Testifying in Kennebec County Superior Court Monday, psychiatrist Carlisle Voss said without hesitation that John A. Okie suffers from schizophrenia, which drove him to kill two people in July 2007.
Voss said Okie believed Alexandra Leigh (Aleigh) Mills was part of an evil group, and that she could read his mind because it “was exposed to her.” In killing Mills July 10, Okie believed the world would thank him.
Okie killed his father, John S. Okie, six days later in Newcastle.
Voss was the third witness in the defense’s case, which opened Dec. 15. His testimony followed Okie’s sister Rylan Nancy Okie, 24, of Boston, Mass., and that of her friend Dorothy Craib, also 24, of Burlington, Vt.
Defense attorney Peter DeTroy is attempting, through his questioning of witnesses, to prove that because of mental defect, John Okie was not responsible for the two killings. Conversely, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese is seeking to prove for the state that, “Johnny wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it,” and that behavior leading up to the killings was that of a young man who abused drugs and alcohol.
On the witness stand, Rylan Okie, often tearfully, described her younger brother as a happy young child, and then described the uncommunicative young man she believes he is today.
As children, Rylan said the immediate and extended family was very close, engaging in boating, traveling, and skiing. She described the relationship between “Johnny” and her father John as particularly close. “He was an average kid, riding bikes, and he seemed happy, and had friends,” Rylan testified.
Rylan recounted the changes in Okie’s behavior commencing in 2004 with a hospitalization. She described visiting her brother who was “quiet, depressed, and distant,” and “very much” different.
In conversation, Okie told his sister he was convinced he had to use cocaine to prevent cancer. He also insisted his mother was raping him in the night, and injecting heroin into his feet to kill him. Rylan told her brother what he was saying was “outrageous” and when asked about his accusations, “he couldn’t say anything substantial,” she said.
Rylan emphatically stated that her brother never told her he heard voices. She described Okie as distant, distracted, and often unresponsive in conversations.
Rylan said she became used to that type of behavior saying, “That was Johnny. We called him The Sloth. He was always tired.” She said she never saw the “old Johnny” after his 2004 hospitalization.
When questioned about Aleigh, a classmate of Okie’s at Kents Hill, Rylan became very emotional, and through tears said, “She and Johnny were really good friends,” and said Mills had vacationed with the family in Puerto Rico.
In 2004, Rylan said Johnny believed Mills was pregnant, “But, she wasn’t. He also said she was messing with his head,” she said.
She later learned through Mills and her parents of a 2005 incident where Johnny “took off” to New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and was locked in a woman’s restroom. He was arrested but not charged due to his mental status.
She said she made many attempts to speak with her brother, but “It seemed like every time I spoke to him, he wasn’t listening,” she said. “I felt like he was destroying my parent’s marriage.”
Following graduation from Kents Hill, DeTroy asked Rylan why the friendship between Mills and Okie ended. “He just kept repeating, she was “F-ing” with his head. He couldn’t even give me one sentence of how she was “F-ing’ with his head,” she said.
Rylan relayed two incidents concerning Okie’s deteriorating behavior. He drove to visit her in Boston following a tonsillectomy surgery, and arrived covered in blood. He denied eating anything enroute. In a hospital emergency room, Okie was admitted for blood loss. He told doctors he had stopped and eaten fast food. When Rylan asked why he had withheld that information, he said “‘I forgot.’ He just wasn’t there,” she said.
In July 2007, just a few days before killing his father, a school friend Dorothy Craib was traveling to Rylan’s in Boston for a party. Okie insisted on accompanying Craib despite his parents’ objections. Okie’s parents insisted that he refrain from smoking marijuana, and drinking, a practice of his that was well known in the family.
However, Rylan said, and later Craib confirmed under oath, that Okie was “a jerk” on the trip, uncooperative, and ultimately did smoke marijuana while traveling. In Boston, Rylan confronted Okie, who then pushed his sister into a wall, causing her to fall. “In the first 30 seconds, he was just not there, but then he helped me up and apologized,” Rylan said.
Following that incident, according to Rylan, the family discussed an “intervention” hoping to get Johnny some help, and perhaps hospitalized.
Rylan remembered the phone ringing, and her hesitation because, “Every time I answered the phone, it was more bad news about Johnny.” On this occasion, it was her mother saying her father, John S. Okie, had been murdered.
Coming home to Newcastle, Rylan said, “He [Johnny] had no expression, no tears, no emotions.” Through tears, she told DeTroy, “He was never the same after the [2004] hospitalization.”
On cross examination, Marchese recapped Rylan’s testimony as depicting her brother as, “smoking pot, lazy, and a real source of friction between [your] parents,” with Okie being a grouchy 20-year-old in 2007. “He was hospitalized in 2004, was supposedly on meds, and smoking pot. He was also a teenager who wants to party,” said Marchese.
Marchese said the family had full knowledge of Okie’s pot use. “That was the topic of a lot of conversation? More about pot, rather than a relapse?” she asked.
Marchese asked Rylan why she hadn’t told police detectives in Aug. 2007 that Mills was “F-ing” with Johnny’s head, had pushed her into a wall, and failed to discuss an intervention with police. Rylan had described Johnny as “totally normal” to the police, Marchese said.
“I’m not sure what I mentioned to the police,” said Rylan.
“You told detectives he had a blank stare,” said Marchese. “That was Johnny being normal,”
Rylan said, answering. “Now I look back at it, it isn’t normal. I got completely used to it [Okie’s behavior].”
The afternoon was almost entirely devoted to DeTroy’s examination of expert witness Dr. Voss, a forensic psychiatrist with more than 40 years experience helping Maine Medical Center inpatient and outpatient psychiatric patients, treating major mental illnesses such as psychosis, schizophrenia, and addictions.
Voss was charged with taking Okie’s full medical records from his hospital admissions, outpatient care, and police reports, and evaluating, analyzing, and reporting the documents at trial, along with conducting a personal interview with Okie, most recently in Oct. 2008.
Voss generally described a psychotic disorder as a misconception of reality, with or without auditory or visual hallucinations and delusions. “These patients develop beliefs that others can’t endorse,” Voss said. He further described psychotic elements of mind controlling, getting messages from television and radio, and of being “followed around.”
Communication can be difficult, with psychotics “unable to sequence thoughts,” and in conversation, “skipping all over and being very hard to follow. Sometimes there is what we call ‘word salad’ where there is a jumble of words.” Voss said symptoms can include vagueness, blankness, inability to remember, tiredness, and extreme lethargy.
Voss said Okie’s 2004 hospitalization showed documentation and a diagnosis of “severe psychotic state with intense delusions.”
“He had thoughts of killing his mother three years before the murders, because he believed she was trying to kill him with heroin,” Vose said. “He reasoned to protect himself, he would have to kill her to save himself.”
Voss also pointed out in the medical record that Okie believed he had been, “raped a number of times by girls [at school] and the school nurse, and that the high school water was laced with cocaine.” The report also noted Okie had at one point barricaded himself in his room and called the police on his mother due to his delusions.
“This is as severe a case as I recall,” said Voss.
Voss testified that Okie’s reasons for wanting to kill in 2004, to protect himself, were the same reasons he cited in 2007 for the murders of Mills and his father. “We know patterns and themes tend to stay the same,” he said.
Even when challenged about the validity of a delusion, the patient is, “absolutely sure it happened. Never argue with a delusion; they [the patient] hang on so hard. They learn not to tell [about delusions], because they end up in the hospital,” Voss said.
Voss said typically patients are considerate and rational when interviewed, but when getting into the topic of their delusions, become frightened. “It’s real to them. This is classic schizophrenia, classic textbook, and severe,” Voss testified. “He thinks people can put thoughts into his head, or can take them from his mind. He repeatedly said, “I can’t use my mind.”
Specifically about the murders, Voss said Okie developed a belief that Mills was in an evil group. He also believed there were good police and evil police, and that in murdering Mills, the good police would thank him.
Voss said Okie’s actions showed no preplanned steps. “The way he went about it [the Mills murder] was clumsy, poorly thought out. His thinking and judgment are impaired. Her parents could have awakened. It was totally easy to find out who did this.”
Voss also said he believes Okie killed his father, because killing Mills “didn’t help,” and Okie developed the belief that his father had actually been the reason he couldn’t use his mind, and was part of the “evil group.”
Throughout all the testimony, and even during recesses, John Okie sat stock still across the room from the witness stand, eyes downcast during the testimony, looking far younger and more vulnerable than his 22 years.
Fair-haired and baby-faced, the few movements Okie made consisted of reaching to pour and drink water. Once he seemed to be sleeping.
In the vast and ornate courtroom, Okie showed no acknowledgement or recognition of his sister on the stand, friends or family in the courtroom, interest in his surroundings, or visible reaction to the seriousness of the murder charges facing him.
