Theories of altruism and anger compete in case of BC dad who killed his children

KAMLOOPS, B.C. - A B.C. father who described killing his daughter and two sons during his testimony at his first-degree murder trial should be found not criminally responsible for the crime, his lawyers told the judge hearing his case on Thursday.
But the Crown says Allan Schoenborn concocted the self-serving explanation for his crime, and should be found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder.
The judge, who is hearing the case alone, without a jury, must decide whether Schoenborn was driven by mental illness or more sinister motives.
Defence lawyer Peter Wilson argued Schoenborn was living an increasingly psychotic reality in which he believed it morally right to take the children's lives.
"He saw reality on an entirely different plane that the rest of us," Wilson said Thursday in his final arguments in the case.
"The reality he saw was his children were at great risk, that they were destined to suffer a fate worse than death and he had no option but to kill them."
Schoenborn is on trial for first-degree murder in the deaths of 10-year-old Kaitlynne, eight-year-old Max and five-year-old Cordon. Their bodies were found in their Merritt, B.C., home in April 2008 by their mother, Darcie Clarke.
The defence says the killings were the culmination of two decades of mental illness by a man who suffered paranoid delusions dating back to 1987. An altercation at a bus station and incident at his daughter's school where he accused teachers of prostituting her in the days before the killings are evidence of Schoenborn's declining mental state, Wilson said.
Schoenborn told the court that he believed his children were being sexually molested, and that killing them was the only way to end their suffering.
The Crown says that is not the case.
"All the details about what informed his thinking and reinforced his beliefs and motivations come long after the fact," Crown lawyer Glenn Kelt said in his final arguments.
He told Justice Robert Powers that Schoenborn never told anyone of his fears the children were being abused.
He urged the judge to convict Schoenborn of first-degree murder, saying he concocted the mental illness and the belief that he was saving them from abuse to explain away the murders.
But Kelt painted a picture for the court of an angry, lucid man desperate to exact revenge on his estranged wife and assert control over his unravelling life.
The verdict hinges on whether Schoenborn knew killing the children was wrong, and it is the difference between life in prison for the accused or hospitalization and treatment for a mental illness.
Kelt said the bizarre incidents in the days prior to the murders were caused by alcohol, and insisted there were no cases of Schoenborn showing symptoms of illness before or after he was arrested.
"One of the conclusions you can come to is it didn't exist at the time," he told the judge.
Court has heard that Schoenborn has never been diagnosed with a mental illness.
In his own testimony, Schoenborn described in grisly detail stabbing and suffocating his daughter to death and then smothering his young sons.
He told the court that his daughter struggled with him as he slashed her neck with a cleaver, telling him "I'm sorry, daddy, I'm sorry." He suffocated the boys with a pillow and a plastic bag.
He has been in custody since he was found, emaciated, hypothermic and with self-inflicted wounds to his arms, in the woods near the community of Merritt following a 10-day manhunt.
There's been no evidence presented at the trial that the children were, in fact, being sexually molested.
Three psychiatrists testified at the trial - one who told the court that Schoenborn was mentally ill, one who said he found signs of paranoia but did not believe the accused was mentally ill and another who said he could not be sure of the man's motives when he killed the children.
Powers reprimanded the accused Thursday after Schoenborn, who sat stone-faced throughout his lawyer's arguments, called out repeatedly from the prisoner's bench to refute Kelt.
"It wasn't to take the kids from Darcie, it was to put them safe," he yelled after Kelt alleged Schoenborn wanted to make his estranged spouse pay for severing their 15-year relationship.
Another time, he held up his wrists to show the scars he had from a suicide attempt after the killings.
Further final arguments were scheduled Friday.
If convicted of first-degree murder, the 41-year-old former Vancouver roofer faces life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.