Murder suspect says he’s ‘possessed’

BOISE – A man accused of killing two people and suspected of wounding a third says he has a history of mental health disorders, including schizophrenia, and feels “possessed.”

John Delling, 21, can’t use the insanity defense, because Idaho law bars it. Still, his mental health could be a mitigating factor in his cases.

Delling is scheduled to stand trial next April in 4th District Court in the April 2 slaying of Bradley Morse in Boise. He also is charged with first-degree murder in Latah County for the March 31 shooting death of University of Idaho student David Boss in Moscow and is a suspect in the March 20 shooting that injured University of Arizona student Jacob Thompson.

In a jailhouse interview, Delling said he drove more than 6,000 miles around the western United States in search of people who had hurt him in the past. Delling, Thompson and Boss were classmates at a Boise high school, and Delling met Morse over the Internet through video games the two played, police have said.

“I didn’t have any intent to kill people, let me put it that way,” he told the Idaho Statesman. “I’m pretty much possessed. I have no control over my body.”

Word of Delling’s history of mental illness is not new.

Following his capture in northern Nevada in April, Delling’s parents said their son was mentally ill. In a letter to news outlets, they said they did everything “under the law and in our power” to prevent their son from harming others, but in the end he “was very sick, and needed more than this system had to offer.”

Delling also had been irrational and delusional during a visit to the Boss family’s Boise home over Christmas break, and Delling’s brother, Eric Delling, told police in early April his brother had asked him recently if he thought Boss was “stealing his powers.”

John Delling had previously voiced concerns about people “stealing his aura,” Eric Delling said.

In Monday’s interview from the Ada County Jail in Boise, Delling told reporters he had been sexually and mentally abused during his childhood and that another person was involved in the killings.

Authorities say Delling’s claim is part of his delusions.

“There’s nothing to indicate that anyone else was involved other than John Delling,” said Andrea Dearden, a spokeswoman for the county Sheriff’s Office.

Moscow police also said that Delling was alone in all instances in which he was observed in the city. “We currently have no leads that anybody else was an accomplice,” said Moscow Assistant Police Chief David Duke.

During the 45-minute interview with the newspaper, Delling discussed a range of topics, including the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., and the April 16 shootings that left 32 people and the shooter dead at Virginia Tech.

He said he didn’t necessarily agree with those rampages but did consider the shooters “martyrs.”

“When you kill somebody, your solar plexus takes in the power of that person and gives it to your god,” he said.

Delling said he has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist as schizophrenic and is being given medication in jail. He was uncertain if the medication helped his condition, which he said stemmed from abuse as a teen by another youth.

“My mental health is very, very bad,” he said.

Delling gave the interview against the advice of his lawyers, Gus Cahill and Amil Myshin, who declined to discuss his case. Publishing the interview could taint the prospective pool of jurors from whom lawyers will have to choose for a trial, Myshin said.