Delling not fit for trial, judge says

BOISE – John Delling is improving but is still not mentally competent to stand trial for first-degree murder after five months of treatment for paranoid schizophrenia, a judge has ruled.

Rejecting prosecutors’ arguments that Delling was ready, 4th District Judge Deborah A. Bail ruled last week that the suspect lacks the mental fitness to make informed decisions. She ordered that he remain in the custody of the state Department of Health and Welfare.

Delling is accused of killing Bradley Morse in Boise on April 2, 2007. He is also charged with first-degree murder in Latah County in the shooting of University of Idaho student David Boss in Moscow on March 31, 2007.

In court filings, detectives wrote that Delling has confessed to fatally shooting both men and to shooting and wounding Jacob Thompson in the face outside Thompson’s apartment in Tucson, Ariz., on March 20.

Delling has not been charged in Arizona, but Tucson police told the Idaho Statesman that the case remains open.

In a jailhouse interview with the Boise newspaper last year, Delling said he drove more than 6,000 miles around the West looking for people who had hurt him in the past.

Delling was a high school classmate of Boss and Thompson in Boise, and he met Morse when the two were playing video games over the Internet, police said.

Police say Delling knew where Boss lived and used the Internet to find Thompson and Morse. Detectives also said Delling used his bank card in California during an unsuccessful attempt to find another former classmate, Travis Jablin.

Detectives say Delling told them that Boss, Thompson and Jablin were part of a group he called “the players” who were trying to control his mind and drain him of energy and that the killings were in self-defense.

Delling was arrested in Sparks, Nev., a day after Morse was killed. Police say Delling came to believe Morse was part of the group only on the night they met – the same night Morse was killed.