Eerie footage has resurfaced that captures clues that a murderer was pretending to be insane, having not realised a camera had been filming him at the time.
Advert
Dawson McGehee stabbed his 54-year-old mother Kathleen to death on Halloween in 2011 but pleaded not guilty for her death by reason of insanity.
A jury later found him to be legally sane, and he was convicted of second-degree murder.
A video from JCS - Criminal Psychology, a YouTube page that focuses on forensic psychology, true crime, social science and behavioural science, delves into footage from an early police interview, which apparently shows him 'pretending to be crazy'.
Advert
A narrator explains: "This is 26-year-old Dawson McGehee, sitting in a police interrogation room in the early hours of a Tuesday morning.
"The Monday night before, he stabbed his own mother to death for asking him to move out of the house and get a job.
"Dawson is unaware that he is being recorded on a hidden camera.
"In three seconds from now, he will hear the sound of the door being opened by a detective. And at that exact moment, you will see a remarkably noticeable switch in his demeanour."
And on cue, as the door is opened, McGehee suddenly switches his calm demeanour to erratic breathing and begins gesturing with his hand, as if stroking the air.
Advert
The officer asks him: "We've got some stuff we wanna talk to you about. We wanna talk to you about what happened to your mom."
Seemingly confused, McGehee says absent-mindedly: "What happened to my mom?"
The officer replies: "Well, you tell me."
Looking up to the ceiling, McGehee says: "People called me and said something happened at home, to Mom."
Advert
Stuttering slightly, he adds: "They were very, very vague.
"What happened to my mom?"
The officer once again returns the question to McGehee, who says: "I was... I was... waiting for... my brother and sister to tell me."
As the questioning continues, he asks if he's supposed to have an attorney, to which the officer says he can have one if he wants.
Advert
The narrator then cuts back in, explaining: "It would come as no surprise that a judge deemed him fit to stand trial.
"A jury then found him legally sane, and he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his mother - all of which was in spite of a continuous charade of mental illness, similar to the one you see here."
The narrator adds that McGehee 'clearly believed that his passage through the legal system would somehow be easier if he were presumed insane', which is a 'naïve yet somewhat common misconception that many suspects make when facing serious charges'.
He says: "They have this notion that a plea of insanity would either lower the severity of their punishment or liberate them from it altogether - that, instead of being sent to prison, they would simply be released back into society, perhaps with a free psychotherapeutic programme to attend on the weekends.
"This is, of course, a far cry from reality. In the United States, if you're found responsible for a serious offence, but also found not guilty of the crime by reason of insanity, you will be institutionalised at a high-security psychiatric facility.
"These institutions are without question, some of the darkest and most disturbing places in the system, and if you're not actually suffering from the crippling effects of mental illness, living in this type of environment will be a mentally agonising experience."
According to court documents, McGehee is currently serving a prison sentence of 15 years to life for the murder of his mother, plus a consecutive determinate term of one year for the use of a deadly weapon.
Featured Image Credit: OxygenTopics: World News, True Crime, News, Murder