including heroin and cannabis, although he had stopped using heroin before meeting Natalie, his first girlfriend. He kept his criminal record, a drink-driving conviction in 1999 and a wounding conviction a year later after he had headbutted a man in a nightclub, secret from Natalie, a chorister at Chichester Cathedral. But within weeks of them moving in together the relationship hit the rocks when Moxon became increasingly paranoid about his safety. He told pals he feared Natalie, who had no idea of his paranoid fantasies, was trying to kill him and moved out and returned to his parents' house. His worried parents took him to his GP who referred him to a psychiatrist. But before the appointment date arrived, Moxon decided to visit Natalie on February 8 this year. Police told Lewes Crown Court how Moxon admitted in interviews walking into the bedroom where Natalie was sleeping. As he knelt on the bed with a kitchen knife pressed to her throat, terror-struck Natalie woke up and tried to tell him that she loved him. But he chillingly told her: "Sorry Natalie but it's me or you - and its you." Moxon launched a ferocious assault on Natalie as she tried desperately to fight him off. Three of the 25 stab wounds pierced her heart and lungs while a hail of others cut into her bones. After the first wave of attacks he calmly got up, changed his clothes and put the kitchen knife into a bowl to soak. Then he suddenly changed his mind, took a second blade from a drawer and stabbed her again before slitting her wrist. Satisfied she was finally dead, he then packed up his clothes and the knife and headed back to his parents. Natalie's mutilated body was found by police in a pool of blood at her flat the next day after workmates became suspicious when she failed to turn up for appointments. Moxon was arrested and at first claimed he had left her alive and well before later admitting he had killed Natalie saying: "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it." Prosecutor Christine Laing said: "It was a savage and tragic killing of a young lady by her boyfriend." Moxon denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He has been taken to Ashen Hill secure unit in Hellingly, near Hailsham, East Sussex, where he will be detained under the Mental Health Act. Judge Richard Brown said: "I am satisfied that for the safety of the public you should be detained under the Mental Health Act and restricted without any limit on time." Natalie's family issued a statement after the trial which read: "We are pleased that Christopher Moxon will receive treatment for the illness which has caused this terrible tragedy." ====== http://www.news-and-star.co.uk/helper_fullstory.asp?sid=5145 The FULL Story... I TOLD THEM MY BOY COULD KILL By Staff Reporter Published in The News and Star on 21/09/2002 A MENTALLY ill man who tried to slit his friend's throat after "voices" ordered him to kill was judged fit to walk the streets by psychiatrists 48 hours earlier. Schizophrenic Daniel "Danny" Slater, of Moatside, Brampton, was sent home from Carlisle's Carleton Clinic even though his terrified mum begged staff to have him sectioned, she claimed yesterday. Slater was finally locked up indefinitely on Wednesday after a judge warned he was so unstable he could kill somebody. Slater, 20, admitted trying to slit his friend Brian Hayes's throat with a knife as they sat together on a sofa on September 9 last year. And Danny's mum, Pauline Slater, told the News & Star she took her son to the Carleton Clinic just two days earlier as his behaviour spiralled out of control. By then he had already: n Threatened to hurt or kill family members; n Hidden knives around the house; n Run away for a fortnight, sleeping rough and eating nothing but grass. "I was terrified of him," said Mrs Slater. "I honestly thought he was going to kill me. "Over the previous few months he had become severely poorly and withdrawn. "He was hiding knives and threatening to harm me and others in the house. It was obvious something was seriously wrong." Mrs Slater said she took her son to the Carleton Clinic after a drugs counsellor warned he was mentally ill. She claims she got short shrift from a psychiatrist, even after her son admitted he wanted to hurt someone. "The appointment was only for a half-hour," said Mrs Slater. Begged "The psychiatrist asked Danny what sort of thoughts he was having and he said, 'To harm'. "When she asked who he wanted to harm, he stared and pointed at me. "I stayed in the room when Danny went out, and begged her to keep him." Under section two of the Mental Health Act, doctors can keep a mentally ill person in hospital for 28 days if they are a danger to themselves or others. Instead, Slater was released, and two days later attacked Mr Hayes, who escaped with minor injuries. Slater claimed later he was obeying voices in his head which told him if he didn't kill his friend, he himself would die. Judge John Phillips, sitting at Carlisle Crown Court, ordered him to be locked up indefinitely after Slater pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding. Judge Phillips said: "It is on the cards the defendant would commit another offence similar to the present one." Mrs Slater said her son, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, had reached a low point just before the attack when he disappeared for two weeks to live at a local beauty spot called "the ridge". "He had only been eating grass because he thought someone was going to get him," she said. "When he came back he was skin and bone. "One night he sat with his head in his hands, saying he was ill and we should put him in hospital." Mrs Slater said her son's behaviour had improved greatly since he started getting medication in the Middlesbrough hospital where he is being held. She said she was considering taking legal action, adding: "This should never have happened." North Cumbria Mental Health Trust said last night they could not comment on the case because of patient confidentiality. Finance director Patrick McGahon said: "If Mrs Slater wishes to speak with the trust on any particular issue, the chief executive is happy to liaise with her." ===== http://www.canada.com/montreal/news/story.asp?id=%7BEC60A5BC-4341-4ACA-AAA1-1634D64E2EE8%7D Killer called menace to society Dangerous-offender ruling sought. Man convicted of manslaughter after stabbing his former wife to death in front of their son GEORGE KALOGERAKIS The Gazette Wednesday, September 25, 2002 A man who killed his ex-wife in front of their son is so messed up, he is a serious danger to society, a psychiatric report says. The report, filed last week with the courts, was prepared because the prosecution wants Mohammed Dadgar named a dangerous offender and possibly imprisoned for life. Dadgar, 35, was convicted in June of manslaughter for stabbing Maria Giuseppina Siracusa 60 times in her St. L�onard home in October 2000. Their 6-year-old son witnessed the attack and was slightly injured while trying to stop his father. Afterward, the boy made a haunting phone call to 911 while Dadgar stole his former wife's Toyota Tercel and drove it at high speed straight into a concrete wall on Metropolitan Blvd. He was slightly hurt. At his trial, Dadgar said he killed his wife on orders from a blonde woman on TV. The psychiatric report on Dadgar was extremely pessimistic, saying the man has a mixture of problems that makes him very volatile. He is violent, impulsive, childish, emotionally immature, loses control when he takes illegal drugs and can't form bonds with others, said the report's author, Dr. Ren�e Fug�re. On top of that, Dadgar is a paranoid schizophrenic who loses control during frequent periods when he does not take his medication, the report noted. His violence is pervasive, not only against women, but family members and strangers as well. Before killing his ex-wife, Dadgar had been arrested for assaulting a member of her family. And before the two married, the man had been found guilty in 1988 of raping a 22-year-old woman in a car. Even today, Dadgar minimizes his guilt in that rape, blaming the victim and his misunderstanding of Canadian customs. He told the victim he hated women. The report mentions he has deep feelings against former girlfriends who cheated on him. "He completely denies any problem of violence against women," Fug�re said. For the manslaughter conviction in his wife's death, Dadgar faces anywhere from probation to a life term in jail. If a judge orders dangerous-offender status, Dadgar will get a life sentence and could never be freed unless he convinces a team of psychiatrists he is no longer dangerous. The judge in the case is expected on Friday to schedule a hearing to discuss dangerous-offender status. Dadgar immigrated to Canada from Iran in 1987, fleeing the war against Iraq, the psychiatric report said. He suffered from obsessive-compulsive behaviour in childhood, often alleviating built-up anxiety by going through complicated rituals where he touched comforting objects. In Canada he worked as a dishwasher, labourer and finally a taxi-driver. He also became addicted to cocaine for years before switching to tranquilizers. He got married in 1993, and has always believed his in-laws hated him and tried to turn his new wife against him. His psychological problems and drug abuse let to a separation one year after the marriage. Dadgar harassed, threatened and intimidated his spouse after that, even scaring away a man she had started seeing, the report noted. She kept in contact with Dadgar for their son's sake. Fug�re said Dadgar is a multiple risk because drug-abuse problems are piled atop personality and psychiatric disorders, making explosions of violence inevitable and unpredictable. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===== http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/local/4253795.htm Posted on Thu, Oct. 10, 2002 Grandma gets life sentence for killing, then freezing tot BY NOAH BIERMAN [EMAIL PROTECTED] The middle-aged woman with wavy gray hair and rimless eyeglasses sat calmly Wednesday in her green jail suit and told the judge she would plead guilty to strangling her 19-month-old granddaughter. Broward Circuit Judge Ronald Rothschild immediately sentenced Christine Sharrow, 48, to life in prison, sparing her the possibility of the death penalty. ''I don't want her to get out and hurt anyone else,'' said Agnes Danko, 54, the child's godmother. ``Nobody's going to change the past, but I think it's more punishment to sit and think about what you did wrong every day.'' Sharrow, of Oakland Park, confessed to police on video to strangling Alexandria Witsky in 1996 with a blue bathrobe sash, then wrapping her in a rain poncho and a shopping bag, which she placed in a freezer. She could have gone to trial and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity if Rothschild had not offered her a life sentence. Sharrow's history of substance abuse and mental illness -- including at least 15 suicide attempts -- weighed heavily in his decision to spare her life, the judge said. Rothschild said he believed Sharrow loved her granddaughter, but was swayed by misguided delusions into believing she was somehow saving the child. Alexandria's mother, Leah Lyons, said last week she would like to move on with her life rather than labor through a trial. She left the Fort Lauderdale courtroom Wednesday before the hearing ended, but Rothschild read a message to her into the court record anyway. ''This is a tragic, horrible situation,'' Rothschild said from the bench. ``Families have been torn apart. I thank you for the humanity you have shown.'' Prosecutor Chuck Morton had argued that Sharrow deserved the death penalty, citing the the cruelty of the crime and Sharrow's prior manslaughter conviction. Sharrow served three years in prison for the 1991 stabbing of her then-boyfriend, and was on probation when she killed her granddaughter. Morton said Wednesday he was satisfied with Sharrow's plea agreement, noting that the judge would have had the final say on her sentence even if the case had gone to a jury. Sharrow, whose wrist was bandaged from being handcuffed to a chair, said nothing in court beyond answering a series of yes-or-no questions. Her attorney, Jeffrey Glass, said she was relieved because she had wanted the life sentence for the past six years. Glass said he did not expect Sharrow to receive mental health counseling in prison. ++++++ Martin F. 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