-Caveat Lector- Or are these simply cases of 'mental illness'?
===== http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/brow03282001.htm Trial to begin for suspect in S. End shotgun murders by Jose Martinez Wednesday, March 28, 2001 The double-murder trial of Eric Brown begins today in Suffolk Superior Court nearly five years after the 31-year-old - who claims to hear voices - allegedly shot two men in the face with a shotgun in the South End. Brown, who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, last week was found to be competent to stand trial on two counts of first-degree murder in the June 16, 1996, slayings of Athos Oliveira and Thomas Meyer. Jury selection begins today. According to police, Brown had purchased the pump-action shotgun just a day before he loaded the gun, donned a green Army jacket and headed for Appleton Street. About 3:30 a.m., he allegedly killed Oliveira first with two blasts of the 20-gauge shotgun, then ran down the street and into the path of Meyer, a San Franciscan in town for a friend's wedding. He allegedly shot Meyer just once, point-blank in the face. Two weeks later, Brown was arrested in suburban Lincoln after a routine traffic stop during which an officer spotted a spent shotgun shell inside his vehicle. The subsequent search turned up the shotgun that ballistics tests later showed fired the fatal rounds. Brown's attorney, Bernard Grossberg, plans to mount an insanity defense and wants to show jurors a videotape of what his client is like when he is not taking his medication. The tape was made at Bridgewater State Hospital, where Brown has been held since 1996. Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney David Meier and Grossberg yesterday filed a series of motions asking Judge James D. McDaniel Jr. to let them quiz potential jurors on issues of race, mental illness and homosexuality. Brown is black and his victims both were white and homosexual. As of yesterday, McDaniel had not ruled on the motions. ===== http://www.review.udel.edu/archive/1999_Issues/05.04.99/index.php3?section=1&article=4 May 4, 1999 {University of Delaware news article} Flagg's fate goes to jury BY APRIL CAPOCHINO -- [City News Editor] The capital murder trial of Donald A. Flagg concluded Monday with closing arguments from both the prosecution and the defense after three weeks of testimony. Flagg, a 41-year-old former autoworker, has admitted to breaking into the home of Anthony and Debra Puglisi in Academy Hills last April, shooting and killing Anthony and kidnapping his wife for four days. Flagg's lead attorney J. Brendan O'Neill said in his closing statement that Flagg is a paranoid schizophrenic who hears voices and blamed the illness on Flagg's actions. Flagg is pleading insanity. Prosecutor Mark H. Conner told the jury there was no evidence from the defense to support its plea of insanity. "We know [Flagg] went out that day with some rope and a gun," he said. "It was clear from the defendant's confession that he went out that day to kidnap and rape." Flagg is charged with 18 separate counts, including first-degree murder, six counts of rape along with a charge of second-degree assault. Conner asked the jury to carefully think about the crime and the law and to convict Flagg based on these counts. "He acted intentional and he caused serious injuries," Conner said. "The facts show the defendant is guilty of all these charges." He challenged the testimony of Dr. Carol A. Tavani, Flagg's psychiatrist and the defense's only witness. "She completely ignores the fact that this defendant, age 41, never told anyone he hears voices," he said, pointing to Flagg. "But here he is, charged with murder, rape and kidnap, and he wants everyone to think he is crazy." Conner said finding Flagg guilty of insanity was like "trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole." "It just doesn't work," he said. O'Neill, Flagg's lead attorney, agreed with the prosecution that Flagg committed an inhumane act when he took the life of Anthony, and kidnapped and raped Debra. "Mr. and Mrs. Puglisi were completely unconditional victims of horrible, horrible crimes," O'Neill said. "They don't deserve any of the crimes that have been thrusted upon them. "Nothing will bring Mr. Puglisi back and nothing can make Mrs. Puglisi whole again." But he urged the jury to consider "the law to guide their decision." He said because Flagg was raped by his cousin when he was 10 years old and he had family problems, he was destined to have mental problems. "What chance did he have to achieve mental health?" O'Neil asked. "What we have here is a sick man with or without drugs," O'Neill said about Flagg's crack-cocaine addiction. "And he took drugs." He told the jury Flagg did hear voices even though Flagg's brother, Terry, along with Tavani and friend Janet Pagan, testified they never heard him speak of these voices. "The voices were there," O'Neill said as Puglisi got up out of her seat and stormed out of the courtroom. "The drugs made the voices worse." James B. Ropp, lead prosecutor, said, "This case is about facts, cocaine use and lust. He intentionally murdered Anthony Puglisi." Ropp said Flagg had the substantial capacity to know what was wrong and he knew what he was doing. "Donald Flagg was high on cocaine and he went out to find a woman to kidnap and rape," he said. "That woman was Debra Puglisi. "This is not an act related to mental illness but part of an intricate plan." ==== http://www.geocities.com/penneylayne/news/2000/beatlesmadman.html BEATLES MADMAN CAGED A deranged Beatles fan who believed it was his mission to kill George Harrison was yesterday ordered to be detained indefinitely in a top security mental hospital. Michael Abram, 34, was found not guilty of attempting to murder the former Beatle and his wife Olivia by reason of insanity. Trial judge Mr Justice Astill said Abram had carried out a "horrifying attack" and ordered he be treated in hospital "without time restriction." Last night Abram's mother, Lynda, called for an inquiry after claiming he was abondoned by the care services who ignored her repeated warnings. She said: "I did my best to warn everyone but no one listened. This attack need not have happened." During a two day trial at Oxford Crown Court, Mr Harrison told how he was going to die when Abram launched a frenzied knife attack. The drug addict broke into 57-year-old Harrison's mansion in December last year and stabbed him ten times. He was only saved by the bravery of his wife, Olivia, 52, who fought back with a brass poker and a lampstand. He told the jury: "I believed I had been fatally stabbed. I vividly remember the deliberate thrust of the knife towards my chest and the flow of blood towards my mouth." The Harrisons last night said they would apply to the Home Office for notification if Abram ever seeks release. In a statement they said: "It is tragic that anyone should suffer a mental breakdown and commit such a brutal act." "We shall never forget that he was full of hate and violence when he came into our home. The existence of the ancient law of the lunatic act provides a loophole." "The prospect of him being released back into society is abhorent to us. We will now continue to rebuild our lives and hope the growing violence in our society is countered and ultimately overcome by the goodness of most people in the world." The jury heard that Abram was a paranoid schizophrenic who thought the Beatles were all witches who flew around on broomsticks. He thought he was the fifth Beatle and that God had told him to kill the musician because he was possessed by him. Psychiatrist Dr Phillip Joseph said that at the time of the attack he was clearly mentally ill. He was consumed with persecution delusions and believed he was possessed by a phantom menace. He thought the Beatles, Oasis and Madonna were all conspiring against him. Dr Joseph said Abram would sit on a upturned plant pot in his empty flat in Huyton, Merseyside, listening to songs by John Lennon, Bob Marley, U2 and the Beatles, which would feed his delusions. Last night it emerged that Abram wrote a letter to the Harrisons the week before the trial. Parts of it read: "I wish to say how sorry I am for the alarm, distress and injury that I have caused when I was so ill." "I have seen many expert doctors prior to 30 December, 1999 and I had never been told that I was suffering with schizophrenia or any mental illness. I thought my delusions were real. I am very glad that I did not do any worse damage." Despite the obvious horror of the attack, Abram's mother painted a tragic and sad picture of his illness and also begged the Harrisons for forgiveness. Lynda Abram, 52, of Stockbridge Village, Merseyside, said her son had been treated for mental health problems throughout his twenties, but pleas for him to be sectioned, she says, were ignored. Living alone on the tenth floor of a tower block in a run-down district of Liverpool, Abram was, to all who knew him, a tormented and seriously disturbed individual. His mental state had deteriorated further because of his addiction to heroin. But psychiatrists said they could not treat him properly until he stopped his drug habit. Lynda and her unemployed husband Ray, 55, said their son's problems began at 17 when he "got mixed up in drugs". Lynda said: "Michael used to be very bright but he got hooked on heroin until he came off it seven months before the attack." "I tried doctors, psychiatrists, but it was like walking into a brick wall. They don't want to know. You tell them he was a drug addict and they just switch off." In the month before he travelled from his grim flat to George Harrison's Oxfordshire mansion, Abram was hearing voices in his head. Days later he was charged with criminal damage to boards advertising the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played, and sent to the psychiatric unit at Whiston Hospital on Merseyside. But he was thrown out after a row with a nurse. The Chief Executive of St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust said he would not comment before studying the judge's comments. But Ken Sanderson added: "The trust has already reviewed its procedures and made any changes deemed necessary. "Lessons have already been learned and we are sorry for the distress to all families involved in this incident and offer our due sympathies." ==== http://www.joplinglobe.com/1998/nov98/nov05/110598f6.html Testimony under way in murder trial By Debby Woodin Globe Staff Writer SPRINGFIELD, Mo. � When police, trying to identify a body found in woods beneath a Joplin viaduct, stopped to talk to a bicyclist, the man on the bicycle cried. "It's about that body, isn't it?" the crying bicyclist asked an officer. More than two years after that chance encounter, the bicyclist, Tim Cable, has gone on trial on a charge of first-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of Arkansas teen-ager Cara Wells. Were those the tears of a man guilty of repeatedly bashing the 17-year-old in the back of the head with a tire iron and dragging her body into the timber to decompose? Or, were the tears shed by a homeless paranoid schizophrenic who was panicked and disturbed after having accidentally encountered the girl's body near a vacant ballpark concession stand he had made his shelter? That question will be answered within days by a panel of jurors seated Wednesday in Greene County Circuit Court. Seven men and seven women were selected. When it comes time for the jury to deliberate, two of them will be excused, serving until then as alternates. The case was moved from Joplin so that a jury untainted by publicity could sit in judgment. After a selection procedure that started Tuesday, attorneys on both sides gave opening statements late Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutor John Podleski told the jurors that Wells had ridden a bus from her hometown, Rogers, Ark., to Joplin on July 16, 1996. She was headed for Pontiac, Ill., to visit friends on her first trip away from home without her parents. A layover at the Joplin bus depot was the last time she was seen alive, he said. Her fate as yet unknown to anyone except the person who killed her, she was reported missing by her family two days later when she did not arrive in Pontiac. Cable, now 31, eventually told Joplin police that he hit her in the head several times with a crowbar. That would be consistent with the results of autopsy, which showed the victim had sustained blows with a blunt instrument, Podleski said. Prosecutors also will call a witness who was jailed with Cable at one time. That witness will testify that Cable threatened the other inmate, saying to him, "I'll kill you like I killed that b----," Podleski said. Cable also told police that the woman he killed was in California, a friend from his school years, public defender Anne Laswell said in her opening address. "Tim hears voices, see visions and is often out of touch with reality," she said, describing him as a paranoid schizophrenic who also told police during repeated bouts of questioning that he had killed no one. She said Cable encountered the body when he searched for the source of a foul odor, expecting to find a dead animal. She asked the jury to remember that Cable, when first approached by police, wanted to know if they were asking about "that body." Had he been the killer, knowing the victim was female, he would have asked if they wanted to know about "that girl's body," she said. Two investigators in the case testified Wednesday. Joe Beckett, a Webb City police detective who served on the case squad that was activated to probe the murder, testified about stopping to talk to Cable. He said he was riding with another officer who spotted a man on a bike in the ballpark. The officers had photographs of jewelry removed from the body that they were using to try to determine the victim's identity. They stopped to show the pictures to the bicyclist, he said. Cable barely glanced at the photos before saying he did not recognize the jewelry, Beckett testified. When the officers asked him how long he had been riding around the area, which was near where the body was found, Cable broke into tears and asked the question that made him a suspect in the case. When pressed to explain his comment about "that body," Cable told the officers he had seen the body twice before police, responding to another resident's report of a foul odor, discovered it, Beckett said. Officer Kevin Klink, who found the body and photographed and mapped the area of its discovery, testified that a large blood spattering and bloody drag marks were found near the body. He said that indicated the victim had been killed about 60 feet away, and that the body had been dragged into the dense brush and trees. Klink also was present at times when Cable was questioned. He acknowledged, under defense questioning, that Cable told police he saw the body and "then got the hell out of there," and that he didn't know anything else about it. Cable, at one point in his questioning by police, also said the woman died of starvation, Klink acknowledged. Cable eventually told police that he had struck the girl with a crowbar or similar weapon, Klink testified. Last Updated: Thursday, November 05, 1998 2:48 AM ==== http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44440,00.html 2:00 a.m. June 12, 2001 PDT Larry Robison heard voices in his head for years before he committed his one and only known act of violence. When he was 25, he said the voices ordered him to kill five people in order to "liberate their souls." The bloodbath was horrific: he severed his roommate's head and penis before moving next door to shoot and stab four strangers, including an 11-year-old boy. Robison later told police he ate his roommate's testicles. Robison, who committed his crimes in Ft. Worth, Texas, had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic long before the murders. A jury sentenced him to die and his family lobbied hard to commute his sentence to a life term. When their protests fell on deaf ears, his sister, Vickie Robison-Barnett, took his case to the Internet. She posted Robison's case history and medical records online and asked the world to e-mail clemency petitions to then-Gov. George W. Bush and the White House. ==== http://www.canoe.ca/NewsArchiveJun96/candigest_june25.html Canadian News Digest Tuesday, June 25, 1996 By The Canadian Press Defence, prosecution agree Dallaire mentally ill OTTAWA (CP) -- The man charged with attempting to kill Prime Minister Jean Chretien heard voices and hallucinated and was not capable of understanding the nature of his actions, his trial was told Tuesday. Andre Dallaire is a paranoid schizophrenic whose break-in at 24 Sussex Drive last Nov. 5 was really a cry for help, psychiatrist Dominique Bourget testified. At the time of his arrest, Dallaire believed he possessed special power and had been given a special mission, she said. "He believed that he would become a hero for the nation." Dallaire told police at the time of his arrest he wanted to cut Chretien's throat because of the narrow win by federalists in last fall's Quebec referendum. The former Montreal-area convenience store worker in his mid-30s, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, break and enter, being unlawfully in a dwelling and possession of a weapon. ++++++ M. F. Abernathy -- [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]-- 04/04/02 <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. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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