Kids slain so they'd be in 'better place,' dad testifies
CBC News | Posted: October 21, 2009 3:07 PM | Last Updated: October 22, 2009
Warning: This story contains disturbing details
The man accused of killing his three children in a Merritt, B.C., trailer home last year testified Wednesday that he slashed his daughter and suffocated his sons to protect them.
Testifying at his murder trial in Kamloops, Allan Dwayne Schoenborn, now 41, gasped and cried as he went into detail about how he had killed his children.
Schoenborn said he feared his former partner and the mother of the children, Darcie Clarke, was trying to harm them.
"I was under the impression she was being pressured by low-lifes to get the kids on drugs and into a life of prostitution," he said. "These thoughts are real, these fears are real."
No evidence had been submitted to substantiate any of his claims.
He also said he was convinced the children were being molested.
Schoenborn said he felt he had no choice but to kill them so they could go to a place where they would never be harmed.
He said he killed his children "for all the right reasons, I did it for them, my children."
"I gave my children up to be in a better place," he told the judge, who is hearing the case without a jury.
Mental disorder
Schoenborn was charged with three counts of first-degree murder after the bodies of his three children, Kaitlynne, 10, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5, were found by their mother in their home in the southwestern Interior town in April 2008.
Schoenborn pleaded not guilty at the start of the trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops last week. Earlier this week, his lawyer, Peter Wilson, indicated he planned to argue Schoenborn was not criminally responsible for the deaths because of a mental disorder.
Schoenborn said he killed Kaitlynne by slashing her neck with a cleaver.
He said he then suffocated Cordon with a pillow and used a yellow plastic bag to suffocate Max.
He said he then wrote "forever young" on the walls with soy sauce, and "gone to Neverland" in blood on pillows.
Schoenborn said he tried to kill himself, but instead ran to the mountains with the family dog.
Earlier in the day, he testified to hearing voices and said he started having mental health issues decades ago. He said he was first admitted to a psychiatric ward 21 years ago after a bad experience with LSD.
Transmitter in nasal passages
Wearing a brown prison shirt and with a scraggly beard, Schoenborn went on to testify in a rambling manner about his long-held suspicions that his wife was cheating on him and might be poisoning their children and about his experiences in a psychiatric ward 10 years before the killings.
Schoenborn testified Wednesday that he had feelings everyone was watching him, and that he believed he had some kind of transmitter in his nasal passages or mouth through which he could hear voices.
"It is true. I do sometimes hear things that I hear and I react to them," he said.
"Where were these voices coming from?" Wilson asked.
"I don't know .… I'm hearing them … thinking they're coming from me," Schoenborn replied.
He appeared agitated and fidgety in the witness box as he described two incidents when he thought daughter Kaitlynne had been drugged and one incident when he thought he smelled semen on Max's hair.
"It smelled sour. It smelled salty. It was the smell of semen," he said, adding that he didn't trust the neighbours.
"I thought [a neighbour] was a cover for moving small children.… The sound of moving was too frequent."
Confessed to witnesses
The Crown closed its case against Schoenborn on Monday with testimony from a psychiatrist who said Schoenborn told him he killed his children to protect them from school bullies.
Clarke, and Kim Robinson, the hunter who captured Schoenborn 10 days after the killing, also both testified earlier in the trial that Schoenborn told them he had killed the children.
The trial was delayed on Tuesday after the defence made a motion to adjourn for a day because the psychiatrist they wanted to call as a witness was unable to appear.
Corrections:- The trial is being held in Kamloops, B.C., not Kelowna, B.C., as originally reported. October 21, 2009 4:20 PM