Dueling experts took the stand Thursday to testify about Wayne Treacy’s mental health on the day he nearly killed Josie Lou Ratley by slamming her to the ground and stomping on her head while wearing steel-toed boots.
Psychiatrist Alexander Neumeister, a nationally recognized expert in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder, said Treacy, then 15, went into a dissociative state that started when he received a text message from Ratley’s phone telling him to go visit his dead brother and started to recede nearly three hours later, when a teacher tackled him to stop him from killing Ratley.
During much of that time, Neumeister said, Treacy may have appeared normal and “goal-directed,” but he was not himself. By the time he approached Ratley, he fit the legal definition of insanity, he said.
“He didn’t see the girl anymore. He saw the red shirt. What then happened was completely outside any cognitive intentional control,” Neumeister said.
Treacy, who is charged with first-degree attempted murder and faces 50 years in prison, admits what he did but is pleading insanity. His lawyers, Russell Williams and Elias Hilal, say Treacy suffered from PTSD after finding his brother, Michael Bell, 30, hanging from a tree outside a Pompano Beach church on Oct. 10, 2009.
The beating of Ratley, then also 15, took place five months later, March 17, 2010, at a Deerfield Beach Middle School bus stop.
Neumeister blamed Treacy and Ratley for the nasty tone of the text message exchange that preceded the attack. Ratley called Treacy a rapist for his apparent interest in their mutual friend Kayla Manson, then 13. Manson had borrowed Ratley’s cellphone to text Treacy earlier in the morning, but no longer had it by the time Treacy replied.
Treacy responded to the rapist taunt by threatening to kill Ratley. Neumeister dismissed the threat as an angry but otherwise meaningless response. The reference to Treacy’s brother, harmless in itself, had a profound effect on Treacy, who was suffering at the time from an untreated mental illness, Neumeister said.
“This message was a game-changer,” he said. “It was sent on the wrong day to the wrong person… It was like somebody kicked him in the chest and knocked the wind out of him.”
Neumeister said he believes Treacy intended to scare Ratley by threatening to kill her but did not intend to follow through. “He wants to see and confront that girl,” he said. “But there’s no indication he wants to do what he did.”
Prosecution expert Hans Steiner, a California doctor who specializes in child psychiatry, agreed with Neumeister on all points except the most crucial — he said Treacy was legally sane when he went on the attack.
Steiner pointed to the messages Treacy sent to two friends who did not know Ratley. He told them he was going to commit murder and was going to prison. He even wrote out a will, recognizing he would not be coming home, Steiner said.
“He told us what he was going to do in the texts,” Steiner said. “He knew what he was doing. He knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. And he knew there would be serious consequences.”
He said the intentional threats Treacy texted to his friends before the attack carry greater weight than the denials he made to investigators and mental health experts afterward.
Steiner also said he believes Treacy has some genuine remorse for his actions, but that his remorse is tempered by his sense that he was not the only one in the wrong.
“He does feel sorry,” Steiner said. At the same time, he quoted Treacy as telling him, “Nobody ever talks about what she did to me.” The statement, Steiner said, showed that Treacy has not accepted full responsibility for what he did.
But Treacy is “fixable,” Steiner said under cross-examination. Five years of intense psychiatric treatment would likely succeed in returning Treacy to a state of mental health that would allow him to lead a more productive life.
The defense rested Thursday without calling Treacy to the stand. Prosecutor Maria Schneider plans to call one more mental health expert before both sides deliver closing arguments Friday.
raolmeda@tribune.com, 954-356-4457 or Twitter @SSCourts
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