-Caveat Lector- Trial Begins Tomorrow For Killings In Honolulu New York Newsday, Saturday May 13, 2000 ASSOCIATED PRESS, Page number A28 Honolulu-Every day, little reminders take Merry Lynn Balatico back to the day a gunman calmly pushed open the doors of a Xerox Corp. warehouse, sought out Balatico's husband, five co-workers and their supervisor, and fatally shot them, one by one. Much of what happened in a conference room of that warehouse Nov. 2, 1999, has been left to Balatico's imagination-until now. Tomorrow, copier repairman Byran Uyesugi goes on trial for the seven slayings, and Balatico, a 33-year-old mother of two, will force herself to listen as prosecutors paint a detailed and bloody portrait of her husband's death. Uyesugi's attorneys are seeking acquittal by reason of insanity. They don't dispute that he was the gunman, but they contend he suffers from delusions and can't distinguish between right and wrong. Uyesugi, 40, faces one count of first-degree murder for the multiple killings, seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for allegedly shooting at an eighth man, who escaped. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison; Hawaii does not have the death penalty. If acquitted by reason of insanity, he could be confined to the state psychiatric hospital in Kaneohe. Prosecutors say Uyesugi, a 15-year Xerox employee, shot his co-workers with a Glock 9-mm. semiautomatic handgun as they were gathering for a meeting to discuss Uyesugi's light workload. He fled the scene in a company van, but surrendered peacefully later that day after a five-hour standoff with police. The shootings shook this close-knit island community, which has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation. Three court-appointed examiners said Uyesugi suffered from schizophrenia and delusions of persecution, but that he knew right from wrong. Defense attorney Jerel Fonseca declined to say how he will characterize Uyesugi's mental state during the trial, which could take four weeks. ====== LAWMAKERS SEEK MELLBERG INVESTIGATION: BIPARTISAN GROUP WANTS TO KNOW WHY AIR FORCE HAD RELEASED FAIRCHILD GUNMAN WITHOUT TREATMENT Spokane Spokesman-Review, Thursday, May 18, 1995 by Jim Camden Staff writer, Pg. A1 The Department of Defense should conduct a full-scale investigation into events leading to the shooting of 26 people by a deranged airman at Fairchild Air Force Base last summer, more than a dozen members of Congress say. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and a bipartisan group from the House and the Senate want an explanation of how Dean Mellberg stayed in the Air Force so long after being diagnosed as dangerous, was given access to records he used to target the doctors who had recommended his discharge, then was released without a treatment plan. Mellberg had been released from the Air Force a month before he went on his murderous rampage at the Fairchild hospital complex. The young airman, who had threatened his roommate and was obsessed over a minor mark on his career record, was diagnosed as dangerous while at Fairchild in September 1993. Maj. Thomas Brigham, the base psychiatrist, and Capt. Alan London, the base psychologist, sent him to an Air Force medical facility in San Antonio, where he variously was diagnosed as paranoid, schizophrenic or psychotic. After Air Force doctors spent three months preparing Mellberg to be discharged and placed in a rehabilitation program, his diagnosis was changed to autism. A military panel ordered him returned to duty. He was given an honorable discharge for a personality disorder and escorted off the base. He withdrew more than $6,000 he had saved and went to Texas and Alaska and then back to Spokane. He bought a MAK-90 assault rifle, a 70-round magazine drum. On the afternoon of June 20, he concealed the rifle in a duffel bag, took a cab to the base hospital complex and walked into a restroom in the hospital annex. After loading the rifle, he walked down the hall to the mental health offices, where he shot London and Brigham. He then walked through the annex and the nearby hospital, spraying bullets that killed two others and wounded 22 airmen, retirees and civilians. One of those wounded was a pregnant woman whose unborn baby later died. Mellberg was shot and killed by Senior Airman Andrew Brown, an Air Force security policeman. ======== MENTALLY ILL MAN KILLS PARENTS, DAUGHTER, SELF The Record (New Jersey), TUESDAY, January 28, 1997 by MELANIE BURNEY, The Associated Press, Page number A3 VINELAND - By all accounts, Steven Romano had a history of mental problems. The paranoid schizophrenic believed zombies were planning to kill him and his family. Romano, 42, went on a rampage Sunday night, killing his parents and his daughter before taking his own life, police said. He even killed the beloved family dog. "His mind was so destroyed and demented," said Eddie Macho, a longtime friend. "He wasn't in his right state of mind." Romano attacked his family shortly after 7 p.m. in their home on Glenn Terrace, a quiet dead-end street, police said. The killings stunned the close-knit neighborhood where residents frequently have dinner together and check on elderly neighbors. A steady stream of neighbors and relatives drove past the two-story yellow house with blue trim. "It's still a state of shock," said Nelson Flores, who lives across the street and had known Steven Romano since elementary school. "It's hard handling this." The victims, Carmen Romano, 68, his wife, Grace, 66, and their granddaughter, Michelle, 22, were found dead at the scene. A double- barreled shotgun and a .357 Magnum handgun used in the killings were recovered. Autopsy results were pending Monday, but authorities said the victims were shot in the head and body. It was not immediately known how many shots were fired. Grief-stricken relatives slowly approached the house and peered inside a window, shaking their heads in disbelief. They declined comment to reporters. Steven Romano had a history of mental problems that began about seven years ago and was hospitalized, according to Macho and authorities. He took medication, but it could not control the voices inside his head, Macho said. A former factory worker, Steven Romano had an ice cream truck business in the 1980s, but it failed because Romano would practically give away ice cream, Macho said. Friends had to stop Romano from giving out $20 bills at a convenience store, he said. "He wasn't a bad person," said Flores. "It was just his sickness finally got to him. He just snapped." ======= Women's Killer Sentenced, Man Told Doctors Voices Hounded Him Albuquerque Journal, Thursday, December 21, 2000 by Leslie Linthicum, Journal Staff Writer PG A1 SANTA ROSA- Theodore Justin Burchess grabbed three cans of soup, two cans of tuna, a jacket and a rifle on Halloween 1998 and drove west from his home in Pennsylvania to quiet the voices in his head. Psychologists said he was convinced that if he got to Mexico, the unrelenting "telepathic slander" that tormented him would stop. Burchess turned south from Interstate 40 at Santa Rosa three days later and drove as far as Borica, a Guadalupe County ranching hamlet, where he believed he had crossed into Mexico. The voices started to tell him he was in a war and his life was threatened. On Nov. 2, about 30 miles south of Santa Rosa, he shot and killed two women who had the bad luck to walk out of their rural homes. A judge in Santa Rosa sent Burchess to prison for 41 years on Wednesday, acknowledging that the 21-year-old's mental illness was also a villain in a tragedy that has torn apart three families. "Mr. Burchess is not to blame, but he is responsible," state District Judge Eugenio Mathis said. Burchess, diagnosed as schizophrenic, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to the murders of Debra Lee Sipes and Veronica Sena and to burglary of guns from Sipes' home. By pleading guilty, he will spend most of his adult life in prison but avoids the possibility of the death penalty or two life sentences. In a two-hour hearing, relatives of the victims described the pain of their loss and their shock and anger that such random brutality could come calling in the ranching country they thought was safe. Theodore and Donna Burchess came from Pennsylvania to sit behind their shackled son in the courtroom and tell the judge about their own nightmare. Justin, as he was called, was 19 and five months away from finishing an automotive technician degree program when he quit school and became sloppy and argumentative, his parents said. They were concerned but wrote his behavior off to a late adolescent rebellion. Neither of his parents knew the extent of their son's decline, they said. "I didn't know that he had tried to commit suicide or that he was hearing voices," said Donna Burchess, a veterinarian from Newtown, Pa. Theodore Burchess, Justin's father, cried and said until two years ago his only knowledge about mental illness had come from seeing the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The Burchesses were shocked to learn their soft-spoken and obedient son had been accused of murder and was hallucinating and hearing voices. After his arrest in 1998, Burchess was evaluated by psychologist Susan Cave. She said Burchess had begun suffering from schizophrenia four months earlier. He was hallucinating and hearing voices and felt a cat inside his stomach clawing to get out, Cave said. "He was haunted and plagued by horrible and terrifying images, and he was under the mistaken belief that these would all go away if he got to Mexico," Cave said. "The motives for these crimes exist only in the rather twisted, sick and psychotic mind of this individual." When he got south of Santa Rosa and thought he had entered Mexico, Burchess got no relief from the voices, only a foreboding that he was in a dangerous situation and the feeling that he was going to kill someone. ======= Judge laughs off obscene outburst by defendant Albuquerque Tribune, Friday, March 31, 2000 Staff and wire reports, Pg. A2 A man accused of setting fire to an abortion clinic made an obscene gesture at the judge in an Albuquerque courtroom Thursday and launched into an obscenity-laced tirade as he withdrew his plans to pursue an insanity defense. Chief U.S. District Judge John Conway, acknowledging Ricky Lee McDonald's unstable mental history, laughed it off. McDonald, 43, was indicted in May 1999 on a federal charge of using fire to damage a building used in interstate commerce, a Planned Parenthood office. The fire charred the front door. In a past case involving an abortion clinic, McDonald was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic who suffers from auditory hallucinations and impressions about babies needing help. Conway asked McDonald's federal public defender, Steve McCue, whether McDonald was still competent to stand trial. "It's a day-to-day thing," said McCue, who filed a motion saying McDonald does not want an insanity defense. McDonald was sentenced to 30 months in prison in October 1996 after pleading guilty to arson. He was videotaped pouring gasoline in the clinic entryway and rolling a shopping cart filled with accelerants toward it in February 1995. ======== KILLER OF NUNS RULED INSANE, NOT CRIMINALLY RESPONSIBLE Tacoma News Tribune, Thursday, October 17, 1996 by Frank Fisher; The Associated Press Pg. A5 SKOWHEGAN, Maine - A former mental patient who broke into a convent and killed two nuns, using a statue of the Virgin Mary as a weapon, is insane and not criminally responsible for his actions, a judge ruled Wednesday. Superior Court Justice Donald Alexander ordered 38-year-old Mark Bechard committed for an indefinite period. If the former jazz trumpet player is someday deemed sane, he could go free. He faces no further penalty for the stabbing and beating rampage in January that also left two other nuns seriously wounded. Sister Patricia Keane, who survived the attack, called the verdict wise. "I thank God for the conclusion to the trial and will continue to pray for Mark and his family, for all those who are mentally ill and who need help," she said in front of the Waterville chapel where the attack took place. The defense in the nonjury trial never disputed that Bechard beat and killed the nuns but said he was schizophrenic and delusional and should be spared prison because he lacked the capacity to understand the "wrongfulness of his conduct." ====== JUDGE LACKS OPTIONS, SENDS SCHIZOPHRENIC TO PRISON : DISTURBED KILLER SAID STATUE ORDERED DEATH OF ROOMMATE ARIZONA BUSINESS GAZETTE, FRIDAY November 16, 1990 Page 21 TUCSON - A Pima County Superior Court judge said he was forced to sentence a man who suffers from schizophrenia to prison because the state has no long-term treatment facility. Superior Court Judge Lawrence Fleischman on Nov. 13 criticized the state for having no place to lock up and treat a man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Philip Carolin III, 30, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was convicted after he admitted killing the victim saying he did so on orders from a statue of the Virgin Mary. Mr. Carolin, who suffers from hallucinations and delusions, will be eligible for parole in about three years, because he has received almost two years' credit for time already served. Judge Fleischman said he would like to have sent Carolin to a mental health treatment facility instead of to prison. Last December Mr. Carolin pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the March 1989 shooting death of Neil Mylo Thormodsgard, who was killed as he climbed a ladder to the roof of a shed, where the two men lived. Mr. Carolin said he thought Mr. Thormodsgard was going to get an automatic rifle he kept on the roof and that a statue of the Virgin Mary in the church he went to daily told him to kill Mr. Thormodsgard. After Mr. Carolin was placed on medication at the state hospital, he reported that he no longer heard voices and had stopped announcing the second coming of Jesus, as he had done before. ----------- 'I BELIEVE YOU'RE GOING TO DO IT AGAIN' MENTALLY ILL KILLER'S CASE FRUSTRATES AUTHORITIES ARIZONA REPUBLIC, SUNDAY December 16, 1990 by Peter Aleshire- The Arizona Republic Page number A1 With the voice of the Virgin Mary echoing in his tormented mind, Philip Leonard Carolin III crouched over the bullet-riddled body of Neil "The Nudist" Thormodsgaard. Four bullets from Carolin's $69 .22-caliber handgun were lodged in Thormodsgaard's body. One had neatly pierced an eye. Carolin, an untreated schizophrenic, beaten child, wife beater, Chosen of God, Keeper of Law and Order, and homeless crazy person, finally had crossed the line. He had killed a man only slightly less deranged than himself: Thormodsgaard, also a schizophrenic, had a long history of arrests for running naked through his neighborhood and brandishing firearms. Carolin, 30, told police he had killed the former merchant seaman on March 6, 1989, because he feared Thormodsgaard was going to get his semiautomatic rifle and shoot Carolin. Carolin said he was acting on behalf of the police and the Virgin Mary. The killing focused the attention of an until-then indifferent judicial system on Carolin's 15-year descent into madness. But, even then, experts could not figure out how to help or punish this tormented schizophrenic. A frustrated judge ultimately sentenced Carolin to prison, knowing that he won't get the treatment he needs before he is eligible for parole in 1994. "I believe you're going to do it again. And then who are we going to look to?" Judge Lawrence Fleischman of Pima County Superior Court asked Nov. 13 as he sentenced Carolin for manslaughter. ======= SLAIN TEACHER NEEDED HELP: HE THOUGHT AUTHORITIES MONITORED HIM WITH ULTRASOUND Phoenix Gazette, THURSDAY, February 23, 1995 by Richard Ruelas, THE PHOENIX GAZETTE Page number B1 Mesa - He was convinced they were listening -- taping his conversations to spread rumors that he was gay and to get him fired from the elementary school. John Ferguson banged on a back door and broke out a window of a condo he was convinced housed the ultrasound equipment that recorded his every move and utterance. Ferguson, 36, was shot to death Wednesday by a Mesa police officer who claimed the third-grade teacher threatened him with a knife. Ferguson apparently refused friends' advice to get psychological help, said Kim Moody, a close friend since 1989. Ferguson had been on medical leave from Jefferson Elementary School since January. Officials wouldn't comment. But Moody, executive director of an art gallery, said Ferguson asked for the leave, saying he didn't feel he was fit to be in the classroom. Ferguson spent most of his leave at home, weaving paranoid fantasies, Moody said. "He stayed at home and fixated. He'd mull it over and build the picture up," Moody said. "He said he was being bombarded by ultrasounds, that they were listening in on him -- they being some sort of . . . police listening in on him." ======== JURORS REJECT DEFENDANT'S 'PREACHING' : MAN FOUND GUILTY OF TRASHING CLINIC Arizona Republic, Thursday, February 27, 1997 by Jim Walsh, The Arizona Republic Page number B1 A man accused of trashing a Tempe abortion clinic used his trial as a platform to liken the medical procedure to Nazi Germany's genocide against Jews during World War II. But Maricopa County Superior Court jurors found Brian Charles' arguments irrelevant to the criminal charges and found him guilty Wednesday of aggravated assault, burglary, criminal damage and misdemeanor assault. "In general, I don't think he addressed the issues at all," said Chuck MacGillivray, the jury's foreman. "He seemed intent on preaching his point of view." Smashing computers inside the Planned Parenthood clinic and terrorizing employees is "not the proper way to express yourself," he said. Charles, 29, went into the Tempe clinic on Sept. 10, 1996, and asked about the cost of an abortion. "You could see this evil come into his face," testified Joy Whalen, who was a receptionist at the clinic. "He took The Club and yelled out, 'Well, there will be no more abortions here today!' " Witnesses said Charles started swinging the metal automotive anti-theft device wildly, punching dozens of holes in walls, smashing computers and telephones, and ripping apart a supply closet where Whalen and Mara Anaya, another employee, were hiding. "Legalized first-degree murder, legalized genocide . . . is basically what this case is all about," Charles said during opening arguments as he acted as his own attorney. "A whole generation of our people have been systematically eliminated from the land," he said. Judge Mark Armstrong is scheduled to sentence Charles on March 31. Fred Charles, the defendant's father, asked Armstrong to sentence his son to medical treatment for schizophrenia. Fred Charles said his son suffers from hallucinations, hears voices, has delusions and believes God is telling him to act irrationally. Brian Charles has rejected treatment for his mental problems in the past, his father said. "It's like a buzzing, interference in their minds," Fred Charles said. But Armstrong said that under the law, he has no choice but to impose a prison sentence of five to 15 years for the burglary and aggravated assault charges. Armstrong said he plans to have the prison sentences run concurrently. After Charles serves at least 85 percent of his prison time, he will be placed on probation for four years and be required to undergo mental health treatment, the judge said. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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