The coroners who evaluated Thomas Handrick, the German man accused of kill his wife and eldest son in a cave in Adejehave denied the temporary mental disorder alleged by the defense and ratified this Tuesday by a psychiatrist and two psychologists in two separate expert reports.
An alleged “mental disorder”, the defense of the accused of killing his wife and one of his children in Adeje
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On the sixth day of trial held in the Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in which the prosecutor requests a reviewable permanent prison sentence, on the one hand, the professionals of the Institute of Legal Medicine have agreed that Handrick’s imputability regarding the double crime was “neither altered nor diminished.” They maintain that the defendant was aware of the situation and of what he “wanted to do” when he allegedly killed Silvia and Jacob, and that he was not acted upon “by voices” that only he could hear in his head.
On the other, the professionals hired by the defense have pointed out that the accused “was not aware or was under the influence of many” circumstances, which are like “pieces of a puzzle” that end up fitting together. “If I add all of them, white and bottled,” said one of these specialists.
Among these circumstances they allude to Handrick’s depression, to a schizoid disorder that was diagnosed after subjecting him to a test whose reliability is “greater than a scanner”; to some personality traits that could lead to a violent episode, to their situation of family conflict and social isolation or to their excessive consumption of psychotropic drugs.
The difference in the evaluations between one and the other is that the workers of the Institute of Legal Medicine could not interview Handrick because he refused on the recommendation of his lawyer, or they did so partially, since the accused did not refer to what happened on the day of the crime.
On the other hand, he agreed to be examined by the specialists who wrote the reports for more than a year after the events occurred, to whom he provided an account of the same, which is what he repeated on the first day of the trial.
In the opinion of the professionals of the Institute of Legal Medicine, the accused built it in his favor during his stay in prison. When they interviewed him, he “consciously tried to control what benefited him” and tried to “get ahead” of issues that might arise in the conversation, being elusive when it suited him.
They have described him as an introverted person, with difficulty expressing feelings, such as sadness when he told them about his deceased wife and son; with little empathy, egocentric, perfectionist and with a tendency to blame third parties and “distort reality in his favor”.
And they have stressed that despite all these personality traits they did not appreciate signs of a personality disorder or any pathology that would lead him to “distort reality” of what happened on April 23, 2019.
The psychiatrist hired by the defense attorney has emphasized that on the day of the double crime, Handrick suffered, at least partially, from serotonin syndrome due to the mixture of up to eleven medications he takes for his chronic back pain, including morphine, and against depression.
Most of these drugs are opiates, with possible interactions that could increase their effects and cause the defendant to have hallucinations, disorientation and decreased memory, among others. A “drug cocktail” that, in his opinion, matches the unconnected story, with “delusional” phases, of the accused about what happened on April 23, 2019. And that is why he maintains that he had his intellective and volitional capacities “annulled or greatly diminished.
Regarding her personality traits, two psychologists have emphasized her obsessive character in terms of order and cleanliness, contradictory to the “disorder” observed at the scene of the crime: the cave in which Silvia’s bodies were found. and Jacob.
Asked by the prosecutor if it is possible that Handrick was able to return home after walking 10 kilometers along a road that he himself recognized as narrow, having that degree of intoxication indicated by the defense, with loss of stability, disorientation and hallucinations, the expert from the Institute of Legal Medicine has indicated that no. Nor was he throwing away his blood-stained clothes and responding to the police when he showed up at his house.
If his condition had been, as the accused himself recounts, after having ingested all the medications he says he had taken that day, “we should have gone to the mountain to look for him.”
