(Murder Victim Mistaken For Satan)- news articles

The defense said Mark Becker was insane at the time of the slaying and killed Thomas because he thought he was a devil tyrant who was oppressing children and had the power to turn people into fish and animals.

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"His face was so different. It's like it was just larger...His eyes looked just right through you," she said.

She said he swore a lot and called her horrible names.

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MB: I feel like I have death in me right now...so much I can taste it. (unknown) ...In my nostrils. It's in my lungs...(unknown)...Can you see it in me?

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A Vancouver man ruled legally insane when he stabbed his sister to death because he believed she was Satan has been ordered to a state mental facility for an uncertain term, a judge has ruled.
"He could be held for the rest of his life," Deputy Prosecutor Tonya Riddell said of Michael Schuurmans after the hearing.
Clark County Superior Court Judge Robert Lewis ruled today that Schuurmans remains a substantial danger to the community unless he's confined.
Absent new evidence, the judge's ruling was based on testimony and psychological evaluations submitted during a trial completed earlier this month when Schuurmans was acquitted in the February 28, 2009, slaying of Shirry L. Dohman-Rice, 53, at their home on Memphis Way in the McLoughlin Heights area.
Lewis ruled then that Schuurmans, 48, didn't know right from wrong when he lapsed into a psychotic break, believing he was God and his sister was the devil..
Now, it will be up to doctors at Western State Hospital near Tacoma to determine when, if ever, Schuurmans is mentally fit to rejoin society.
"He'll be sent to Western State pursuant to doctors' evaluations," said Tom Phelan, Schuurmans' defense attorney, who called both Lewis' decision to acquit his client earlier this month and today's ruling to assign him to Western State "appropriate."
The acquittal on the charge of first-degree murder came after two days of testimony heard on March 1 and 2.
Family members testified that Schuurmans' bipolar disorder had become progressively worse over the past few years. It was marked by a delusion that he was religiously anointed and receiving messages from the universe through the TV and media.
He eventually believed the Apocalypse was under way and that he was required to kill the "beast", whom he thought had inhabited his sister, to protect the world, defense attorney Phelan said previously.
All the doctors at Western State Hospital who evaluated Schuurmans in advance of the trial agreed he was legally insane at the time the slaying was committed, when he wasn't taking medication prescribed for his psychosis.

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Mark Becker was handed down the mandatory life sentence ... for first degree murder. He was found guilty in March after a jury rejected his insanity plea.
At the time of the murder, Becker told police that Thomas was Satan and he killed him because the coach had been tormenting him though it had been six years since the two had met...

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With a bloody bandage on his hand, Trevor Stewart calmly approached a Jefferson County security guard late last month and confessed to killing his father.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” Stewart, 22, said when the guard asked about the blood. “I just killed my dad.”

That exchange and other bizarre comments — including that Stewart’s three pit bulls, God and characters from the film “American Pie 2” told him to kill his father — are detailed in an arrest affidavit filed against Stewart in the April 27 death of his father, Robert.

Trevor Stewart, who family members said after the slaying had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was arrested April 28 after talking to the security guard and is being held without bond at the Arapahoe County Jail. He is due in court Thursday.

After the comments to the security guard and a sheriff’s deputy in Jefferson County, police found Robert Stewart, 55, dead in the family’s home on East Rowland Drive in a tony southeast Aurora neighborhood. He had been stabbed multiple times and had a large knife sticking out of the back of his head. Police also said in the affidavit that officers found between 40 and 50 marijuana plants at the home.

According to the affidavit, filed by Aurora police Detective Warren Miller, Stewart told the sheriff’s deputy he stabbed his father 10 times in the head and slit his throat.

In an interview with Aurora police, Stewart said he killed his father because he believed his father was Satan and because his father and brother tried to poison him, first with a drink and later with tainted marijuana.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to this world,” Stewart told police. “He is Satan, are you kidding me? I am glad that he is gone, he is Satan. It was the right thing to do no matter what.”

Stewart said the night of the slaying, he and his father went to a restaurant for food.

When they returned home, Stewart threw out his drink from the restaurant because he believed his father — who at this point in the interview he referred to only as Satan — had poisoned it.

Later, Stewart’s three dogs told him he needed to kill his father. When he walked into the family’s living room, “American Pie 2” was on the television and the characters also told him to kill his father.

“(Stewart) advised that he is Jesus and that God spoke to him and told him to kill (his father),” Miller wrote in the affidavit.

Stewart said that while his dad was cutting up marijuana plants, Stewart grabbed a kitchen knife and stood in front of a mirror for about 20 minutes thinking about what to do.

Then, when his father turned his back, Stewart plunged a kitchen knife several inches into his father’s skull.

Robert Stewart survived the initial attack and turned around.

“Trevor, what are you doing?” he said, at which point Stewart stabbed his father several more times.

Stewart said the knife’s blade bent in the attack and, because he believed his father was faking being dead, he used another knife to cut his father’s throat.

During the attack, Stewart cut his hand and covered it with a bandage because he believed his father’s blood was poison and would kill him.

Stewart’s lawyer, public defender Jennifer Ahnsted, did not return a call for comment Wednesday.

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Crescent City, CA – A California man will be arraigned Friday, June 4, 2010 on charges of murder, aggravated mayhem and torture in the killing of his friend, 21-year-old Taylor Powell, according to The Daily Triplicate.


Jarrod Wyatt, 26, of Klamath, is accused of cutting his friend’s heart from his chest and tearing off his face in a gruesome attack spurred by hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Del Norte County Sheriff’s Deputy Elwood Lee testified that he arrived at the scene after the incident in March and found Wyatt naked and covered in dried blood. Next to Wyatt was a body on the couch with an 18-inch incision in the chest and most of its face removed.

Lee said Wyatt admitted to the crime then, telling him, “I killed him,” and that “Satan was in that dude.”

Wyatt is believed to have cut out the man’s tongue and cooked parts of his body because he thought that Powell was still alive.

The two friends practiced mixed martial arts together.

Wyatt’s defense attorney claims that Wyatt had a psychotic break and could not control his actions. He stated his argument, “My client was trying to silence the devil…I think he was having a psychotic fit based on the mushrooms he had.”

Witnesses at the preliminary hearing that took place on the week of May 24 reported that Wyatt and Powell became convinced a tidal wave was coming. They believed it was the end of the word and the final struggle between God and Satan was about to happen.

Two others ingested the mushroom tea. Wyatt’s ex-girlfriend, Billy Jo Bailey, and another man were at the scene. Bailey reported she thought she heard the men wrestling but realized it was worse when she saw Wyatt curled on the floor and Powell on the couch. The fourth man called 911 after discovering what was happening.

Wyatt faces first-degree murder charges if premeditation can be proved.

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"I killed Satan.”

According to residents at West Fifty-One Apartments, that’s what 47-year-old James Spencer Williams said at about 9:15 p.m. as he walked around the courtyard with a bloody knife before running off.

In apartment No. 8, Antonio “Tony” Villa, 59, was quickly dying from a fatal stab wound in his upper torso.

Williams was arrested at 9:31 p.m. and charged with murder.

Villa was pronounced dead at 11:34 p.m.

It was a surreal scene, but one the residents of 2251 W. Fourth St. said they’d come to expect.

The complex shows signs of graffiti and vandalism, blood aged brown flecked the doorframe where Villa’s still-red blood had dried on the concrete below.

But Bruce Wood, 36, said he had lived there for a year, and it was a peaceful and quiet place before Williams arrived a few months ago.

"People could sit outside and enjoy themselves," Wood said.

More recently, Wood said his own friends haven’t wanted to come over.

“One morning he was running around in his underwear and some lady’s shirt,” Wood said.

Other residents also described Williams walking around the courtyard wearing women’s clothing or very little, engaging in bizarre behavior such as digging holes and filling them with concrete, walking long distances barefoot at night, and ripping cushions to spread outside.

Residents said that several weeks ago, Williams used a bat to break windows on the lower level, including his own, which was the source of the older blood.

Inside Williams’ home, an assortment of odd and most broken items were plainly visible, including torn furniture, a bicycle on its side, and an upright baby carriage.

Abel Flores, 44, said Williams was somebody nobody wanted to be around, for other reasons.

“He had some kind of book,” Flores said, which Flores described as large and black, but he wasn’t sure if it was a Bible. Flores said Williams would walk around with his hands up, mumbling, “I ain’t afraid of Satan. I’ll kill Satan.”

“He claimed he was Jesus Christ,” said Sam Slate, 44, who said he was dating Villa’s 30-year-old niece Jo Dominguez. Slate said police had often been called out to the complex and Williams had been arrested before, but was never gone long. Slate said he wasn’t surprised by the stabbing.

“It was just destined to happen,” Slate said.

Although no one had a bad word to say about Villa, who didn’t live at the complex, Slate said Williams had fought with Villa before. Slate said things really got bad when Villa hit Williams with a shovel in an argument.

“James (Williams) said he was gonna get him back,” Slate said.

Joseph Fischer, 47, who lives in No. 8, said he and Villa were in Fischer’s apartment Monday night watching God’s Learning Channel with the front door open for the cool air.

Fischer said Williams just walked inside.

“We weren’t expecting nothing,” Fischer said. “I thought they’d kind of patched it up.”

But then Fischer said Williams yelled, “I’m gonna kill you Satan,” before stabbing Villa once with a knife and going back out the door, shouting that he’d killed the devil.

“We were all friends at one time or another,” Fischer said.


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An Edmonton man who killed a pregnant childhood friend has lost an appeal to the Supreme Court Canada of his first-degree murder conviction.

In 2007, Jared Eugene Baker, then 21, was found guilty in the slaying of Olivia Talbot.

Talbot, 19, was pregnant when Baker shot her three times in the stomach and twice in the head in November 2005.

At trial, Baker admitted to shooting Talbot but insisted he was under a drug-induced psychosis at the time. He said he was high on crystal meth and thought Talbot's baby might be his or Satan's.

The conviction was upheld by the Alberta Court of Appeal in a 2-1 decision released in August 2009.

The appeal was heard and dismissed by the Supreme Court...

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A Gulf Breeze man is charged with killing and skinning the family dog on Sunday because he believed it was possessed by the devil.
Matthew O. Foote, 25, is being held without bond on a third-degree felony of cruelty to animals. He is expected to make his first appearance in court this afternoon.
Foote told investigators he believed the 7-year-old dachshund Chihuahua mix, named Sasha, was possessed by Satan, according to a Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office report.
..."He told me he did not really know why he killed his dog except that he thought the dog was Jesus," [Deputy] Rush wrote. "He then corrected himself and said Satan."
...Foote also said he spent the preceding weekend in Louisiana where he met a lot of "evil people." He told the investigator that he also punched a girl on a bus and believed that "something was put in the water," the arrest report says.
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Joncarlo Patton posted a message on his Facebook wall on Aug. 5: "In Dubai, leaving for Sri lanka soon, then India, then home ."
Eight days later, his mother, Cindy Iannarelli, 51, of South Fayette, was killed, her throat slit with a knife. Joncarlo, 15, and a former South Fayette High School student, was detained at an airport 60 miles away in Jodhpur, India while trying to board a flight to Delhi.
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A post April 21 said "if you strike the devil, you must kill her." His friends asked what he meant, but Joncarlo didn't explain.
...he wrote: "oh satan, how long will it take u to learn that u can take the lion out of the pride, but you cant take the pride of a lion?"
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