T E JOURNAL OF

Psy y
Law

Orestes in Southern Cal'ifornia.

a forensic case of matric· e

BY J. REID MELOY, PH.D.

SPECI REPRINT
The Journal of Psychiatry & Law/Spring 1996 77

Orestes in Southern California:

a forensic case of matricide

BY J. REID MELOY, PH.D.

The author presents an unusual case study of matricide, one in

which the perpetrator, a 33-year-old poet and actor, acted out
the role of Orestes in real life. The biogenic basis of his mental
illness, schizoafjective disorder, was exacerbated by a
developmental trauma-the loss of his father to polio and of his
mother to psychosis-as a toddler. The only psychotic avenue
to his masculine identification and separation from his mother
as an adult was murder.

In the early morning hours of May 7, 1969,1 Luke awoke his

mother by attempting to smother her with a pillow. Terrified
by his behavior, she agreed nevertheless to go sit with him in
their living room and drink a cup of coffee. Luke then asked
his mother, "Will you drink from my penis?" She recoiled at
the conscious thought of actual fellatio with her 33-year-old
son but told him she would have to go into the kitchen first.
From the kitchen she fled to her neighbors' home across the
street.

© 1996 by Federal Legal Publications. 1nc.

78 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

The neighbors were awakened by their elderly friend­

Luke's mother was 65-asking them for help and telling them
that her son, who followed her, had tried to smother her while
she slept. They gathered in the living room and tried to calm
Luke down. Luke stayed for a few moments and then sud­
denly left. Mr. Smith, one of the neighbors, peered out his
window and noticed that Luke was getting two objects out of
the trunk of his car. As Luke again walked toward their home,
Mr. Smith noticed that he was carrying a bat in one hand and
a saber sword in the other.

When Luke entered the living room for the second time, he
handed the bat to Mr. Smith and said, "Kill me." He drew the
sword from its sheaf, approached his mother, placed his hand
on the small of her back, and stabbed her in the abdomen. As
Luke's mother fell backward and he repeatedly stabbed her,
Mrs. Smith walked in from the kitchen, started screaming,
and grabbed Luke around the waist, attempting to pull him
from his mother. Mr. Smith grabbed his wife, and they fled
from their home and called the police. Luke continued to
plunge the sword into his mother's abdomen and chest, and
then turned her over and thrust the sword into her back. He
covered her with a rug and left the Smiths' house.

Officer Brown was the first to arrive at the scene of the

crime. He later wrote: "I received a radio call at approxi­
mately 0650 to 1200 Corwin Street for a man stabbing his
mother. As I exited the car, an unidentified citizen yelled at
me, 'She's over there in that house,' pointing at 1201 Corwin
Street. They also stated, 'He is at his house across the street,'
pointing to 1200 Corwin Street. As I looked at this house,
I observed a white male later identified as Luke at the front
door. I sent Officer Marks to 1201 Corwin to check on the
welfare of the victim. I went to the front door of ~200 Cor­
win. As I approached the front door, I asked Luke to come
out and talk. He shut the door. I heard Officer Marks put out
on the radio that the victim was dead. I advised radio that the
subject was in 1200 Corwin Street. He had just shut the door
 79

and I requested a unit at the rear. The front door opened

again, and I observed Luke standing behind the screen door. I
asked him if he would come outside so we could talk. He
stated, 'Can you come inside.' I told him no, and again asked
him to come outside. He approached me and I placed him in
custody. I then put him in the back of my patrol car. Other
officers arrived and interviewed witnesses at the scene. We
arrived at Central at approximately 0740. I advised Luke of
his rights 2 and he said he did not understand them."

Officer Marks had entered the neighbors' home and later

wrote in his police report: "I found a woman lying face down
on the floor in the doorway between the living room and the
kitchen. The woman was covered with a rug. I pulled the rug
back and checked her carotid pulse for about ten seconds.
I looked at her pupils and felt her chest for any movement.
There were no signs of life. I noticed a large amount of blood
under her head and chest. I searched the house for other vic­
tims and it checked negative. I advised radio that the victim
was dead and then I exited the house. The sword was lying on
the kitchen floor at the head of the woman, and the sword
case was lying on the living room floor."

While en route to the police station, Luke made the following

unsolicited comments: "I never killed anyone before. My
mom's worked hard all her life and all she wanted to do is see
Bob. She lost him when she was young. I did it because I
love her. If that is hard to believe, I will explain later."

Five minutes went by. "Did I do the right thing? My mother

suffered enough."

Three minutes later: "Uh-oh, I'm in trouble now. A man's got

to do what a man's got to do. The toys of your chil9hood, my
mother was Satan, you know."
80 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

Four minutes later: "My mother was a ballerina, she was

crazy as a bedbug, a gorilla, she was sweet and tender like
every mother."

Three minutes later: "What I did was right, wasn't it? All I
want is to leave the country. It was the hardest thing I ever
had to do."

Eight minutes later: "She was the Fury. I had to kill the Fury
to become a man."

Five minutes later: "Every women is my mother. No, that is

not right. I killed her; every woman is my sister."

Twelve minutes later: "Mother killer, Fury."

Five minutes later: "I should be at peace with my mother.

I know what my sentence should be."

Ten minutes later: "You guys just sit here like nothing hap­
pened. I just killed my mother. I don't understand you. This is
for the Judas Priest and hell's bells, all the pain my mother
suffered working at the store. She ran the business and they
were stingy."

Twenty minutes later: "Are you going to shoot me for mur­

der? She was tired and I'm glad I did it."

Just prior to the drive to the police station, Luke had begun to
exhibit unusual behavior in the back of the vehicle. He sat
cross-legged on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his
back, and rhythmically rocked forward and backward. He
hummed to himself and made a thumping noise as he rocked.
He became restless and moved around the rear of the truck.
He yelled, "Get me out of here before it happens! You've got
to let me out of here so I can take my mother home. Is she
OK?" He pressed his lips against the upright of the rear door
window glass on the driver's side and said, "I'm eating
 81

bugs." He sat on the rear bench and pushed his legs against a
metal brace. He said, "Officer, you've got to lock my legs
up." He then ran forward and began striking his forehead on
the rear window glass. When the officers told him to calm
down, he backed away from the glass, crouched down, and
silently raged at them. He growled, gritted his teeth, con­
torted his face, and trembled.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith were subsequently interviewed by the

police. 3 Mr. Smith reported, "I was sitting having coffee. I'm
not sure if my wife was awake. Luke and his mother came
over. She was crying and they both entered my house about
the same time. Luke was saying something about being sorry.
1 told them to sit down, and gave them coffee. Luke began
some general conversation with me about my garden. He
wanted to see it. He then left the house and went across the
street to his house. When he came back over, he was dressed
in a pair of shorts. 1 saw him take some things out of his car.
It was parked out front. He walked into the house. He came
over, gave me the baseball bat, and said, 'You can kill me.'
1 was standing in the living room. His mother was walking
out of the kitchen and into the dining room. She had been
there talking with my wife. 1 saw him take the sword out of
the scabbard that he was carrying. He put his hand behind his
mother and stabbed her. He went all the way to the hilt. She
fell. 1 ran out the front door and around to the rear of the
house to get my wife. When 1 came through the kitchen,
1 pulled my wife away and 1 saw Luke jabbing his mother in
the back. We ran out the kitchen door and went to the neigh­
bors. Luke told his mother he was sorry before he stabbed
her."

Mrs. Smith recalled, "At about six thirty my husband woke

me up and said that Luke's mother was in our ~ouse and
wanted to see me. She whispered to me, 'Luke tried to suffo­
cate me. He put a pillow over my head and tried to kill me.
He almost got me.' Luke went into the back yard with my
husband. Luke's mother said she was going to call an ambu­
82 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

lance. She did not want to call the police. She did not want to
upset him. Luke and my husband came back into the house
and got a cup of coffee. Luke went into his house, and in a
few minutes came back with his own mug. He got more cof­
fee and said to me, 'You know, Madeleine, I have been hav­
ing all these terrible things go through my mind.' He then
went back to his house. My husband was watching through
the living room window. He hollered, 'He's coming now, and
he's carrying something that he took out of the trunk of his
car.' Luke's mother was talking to her sister on the telephone.
She hung up the phone and started walking toward the dining
room. I put the phone on the kitchen floor. I then went to the
bedroom and came back immediately. As I was walking in
the hallway, I saw him and heard him say, 'I'm sorry, mother,
I'm sorry, I love you.' He hit her with the sword and knocked
her down. I don't think it penetrated the first time, because he
was on top of her just burying it in. I saw him do it about
three times. I tried to grab him from the waist. He was bent
over her. She was saying, 'Oh Luke, oh Luke, you're killing
your mother.' My husband pulled me back, and I was walking
back towards the door, still watching him just burying it in.
We left the house and went running to our neighbors."

Luke's mother was taken to the county medical examiner's

office. The autopsy report read, in part: "The body is that of
an unembalmed, well developed, well nourished Caucasian
female whose general physical condition is consistent with a
chronological age of 65 years. . . . The chest shows multiple
stab wounds, some of which are very small up to one eighth
inch at maximum dimension. Chiefly in the upper portion of
the left chest and over the left neck, several deep stab wounds
are also present. . . . Over the upper lateral portion of the
left breast is a disruption about three-quarter inch in dimen­
sion. On the upper right portion of the abdomen are a number
of deep disruptions. . . . The back also shows a number of
stab wounds. There are a total of twenty-two cuts and wounds
to the body of the victim and two defensive cuts to the left
arm of the victim."4 The cause of Luke's mother's death was
 83

massive hemorrhage due to laceration of the heart, lungs and

liver.

Luke was questioned by homicide investigators as to why

he killed his mother. "It's complicated, it's a long story why
I killed my mother. First of all, in order to understand I'm
trying to join you. I never killed before. The only thing that
I have ever killed are red ants and roaches. One time I killed
a bird with a slingshot from a tree. The bird is the largest ani­
mal that I killed until I killed my mother. I did it for the sake
of our earth. If you knew the whole story, you would under­
stand. I feel like you, my mother, my sister, my brother, I am
lost. I need some guidance, some help in terms of helping the
shape, changing the environment on the earth. Subcon­
sciously, the red ants and cockroaches that I was killing,
I was killing Indians and Blacks, not that they were. My ten­
der mother, she was a gorilla. She was a missing link to
bridge the gulf between the past and the present, if you
understand what I'm saying. All that has been lost. I dream of
extinct animals and creatures brought back."5

Luke continued, "She wanted to be with Bob, her husband.

Maybe I did wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing.
I wanted to join you. You are humanity. I want to join you.
My mother was a saint. I killed her to save the saints. I saw
signs and symbols everywhere. I am no one. I am nobody.
I care about everything and I care about nothing. I have not
been asleep for five days. I have lost track of time. I killed
my mother. She worked for eighteen years and broke her
back. I sacrificed her because I thought it was the second
coming of Christ. My mother was a sixty-five-year-old
female version of Jesus Christ and she was crazy. I think
I decoded her. I used a sword, a sword I found in India, in a
palace hotel in an India closet. I used the sword in a play. It
was heavy. I saw blood coming from her and spilling on the
kitchen floor. I am sorry. I am not guilty. She screamed at me,
'You're killing me, Luke.' We worked in a code. The first
time I tried to kill her was gently with a pillow, but that was
84 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

not right, she told me. I then got two weapons, a bat and a
knife. I tossed one to the man of the house, gave him the
baseball bat and asked him to kill me, but he didn't. I stabbed
her heart. It was hard for her to fall. I saw Dr. Atherton after
I freaked out from a play. It was a Greek trilogy. The name of
the play was the Oresteia. The Fury drove me crazy . . . I am
the Jew's Messiah and the Moslem's Mahda. I wouldn't have
killed my mother if I had seen the geyser in Mexico."6

Prelude to the homicide

Luke was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1939. His father,

a captain in the Army, died of bulbar polio when Luke was
18 months old. His mother had an acute psychotic break,
most likely a psychotic depression, following the loss of her
33-year-old husband when she was 30. She was hospitalized
for a year, during which time Luke and his older brother lived
with their aunt and uncle in Omaha, Nebraska. Luke never
gave up hope, however, that his mother would recover, and
she did join them in Nebraska until Luke was five. They
moved to Southern California, where Luke lived until he
was 21.

His mother was remarried briefly for two years, and this
union produced a second brother. All three children were
intellectually and athletically gifted. Luke's older brother
eventually became a physician, and the younger one a profes­
sional athlete. Luke reports that his school years were rela­
tively uneventful, and he received his bachelor's degree in
English from a well-regarded private university. He had dis­
tinctive skills in both basketball and poetry, and he eventually
received his master's degree in English from a major univer­
sity. He also spent one semester in Europe studying,German.

Luke characterized 1959 as the year his grand odyssey began.

Others would consider this time as the beginning of his insid­
ious decompensation into psychosis, which eventually
 85

resulted in his matricide. He went to New York and from

there to Europe, where he spent six months living in Sweden
with a young woman. It didn't work out. He moved to Copen­
hagen, where he met a rather charismatic Indian intellectual
who encouraged him to study in the Far East. He moved to
Pakistan and remained there until 1961.

Luke returned to Europe to visit his Indian friend in Italy.

They returned to India and Pakistan together, where they
attended a private Islamic school. Luke converted to Islam,
had his first psychotic break, and was arrested by the police.
He spent ten days in observation, and the American vice con­
sul sent the following letter to his psychiatrist in the United
States:
Luke first came to our attention in late June, when three of his
American classmates at his school devoted to the study of Islam
told us that he had been acting strangely. They said he had become
extremely aggressive and quarrelsome, and occasionally appeared
to be suffering from hallucinations. On July 14, 1962 (age 23) he
was reported to the police for his dangerous behavior, and arrested
by local police the next day for violating the Lunacy Act. The
Lunacy Act makes it illegal to be a lunatic in Pakistan. The normal
procedure in Lunacy Act arrests is for the court to commit the
accused to jail for ten days' observation by a prison doctor. Luke
was visited in the prison hospital by our counselor officer, who
found him subdued, polite, and confused. He expressed a desire to
return to the United States. He said he bore no animosity toward
anyone and realized that he was in jail for his own good since he
needed the rest.

Local authorities agreed to release Luke from custody and

then dropped the charges against him on July 28. He departed
for the United States two days later.

Upon his return, Luke was diagnosed with chronic paranoid

schizophrenia, a major mental disorder characterizC?d by hal­
lucinations (false sensations) and delusions (fixed false
beliefs). During the next three years he was treated with large
doses of antipsychotic medications and showed major
improvement.
86 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

Luke re-entered the theater and appeared on several nation­

ally recognized stages. He won an Atlas award for one per­
formance.

Before the homicide, Luke was teaching as a graduate assis­

tant and rehearsing the trilogy Oresteia. In the first play he
was Agamemnon, the father of Orestes, who sacrificed his
daughter Iphigenia in order to make the winds favorable for
his voyage to Troy. In the third play, Eumenides, Luke played
a Fury who demanded revenge against Orestes for the murder
of his mother, Clytemnestra.

While rehearsing, Luke fell in love with an actress named

Lorena Darwin, who played Cassandra. He was also involved
in a lengthy asexual relationship with a woman named
Gertrude Smith; they spent a great deal of time together, but
she had a boyfriend in San Antonio.

Luke had two props in the Oresteia, a baseball bat and a cere­
monial sword. He found the saber in a closet at a single­
room-occupancy hotel in the city where he lived. He believed
the saber had been left for him by some unknown person.
Imprinted on it was "Made in India," and, of course, Luke
had undergone his spiritual transformation there several years
earlier when he had converted from Catholicism to Islam.
During rehearsal, Luke felt influenced by external forces and
began hearing and seeing things as if he were touched by the
gods. He began to believe that his actions were not his own,
as if he were simply a medium for God's will. 7 One evening
he attempted to sexually seduce Lorena. She rebuffed him
and distanced herself. The next day, Luke noticed a large map
in one of the classrooms at school. He believed this map, if
he gave it as a gift to Lorena, would reconcile them, since she
was organizing a trip to South America. He was al~o halluci­
nating more often.

Several days later a professor was lecturing on Shakespeare's

A Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. He began a sentence
 87

with the words "The problem is . . . ," and Luke knew the
problem was world hunger. He interrupted the professor with
a question but instead confused him. Luke threw an orange
from his lunch bag at the map and stormed out of the class­
room. The professor followed him to the lunchroom and tried
to talk with him, but Luke grabbed an apple that the professor
was eating, began eating it himself, and threw down the core.
He angrily left campus, went to his car, and leaned on his
automobile hom to "punctuate" his anger. He drove to Mex­
ico without telling his mother, with whom he continued to
live. 8

Luke stopped at a statue of Lazarus in Tijuana. He left his car

and saluted the statue as if someone who was dead had risen
again. He later reported that he felt superhuman at the time.
Luke was compelled to drop out of school, leave the play and
his job, and make his way out of the country. He felt threat­
ened by others and feared for his safety, as he perceived the
world collapsing about him.

There was a red warning label on a toilet in a bathroom. Luke

believed this was a sign that he should flee from those he
knew and live in Mexico with those he did not know but who
nevertheless were real. 9 The next day he returned to Southern
California, however, and began to wander the grounds of a
local psychiatric hospital. His car battery died, so he bor­
rowed a friend's car, returned to school, and announced to his
students and department chair that he was resigning.

Luke said, in retrospect, "I felt guided, not by specific voices,

but as if I was in the hollow of an immensely powerful hand
and doing its wishes." He felt controlled if he left his
mother's home but somehow, paradoxically, under his own
control when in her home.

His behavior became increasingly peculiar. He took two of

his dead father's ceremonial swords and two books of plays:
To Kill a Mockingbird and four screenplays by Ingmar
88 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

Bergman. Late one night he went to a women's clothing

store, left one sword and a large stone, and broke some bot­
tles in front of the store as "an offering." He hitchhiked sev­
eral blocks to a pornographic theater, where he handed the
other sword, the other book of plays, and a stone to the
owner. He later told an examiner that he was trying to con­
vince the theater owner that pornographic movies were inap­
propriate. The book of plays was a reference to classical art,
and the stone and the sword were a threat and a bribe. When
he found out that the theater did indeed stop showing porno­
graphic films, he was elated.

He began to rearrange his room in his mother's home. His

father, of whom he had no conscious memory, became a cen­
tral figure in his mind, especially since he had relinquished
his father's swords. Luke felt alone and miserable. He began
playing with his childhood toys in his room. His psychotic
regression carried him into an isolative state, alone with his
mother. He ruminated about his mother's love for only one
man, his father; she would often say that she pined for him,
and wished that she could die and join him. She told Luke she
would soon be granted her wish, given her age. lO

Early one morning, several weeks before the killing, Luke

took the flag that had covered his father's coffin, and his
father's picture, and climbed up onto the roof of his house.
He wouldn't listen to his mother begging him to come down.
He spread the flag upside down on the roof and placed his
father's picture facing east. He tied the canvas bag that had
held the flag around the chimney like a diaper. Luke began
tom-tomming on the top of the chimney to greet the dawn "as
a wild Indian."

He remembered hearing the sound echoing blocks ~way, and

the voices of small children yelling, "Take me first, take me
first," as if they were asking for a spaceship to take them
away. Luke climbed down, ran into his garage, and grabbed
his father's relic Japanese rifle and a toy rifle. As he rounded
 89

the corner of his house, two policemen accosted him and

spread-eagled him on the ground. He was handcuffed and
searched. He remembered seeing oil stains on his pants leg
and realized that oil was the major crisis on earth.

Luke spent a week in a psychiatric hospital. As a patient, he

arranged a field trip to the local university to see the Oresteia
with a member of the staff and other patients. He was excited
to see the play, and at one point he stood up and joined the
Fury in saying, "Or who will live with justice?" The doctor
told him to sit down.

Following his discharge, Luke went to Santa Barbara. He

convinced some friends to return with him to the Oresteia,
the same production for which he had auditioned, but he was
rejected because of his deteriorating psychotic condition. It
was ten days before he would murder his mother.

The next day he made love to his girlfriend, Gertrude, and

believed it was a magical experience. He was easily sexually
aroused, and he noted that there was a huge oil strike in
Mexico, linking these two events in his mind. Luke urged
Gertrude to buy a house with him so they could live together.

Gertrude recalled these days for the police investigators: "On

Friday, two days before Luke killed his mother, he called me
around 11 :30 p.m. He was crying and told me he was coming
over. He paced the floor and was taking walks out of the
apartment. He was saying he hates machinery. He discon­
nected all the clocks and the refrigerator; he was acting like a
little boy."

"Luke talked to himself, read out loud, went outside and

banged his head on his car. He had this great need to protect
me, and said how much he loved his mother. He didn't sleep
that night and left the next morning."
90 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

"He called me at work at 9 a.m. He had driven through our

town at 90 miles per hour to see what it was like to be in Star
Wars. Luke said it was like driving through the valley of the
shadow of death. He called again around 1:30. He was crying
and wanted to see me. Luke said he was homicidal and
couldn't live without me. He was also worried that someone
was going to hurt me."

"I went over to their house after work. Luke's mother thought
he was doing better, and she was cooking dinner. He was
telling her how great she was, the greatest mother in the
world. After dinner, she told him she couldn't take it any
more, and that he had to take his medicine. She told him to
move out, and that she was tired, old, and not feeling well."

"She also told Luke that if anything happened to her, her old­
est son had her will and that her estate would be split into
three parts for her sons. Luke openly resented that he didn't
have possession of the will."

(Earlier that day Luke had gone to the church where he had
received his religious training, and visited the Stations of the
Cross. He remembered feeling "totally in love with my
mother, the best woman I have ever known." He would weep
profusely when he recalled this in subsequent interviews.
Luke also became convinced that both his city and another
major metropolitan area were going to be bombed in retribu­
tion for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He delusionally believed
that they had been chosen as sacrificial cities to ensure world
peace, and that he could stop this devastation only if he had
sex with his mother or killed her. This delusion quickly coa­
lesced as the central, conscious motivation for the matricide.)

Gertrude continued, "Luke's mother talked abou.t her hus­

band. She said that when he died, she couldn't make it and
had to go to the hospital. She also told Luke that she loved
him but sometimes didn't like him. Luke promised that he
would go to the doctor. He paced the floor and cried. We
 91

went outside, and he asked if I thought she was being too

harsh with him. I said, 'Yes, a bit.' We went for a walk, and
he kept telling me what horrible shape the world was in. Then
he'd talk about machinery and airplanes, and leaving the
country. I went home at 9 p.m."

"He telephoned me at 10 to see if I was O.K. He called back

at 11 :30 and was crying. He said he was coming over to pro­
tect my house, because he was afraid something was going to
happen to me. lI I heard him yelling at his mother, 'Get out of
my room, I don't want you here.' He told me he'd kill him­
self if anything happened to me. I asked him to not come
over, but he showed up at my house at 1:15 in the morning.
He said he had a dream that something was going to happen
to me. He talked about going to the moon, and that we were
going to get married in Mexico tonight. He was restless and
continually pacing my apartment. When I told him no, he
said he was going to kill his mother and that he hated her.
I said, 'You don't hate her, you love her.'12 He then said,
'Will, will, will, will, oh, I get it-maybe I should kill her in
her sleep and everybody will think that she died in her
sleep.' 13 He talked a lot about killing her. I didn't ask him
anything. I didn't want to know. He was with me about an
hour. When he left at 2:30, he didn't say he was going to do
it. He went to get some things from his car, and took a pillow
from my couch. He got his wallet and some money out of a
pair of pants."

Luke couldn't sleep, and went in to tell his mother. She

invited him into bed with her, but this didn't help. In fact, he
became increasingly agitated. 14 When they went into the liv­
ing room together, he watched her smoke and realized how
immensely powerful she was. He delusionally believed that
her smoking was fueling the brush and forest fires that were
occurring in their city on this extremely hot weekend. He
remembered hearing her refer to herself as "the dragon lady."
He believed that whatever she did affected the entire earth.
Luke thought that he couldn't have sexual intercourse with
92 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

her, since her vagina was sacred and belonged to his dead
father. Anal intercourse was also out of the question. His only
recourse was fellatio, which prompted his question "Will you
drink from my penis?"15 He remembered then placing a pil­
low over her face for about five or ten seconds as she sat in
the chair. 16 When asked by investigators if this was the way
he gave his mother a choice between dying and having sex
with him, he yelled, "Exactly, exactly!"17

Aftermath of the homicide

Luke was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter l8 and not

guilty by reason of insanity. The psychiatrists and psycholo­
gists who examined him following the crime agreed that he
met the legal criteria for insanity: as a result of a mental dis­
order, he lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the
criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the
requirements of the law. 19

Luke had initially been diagnosed with paranoid schizo­

phrenia following his first psychotic break in Pakistan. After
the homicide, the clinical consensus was that Luke suffered
from an affective or mood disorder of psychotic proportions,
technically called schizoaffective disorder. The natural course
and symptoms of this mental illness include an onset in early
adulthood and the variable and extreme disorganization of
thinking, feeling, and perception. Thoughts are pervaded with
grandiose delusions; feelings fluctuate between accelerated
states of mania and deep waves of depression; and percep­
tions include false sensations such as auditory or visual hallu­
cinations. In Luke's case all these symptoms were present,
except for the depression. Like the schizophrenias and other
major mood disorders, schizoaffective disorder appears to
have an inherited biological basis. In the murder' of Luke's
mother, this mental disorder provided the delusional thinking
that consciously rationalized his act. He wrote this letter ten
years after the matricide:
 93

In all my early life, I felt locked in a struggle. The struggle of the

individual to maintain his integrity and identity alone in a world
where most others have succumbed to the beauty of brute force,
natural energy, and mindlessness. Ten years ago, I, too, in a terrible
moment of madness succumbed to the worst of the world in myself.
In my vision of intense horror, by the deranged act I committed,
I intended to shock the world into the kind of awareness that would
forever banish the forces of ignorance, fear, hatred and prejudice
from within ourselves and from our world. My intention was honor­
able, my means insane. My mother was to be the sacrifice on the
world's altar. Hers was to be the final murder on earth. My own
death, which I expected to soon follow, will be the final execution
on earth. I imagined that I would be crucified on satellite television
around the world and my death would be witnessed by virtually
every person on the face of the planet. What I perceived humanity
to be perpetrating against Mother Earth, I did to my own beloved
mother as a sign and a warning that humanity was destroying our
planet and itself. And in my own mind it was to be the last murder.
My mother's death at my hand would stop the madness and the
killing for once and for all. In my mind, I was sacrificing my world,
my mother, so that our larger world, Mother Earth, could be saved
and made to work as well as we all wish it would work, peace and
plenty like paradise come to earth.

Luke was committed to a regional forensic hospital, where he

remained in treatment for seven years. He was conditionally
released to an involuntary outpatient program in his commu­
nity, from which he absconded two years later. He was identi­
fied in a distant city after being on the lam for nine months,
and was extradited back to the state from which he had fled.
Luke was restored to sanity2° eleven years after his matricide;
he now lives his life unfettered by the legal constraints of the
criminal justice system.

But the question remains, why did Luke kill his mother?
What were the motivations and developmental pathways that
inexorably led Luke to this matricide when he was 33 years
old? Why would Luke kill his mother when thcrosands of
other individuals who suffer from major psychotic disorders
are never violent?21 Such an act is complex and multi­
determined, and not all the contributing factors can ever be
94 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

known. But certain variables do seem necessary, although not

sufficient, for the commission of this matricide.

Most obvious to understanding Luke's act was his genetic

vulnerability to psychosis. Research in psychiatry and psy­
chology has demonstrated that most major psychoses, when
not drug induced, have a largely inherited component. They
are transmitted from one generation to the next, although they
may remain dormant in certain generations, and they are
more likely to occur among first-degree blood relatives of
those with the illness.

Luke's genetic vulnerability to a major mood disorder, diag­

nostically labeled schizoaffective disorder, was foreshadowed
in the psychotic episode of his mother following the death of
his father. She was 30 years old at the time. So Luke, accord­
ing to the patrilineal or matrilineal transmission of the disor­
der, was biologically predisposed to the development of a
major psychosis in early adulthood, depending on the extrem­
ity of environmental stressors. In his case, the stressors were
most likely the acculturative shock of his journey to the Far
East and his separation from his mother, a symbiotic depen­
dency without which he could not maintain a grasp on reality.

The singular developmental factor that predisposed Luke to

matricide was the trauma of losing both his mother and his
father when he was 18 months old. This is an important and
complex period in a child's life, and a time when attachment
disruptions and losses can deeply wound and scar a nascent
psychology. Margaret Mahler, a distinguished psychoanalyst
and researcher, called this period "separation-individuation,"22
and described the sUbphases of differentiation, practicing,
rapprochement crisis and object constancy. The entire period
chronologically encompasses the infant's lifeJrom six
months through three to four years.

What was most salient to Luke's psychology was the sudden

loss of his mother as a constant object when his narcissistic
 95

sense of autonomy and omnipotence had flowered and he was

feeling his own separateness and vulnerability. This is the end
of the subphase of "practicing" and the beginning of the "rap­
prochement crisis," when the toddler is moving away from
and returning to his mother, resisting his dependency and her
constraints, and excitedly although ambivalently exploring
the world. In fantasy the child is annihilating the mother
when he has temper tantrums and is sensing himself as
omnipotent, the center of the universe. At the same time, the
mother is containing the child when he is angry, and also mir­
roring the child's grandiosity in a nourishing and full manner
when elation is felt by both. As the rapprochement subphase
continues, the child experiences feelings of remorse on the
heels of his wishes to destroy, to be rid of his mother; at other
times he feels heightened anxiety in her absence. He realizes
that his wishes and his mother's are not always consonant.
Goal-directed anger is more apparent, and hyperactivity and
restlessness emerge as a defense against his awareness of sad­
ness. His mother is now perceived as separate, but is alterna­
tively conceived as being "all good" or "all bad," a defense
that is referred to as splitting. 23 He also encounters doses of
reality that are inhibiting or downright painful, reminding
him that his grandiosity has limits and that his mother is
wanted but is not always satisfying. During the consolidation
of rapprochement, and in satisfactory and nontraumatic
mother-child dyads, the mother remains to accept with grati­
tude her child's remorse and sadness, and attempts to soothe
the painful exigencies of his reality. The child returns to his
mother, his narcissism tempered, his destructive fantasies
quieted, and his capacity for the empathic sense of others
born. He has "gradually and painfully given up the delusion
of his own grandeur."24

In Luke's case, his mother is suddenly gone, and iij his mind
he has destroyed her. His annihilatory fantasies, a product of
his normal intermittent rage toward his mother, have caused
her to disappear, and his omnipotence is verified in reality.
Luke's narcissism has become to him a source of danger, and
96 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

the wellspring of further abandonment rage at her loss and

fear of his own destructive power. His sense of specialness
and entitlement is no longer an avenue of experimentation
("practicing") and pleasure, but a diabolical aspect of his per­
sonality that has the potential for real destructiveness and
omnipotent control of others.

Luke cannot finish the developmental subphase of rapproche­

ment because he has no opportunity for reparation. There is
no longer a maternal object to receive his gratitude and con­
tain his disquieting affects. Her loss and subsequent return
have dynamically set the stage upon which his delusions of
persecution and rescue (of both his mother and Mother Earth)
can consciously fuel the matricide many years later.

His dependency needs were also magnified in the absence of

his mother. Paradoxically, narcissism demands dependency. It
is a pseudo-autonomy that requires the admiration of others.
The toddler whose narcissism is flowering is lost without the
parent as audience, just as the narcissistic personality-disor­
dered adult demands attention and yet devalues it. Luke's
early memories were imbued with a sense of great destiny
and he met the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder in
the years following the matricide. 25 His intense dependence
and ambivalence concerning his mother were captured in sev­
eral responses from a sentence-completion test that he did
after the homicide. To the phrase "As a child my greatest fear
was" Luke wrote "that my mother would go away like my
father did." He responded to the phrase "He felt his lack of
success was due to" by writing "a protracted psychological
dependency on others, especially my mother." And then he
completed "Love is" with "seeing your mother in a lost pic­
ture on a milk carton."

The loss of his father also mattered immensely to Luke, but

in a more disguised form. James Grotstein,26 a distinguished
contemporary psychoanalyst, has used the term "background
object of primary identification" to describe the way in which
 97

certain parental objects provide the template for the concept

of self. Although Luke never consciously knew his father,
this background figure was an unconscious identification suf­
fused with the hope and expectation of an eventual masculine
identity. The death of his father meant a search for an alterna­
tive paternal identification figure, which was never to be
fully realized. Luke found it for a period of time with his
uncle, and it was probably rekindled with his mother's sec­
ond marriage, when Luke was four years old. But in all these
cases the "father" leaves or is lost, and unconsciously Luke
has achieved the taboo wish of Oedipus: to kill the father and
mate with the mother. This oedipal fantasy becomes more
salient as he reflects from the age of five, when his mother's
second husband leaves, back to the dawn of his consciousness
when his father disappeared. Omnipotence, again, stimulates
the belief that he caused his father's death.

Luke's failure to resolve the oedipal crisis (through renuncia­

tion of the wish to mate with the mother and identification
with the father) is pursued in his theatrical roles as an adult,
and most dramatically in the moments before the homicide,
when he hands the bat to Mr. Smith, "the man of the house,"
and orders Mr. Smith to kill him-a desperate attempt to tri­
angulate his relationship to his mother by compelling a father
figure to stop him from literally sexually assaulting or killing
his mother.

When Mr. Smith does not do this, Luke thrusts the penis­
sword into the abdomen of his mother. The act of matricide
becomes a condensation of sexuality and violence, the wish/
fear of both Oedipus and Orestes,27 an act that could be com­
mitted only in a psychotic state and was the repetition of
maternal annihilation, born in his omnipotence fantasy and
borne out in actuality when Luke was 18 months old.

During the post-homicide years, Luke's violence risk toward

others did not focus upon a repetition of the matricide with
another older female, but upon his incessant need to verbally
98 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

taunt younger males. Invariably he would be physically

assaulted and injured. The psychodynamics for this behavior
appeared to involve a competitiveness with other males, usu­
ally oedipally rooted, and a masochistic desire to be punished
for his act of matricide. 28

Luke's genetic vulnerability to psychosis and the traumatic

loss of his mother and father during his period of separation­
individuation irrevocably shaped his personality. His child­
hood narcissism, manifested in feelings of omnipotence and
entitlement, was never modulated enough by a constant and
mostly nurturant maternal object. His dependency needs,
heightened by the loss of his mother and her subsequent
return one year later, were exacerbated by the onset of his
psychosis, his return to her symbiotic orbit as a man, and his
unconscious desire to somehow capture as an adult what he
had lost as a child.

Luke's search for a masculine identification became the cap­

stone of his psychopathology and the matricide: by killing his
mother he could renounce his wish to mate with her, fulfill
her wish to be reunited with her husband, and perform an
omnipotent act that would rescue Mother Earth. In Luke's
psychotic state of mind, the only avenue to his masculine
identification and separation from his mother as an erotic
object was matricide. 29

Notes I. All identifying information in this actual forensic case has been
altered to adequately disguise the identity of the patient. When an
individual pleads insanity, as Luke did, he waives all rights to
privilege concerning evidence pertaining to his mental state. The
data contained in this essay were introduced as evidence in Luke's
case and are a matter of court record.
2. Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436) 1966. For an excellent historical,
legal and political analysis of the case, see Baker:L. (1983).
Miranda: Crime, Law, and Politics. New York: Atheneum.

3. Scientific research during the past 15 years has demonstrated that

eyewitness testimony is substantially influenced by the passage of
 99

time, post-event suggestion, and witness motivation, among other

things. See Loftus, E. (1991). Witness for the Defense. New York:
St. Martin's Press.

4. Stabbing wounds are distinguished from cutting wounds by being

deeper than wide, possibly damaging vital organs beneath skin and
bone, and showing a predominance of internal bleeding. The wound
itself is usually smaller than the blade that caused it because of the
elasticity of the skin. Defensive wounds, usually to the hands and
forearms, indicate that the victim attempted to resist or stop the
attack by grabbing or blocking the weapon. See Geberth, V.J.
(1990). Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and
Forensic Techniques (2nd Ed.). New York: Elsevier.

5. Luke's formal thought disorder, evident in this monologue, is a

symptom of his psychosis, his loss of contact with consensual
reality. Formal thought disorder refers to a disturbance in the form of
thought rather than in the content. This portion of Luke's monologue
is most indicative of derailment, a term used to describe speech
"in which a person's ideas slip off one track onto another that is
completely unrelated or only obliquely related." See Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (1994),
p. 766. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

6. This passage again iIlustrates Luke's derailment. Although his

thinking does appear quite loose to an examiner, in his mind the
thoughts are linked by delusions: fixed false beliefs that he has no
personal boundaries and that certain religious events and figures are
inextricably bound to his murderous purpose. The theological
transcendence of the personal criminal act is common in the
teleological, or purposive, reasoning of the psychotic individual who
commits homicide.

7. Visual hallucinations alone are unusual in psychotic disorders unless

the pathogenesis is an organic factor, such as the ingestion of a
controlIed substance like methamphetamine or phencyclidine (PCP).

8. Although the research concerning actual cases of matricide is smalI,

most appear to be committed by schizophrenic males who are living
alone with their mother at the time of the killing. See Campion, J.,
Cravens, J., Rotholc, A., Weinstein, H., Covan, F., and Alpert, M.
(1985). A study of 15 matricidal men. American Journal of
Psychiatry, 142, pp. 312-317. Luke fits this modal profile.
9. This is a symptom called an idea of reference. It is a "feeling that
casual incidents and external events have a particular "and unusual
meaning that is specific to the person" (DSM-IV, p. 768). It often is
a marker for developing persecutory or paranoid beliefs.

10. Is there complicity between mother and son that results in matricide?
In Luke's case, his mother's behavior, if retrospectively accurate.
100 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

may have contributed to his matricidal impulses, since he could

consciously rationalize his act as a fulfillment of his mother's
desires. There is also the hint of oedipal jealousy in these behaviors,
as Luke, the son, gives away the father's swords (penis), yet still
finds that his mother's sole love is her dead husband, and Luke
cannot mate with her. In other cases I have found that mothers often
harbor the unconscious belief that if they sacrifice their life, their
mentally ill adult son will somehow be cured or healed. I call this a
"resurrection delusion."

II. This behavior infers the presence of the defense of projective

identification. Luke is attributing to forces outside himself his own
hatred and malevolence, yet he must somehow control these forces.
In this case, projective identification is being used as a psychotic
defense against further disorganization. Luke cannot just project
his rage and be done. He must protect those who he at times believes
are in mortal danger-in this case his mother and his girl­
friend, alternative erotic objects within his tumultuous intrapsychic
world. See Grotstein, l. (1981). Splitting and Projective
Identification. New York: Aronson. Dr. Grotstein offers a Kleinian
perspective, enhanced by the work of Wilfred Bion.

12. In actuality, Luke hated and loved his mother, experiencing these
feelings at an extreme level in rapid oscillation, a marker for the
defense of splitting and the manic psychosis in which he was caught.
This comment, a futile attempt to be helpful, probably further
confused and agitated Luke.

13. This is a further example of formal thought disorder, wherein certain

divergent meanings of one word are condensed: in this example,
the "will" of his mother, upon her death, is condensed with "will"
as an auxiliary verb that directs futurity or a course of action.
Condensation is a genotypic mechanism for many different types of
formal thought disorder. See Meloy, l.R. (1986) on the relationship
between primary process and thought disorder. Journal of the
American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 14,47-56.

14. Her behavior, if it actually occurred, would signify to Luke, in his

psychotic state, her acquiescence to his sexual desires, motivated by
his delusion that he would save two cities from a nuclear holocaust.
His mother's offer to gratify his oedipal wish, no longer unconscious
as it is in most adults, would reasonably trigger intense emotional
turmoil. Her behavior raises further questions about her unconscious
complicity with Luke in his regressive sexual fantasies, as well as
his matricidal fantasies, as noted earlier. •

15. His question is also a condensation of an incorporative fantasy

(drinking, eating) and a sexual fantasy. Such condensations
are common in crude colloquial expressions for various sexual
activities--e.g., "eating" or "eat me" for fellatio and cunnilingus. In
 101

fact, two libidinal areas are involved, the oral and the genital, which
metaphorically links two different stages of psychosexual
development during such sexual activity.

16. Notice that this contradicts the reports of Mr. and Mrs. Smith
concerning the timing and location of the attempted smothering.
Discrepancies such as these are not uncommon in homicide
investigations when several witnesses must remember the reported
memory of another. Most evidence codes recognize the gross
distortions inherent in such recall by excluding most forms of
hearsay during testimony. Generally testimony is direct personal
observation. One of the exceptions is the use of hearsay by expert
witnesses.

17. Psychotic regression, in its extreme forms, is often manifest in

conflicts between eros and thanatos. In matricide it is given an
oedipal twist.

18. California law requires a finding of criminal guilt before sanity is

determined. Voluntary manslaughter is a degree of homicide that
requires intent, but it does not require premeditation, deliberation, or
malice aforethought, elements of a killing that are legally necessary
for various degrees of murder.

19. These are the American Law Institute (ALI) criteria, in effect in
California at the time of Luke's homicide. Individuals are acquitted
by reason of insanity in about one-quarter of one percent of felony
cases, and there is invariably agreement by both prosecution and
defense that the individual was insane at the time of the crime.
obviating the need for a trial.

20. The legal basis for restoration of sanity, at least in California, rests
on the determination that the indi vidual would not constitute a
danger to self or others. It is a curious anomaly, since the original
criteria used to determine insanity are irrelevant. It is thus logically
possible that an individual could continue to meet the criteria for
insanity at the time of the crime and also meet the criterion for
restoration of sanity. Statutory law, however, precludes such a
possibili ty.

21. Although research concerning the relationship between violence and

mental illness is not conclusive, the consensus among experts is that
mental illness is not a major factor in violence risk unless a symptom
of the mental illness, such as a delusion, specifically motivates the
violent act itself. This is a critical aspect of Luke's matricide, since
he delusionally believed he must kill his mother to save two cities
from nuclear holocaust. See Monahan, J. (1981). The Clinical
Prediction of Violent Behavior. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Monahan, J. and Steadman, H. (eds.) (1994). Violence and Mental
Disorder: Developments in Risk Assessment. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
102 A FORENSIC CASE OF MATRICIDE

22. See Mahler, M., Pine, F. & Bergman, A. (1975). The Psychological
Birth of the Human Infant. New York: Basic Books. Meloy, J.R.
(1992). Violent Attachments. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.

23. This pre-oedipal defense, which divides the psychological world into
alternating all-good and all-bad representations, gives way to
repression in later childhood. When self and others are conceived as
whole, integrated objects in the mind of the child, usually during
latency (ages 6-10), splitting is no longer operative as a
psychological defense. See Kernberg, O. (1975). Borderline
Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. New York: Jason Aronson.
Meloy, J.R. (1988). The Psychopathic Mind. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.

24. Mahler et aI., supra note 22, at 79.

25. The DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) lists nine
criteria for the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, five of
which must be present: is interpersonally exploitative; is grandiosely
self-important; believes that his or her problems are unique; is
preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance,
beauty or ideal love; has a sense of entitlement; requires excessive
admiration; lacks empathy; is preoccupied with feelings of envy; and
shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
26. See Grotstein, J. (1980). A proposed revision of the psychoanalytic
concept of primitive mental states: I. An introduction to a newer
psychoanalytic metapsychology. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 16,
479-546.

27. The act of mating with or killing the mother, as alternative fears and
wishes that oscillate in consciousness, also implicate the negative
oedipus complex: the wish to kill the mother and mate with the
father.
28. Luke's violence risk could be described as bimodal: first, the risk
that he would become psychotic again and develop a delusional
transference toward an older woman, believing that she was his
mother; and second, that he would engage in assaulti veness toward
younger males. The psychosis could be kept in remission with
medications, thus eliminating the first violence mode; the second
violence mode was treatable only with intensi ve psychotherapy,
which Luke strongly resisted. For a comprehensive discussion of
masochism, see Glick, R. and Meyers, D. (1988). Masochism:
Current Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic
Press. Novick, J. and Novick, K. (1996). Fearful Symmetry.
Northvale, NJ: Aronson. •

29. See Stoller, R. (1974). Symbiosis anxiety and the development of

masculinity. Archives of General Psychiatry, 30, 164-72.