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Ex-North Florida woman on trial in drowning of son
More articles on this topic: Christine WilhelmAssociated Press, July 8, 2003
http://www.heraldtribune.com/
TROY, N.Y. — There is little doubt Christine Wilhelm drowned her son in a bathtub at home last year, but jurors will have to decide whether the former North Florida resident knew it was wrong or was delusional that night.
Wilhelm, 39, of Hoosick Falls, N.Y., faces second-degree murder charges in the April 16, 2002, death of her 4-year-old son Luke. Authorities also accuse the former Live Oak resident of attempted murder, trying to do the same to her son Peter, then 5, who escaped.
Wilhelm, who had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. In closing arguments Monday morning, her lawyer told jurors that severe mental illness prevented Wilhelm from knowing right from wrong when she killed her son.
Jerome Frost reminded the jury that Peter Wilhelm testified his mother believed she was seeing werewolves the night she drowned Luke.
“She lacked substantially the capability to know or appreciate the consequences of her actions,” Frost said.
He told the jurors they would have to decide whether Christine Wilhelm is “an unspeakably evil person” or “living in a world that you and I will never know.” Closing arguments were expected to wrap up Monday and jurors could get the case Tuesday.
Frost said earlier in the trial that his client believed her husband and satanic cult members were going to torture the children and make them ritual human sacrifices.
Deputy District Attorney Trish DeAngelis countered that Wilhelm’s marriage was falling apart, and she decided to kill the boys in their home near Vermont to punish her husband and keep him from getting custody.
At stake is whether Wilhelm will go to prison for up to 25 years to life.
If acquitted, she still faces confinement to a psychiatric institution likely to last many years, said Joseph Glazer, president of the Mental Health Association in New York State. Wilhelm’s plea contains the admission that she did the act, but was too mentally deficient at the time to know it was wrong, he said.
The monthlong trial contained conflicting testimony on that point.
“Mom tried to drown me with her hands on my waist because she had a sickness and she didn’t take her medicine,” Peter, now 6, testified in Rensselaer County Court.
Wilhelm’s husband, Kenneth, was working a night shift as a registered nurse at Albany Medical Center 30 miles away when his son died. He testified that she had stopped taking the medication for her illness and that her mental condition deteriorated before the drowning.
Rensselaer County Child Protective Services case worker Kathleen McGarry, who interviewed Christine Wilhelm in jail, said Wilhelm told her she knew what she was doing was wrong, and tried to resuscitate Luke, but instead of calling for help, put him back in the tub and killed him.
McGarry also said her department investigated in September 2001 Wilhelm’s claims that Kenneth Wilhelm had sexually abused their children, but found no evidence of it.
Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, a prosecution witness who did a 10-hour videotaped evaluation of Wilhelm a month after the killing, agreed with defense witness Stephen Price, another psychiatrist, that she suffered from schizophrenia at the time of the incident.
“Most who commit homicide know right from wrong despite schizophrenia,” Dietz said. “It requires very specific delusions or hallucinations to make them think that it was right (such as) God commanding them to do it.”
Dietz said it was possible Wilhelm knew that what she was doing at the time was wrong.
“There is evidence weighing on both sides of the issue,” he said.
Wilhelm had been committed to a psychiatric hospital in May 2001 in North Florida — where the family lived at the time — after telling deputies she feared for her children’s safety, according to Florida authorities.
That mental evaluation occurred just one year after Luke, then 2, nearly drowned in his parents’ above-ground pool at their Live Oak home, said Suwannee County sheriff’s Maj. Les Hall.
Deputies ruled the near-drowning accidental.
In September 2001, after the family moved to upstate New York to be closer to her parents, she was hospitalized at Albany Medical Center after a psychotic episode at her parents’ home in Hagaman.
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