Unmedicated Cleaver Killer: "I'm the Messiah"

The family of a possibly insane killer who butchered a doctor now wants him to be reexamined. Last week, a lawyer for David Tarloff, who killed a psychiatrist in her Upper East Side office and attacked her colleague with a variety of knives in February, mentioned his client's problems and now a motion reveals their extent.

Tarloff's family believes he has stopped taking medication that stabilized him enough to be fit for trial when he was transferred to Rikers Island from Bellevue. His lawyer described a conversation Tarloff's father had to WABC 7, "David was really breaking down. He was crying and he said, 'Dad, I don't understand why they're doing this to me. I'm the messiah.' And then he also described an incident seeing flakes falling from the sky, which seemed to indicate some sort of approval or some sort of sign from God."

Additionally, the motion says Tarloff was punched in the face by one inmate and called "the cleaver" by others and requests Tarloff be moved back to Bellevue's prison ward. However, a Corrections Department official says Tarloff was separated from the general population when he arrived at Rikers.

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By Dave Hogarty in News on April 1, 2008 4:31 PM

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bitternative

I have been the target of my schizophrenic sibling's hatred and diabolical manipulation since early childhood. My wish is that all that I and my family have had to put up with happens to all those misinformed individuals that advocate for minimal retention of mental patients. In saving taxpayer dollars by releasing patients from institutions as soon as possible and providing inadequate post-release monitoring, the taxpayers instead spend on processing random violent attacks against innocent persons, routinely unnerving the city. Tarloff wanted to be kept in an institution so that he wouldn't harm anyone. So did Andrew Goldstein in 1999 before pushing a sweet 28-year old woman to her death on the subway tracks. So did many others. So if everyone is on the same page about it, what's the problem here?

west side Michael

I hope this horror will teach mental health care professionals to be more careful in the security

of their habitats not only for there own skin but

that of their patients. I know a Psych.hospital where if a mental patient goes berserk ,no one for about 10 minutes would appear to help and subdue such patient.The so called lets in anybody who

looks like a patient by just asking them to sign

a book but no check of I.D. at all.