WHEN DEMONS GET THE BLAME: Strange and Disturbing Criminal Cases

They blamed the Devil for their crimes — murder, mutilation, even the deaths of children. Whether it was a sinister excuse or a genuine descent into darkness, the truth is far more disturbing than fiction.

Over the years, some of the most horrible crimes have had an equally horrible justification: “A demon made me do it.” As long as human beings have committed awful acts, some have sought to cast the blame at supernatural forces beyond their control. Whether it was a convenient excuse or they actually believed that they were possessed, these cases will actually make your skin crawl when you read about them.

Not some criminals, mind you, but the use of “demonic possession” as an excuse. Others, who will often have a serious mental illness or drug addiction themselves, truly feel that their bodies were taken over by demons or evil spirits at the time of their crimes. Either way, we all know how it goes – badly – and that leaves us wondering what on earth happened.

The Amityville Horror (1974)

On a chilly November night in 1974, in a quiet neighborhood in Amityville, N.Y., atrocity struck in the DeFeo family home. Twenty-three-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. did the unthinkable and gave birth to one of the most well-known horror stories in American history.

That night, as his family slept peacefully in their beds, Ronald used a high-powered rifle to methodically shoot each member of his family. His father, Ronald Sr., his mother Louise, and his four younger siblings — Dawn, Allison, Marc and John Matthew — were all killed as they lay sleeping. The perplexing thing was that none of the neighbors claimed to have heard gunshots, though six people had been shot at close range.

Ronald didn’t run or hide right away after the murders. He even went to work and otherwise lived his day normally. That evening, he stormed into Henry’s Bar, a local watering hole in the area where he was a familiar figure, crying that his family had been killed. “You’ve got to help me! I think my mother and dad are shot!” he yelled to the patrons.

Several of his friends returned to the house with him, where they found the grisly sight. When police arrived, Ronald seemed in shock He told them he believed the mob had targeted his family, and even named a possible hit man. But when police investigated, his account began to crumble. The hit man he’d named had a rock-solid alibi, and other facts didn’t align.

The very next day, Ronald confessed to the killings. When asked why he did it, his answer was: “Once I got going, I just couldn’t stop.” It went so fast.” Eventually, his attorney would assert that “demonic voices” in Ronald’s head had ordered him to kill his family, and that he had committed the murders in a kind of trance.

The house at 112 Ocean Ave. where the DeFeo family was murdered eventually became known as the “Amityville Horror House.” The next family, the Lutzes, said they were subjected to terrifying paranormal activity and fled after 28 days. Their story inspired the best-selling book and film “The Amityville Horror.” To this day, people argue about whether the house was actually haunted, or if the whole thing was an elaborate hoax.

So whether the house was cursed or not, six innocent lives were lost that night. Ronald DeFeo Junior was found guilty on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison. He died in custody in March 2021, claiming that voices had urged him to kill his family.

The Shrinks Who Did an Exorcism That Went Wrong (1974)

That same year, as movie fans the world over were being terrified by “The Exorcist,” a real-life exorcism with an equally tragic conclusion was occurring in the small town of Ossett, England. On the surface, Michael Taylor, a 31-year-old married father of five, sounded like a regular guy. People who knew him said he was cheerful, but that his life was sometimes shadowed by depression caused by a back injury that made it hard for him to hold down steady jobs.

The Taylor family’s life began to change when they began attending the Christian Fellowship Group, a local church. Michael, who had never been especially religious, began attending church services more regularly. A significant part of this shift was due to Marie Robinson, the group’s charismatic 21-year-old preacher. Robinson had convinced her congregation that “the power of God” could exorcise demons, and she held regular services, interrupted by tongue-speaking and religious ecstasy, as members were healed and purged.

And as Taylor grew more enmeshed in Robinson and her philosophy, his disposition also began changing.“He was fidgety and nervous. He formed bad moods, prone to bursts of anger that terrified his wife and children. The small town soon became abuzz with rumors of an affair between Robinson and Taylor, particularly after the two were caught spending time alone together in compromising positions.

When Taylor and Robinson were discovered naked in the same area, Taylor attributed his actions to a devil that had “taken control” of him. Worried congregants summoned a local Anglican vicar to perform an exorcism. Under an exhausting all-night ceremony in October 1974, the vicar and other ministers allegedly cast out forty demons from Taylor’s body, including those of “bestiality,” “incest,” “lewdness” and “blasphemy.”

But by the next morning, the ministers were drained. Though sure that three other demons — “murder,” “violence” and “insanity” — remained inside Taylor, the men decided to go home and get some rest before resuming the exorcism. They told Taylor’s wife, Christine, to keep him away from anything he could turn into a weapon, but assured her with prayer, everything would be all right.

Hours later a neighbor spotted Michael Taylor roaming the streets, bloodied. When asked what had happened, Taylor responded calmly that it was Satan’s blood. The grisly truth soon came to light: the blood belonged to his wife, Christine, whose dismembered body was discovered in their home. She had been murdered in an especially savage way, her eyes gouged out and other wounds that responding police officers said were among the most horrific they had ever seen.

When Taylor was tried, his defense claimed he had entered a state of automatism — a condition where a person acts while being unaware of what he is doing — induced by exorcism and his religious fervor. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital. The case ignited a national debate in Britain over the risks of amateur exorcisms and religious extremism.

The Devil Made Me Do It Trial (1981)

Nineteen-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson stabbed his landlord, 40-year-old Alan Bono, to death after an argument on February 16, 1981 in the small town of Brookfield, Connecticut. The falling out had begun over Johnson’s girlfriend, Debbie Glatzel, who was employed as Bono’s housekeeper. When the police came to arrest Johnson, he regarded them blankly and uttered five words that would enter legal immortality: “The devil made me do it.”

This was not a last-minute contrivance. Several months before the murder, Johnson’s girlfriend’s family had been contending with what they said was a demonic possession. Debbie’s 11-year-old younger brother, David Glatzel, had been behaving strangely — growling, speaking in different voices and saying he’d seen a beast with sharp teeth and horns that was threatening to steal his soul.

Desperate for assistance, the Glatzel family reached out to Ed and Lorraine Warren, self-described demonologists who would go on to achieve fame for their involvement in cases such as the Amityville haunting and the Conjuring house. Over the course of several exorcisms that the Warrens performed on David, Johnson supposedly taunted the demon — saying, “Take me on, leave the boy alone!”

According to the Warrens, this challenge freed one of the 43 demons that possessed David so it could leave that boy’s body and take residence in Johnson’s. In the weeks before the murder, Johnson’s behavior was reportedly markedly altered. He started to blackout and seeing a demon that was supposedly harassing David.

When Johnson’s case reached the trial stage, his lawyer, Martin Minella, sought to use demonic possession as a defense — the first time in American legal history that someone had sought to use such a claim to enter a not guilty plea. Minella argued Johnson should be acquitted of murder because he had been possessed by a demon at the time of the killing and so was not capable of committing murder.

Judge Robert Callahan was not persuaded. That such a defense “could never be permitted” in a court of law because it was not provable, he ruled. “The courts of Connecticut will not recognize that the Devil exists,” he said, insisting that the trial proceed on strictly secular grounds.

With their supernatural defense turned down, Johnson’s legal team had few options remaining. Johnson was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter (as opposed to murder), and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. Because of good behavior he was released after 4 years and 7 months.

The case “the Devil made me do it” came to be known captivated the American public and ignited heated debate about the intersection of religion, mental health and criminal responsibility. It has spurred several books, documentaries and even a 2021 horror movie, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.” The Warrens insisted until their deaths that Johnson had indeed been possessed, while skeptics attributed possession to mental illness, substance abuse or simply a canny play of legal strategy.

The Son of Sam (1976-1977)

New York City’s summer of 1976 was fraught enough. The city had also been battered by high crime rates, a financial crisis and the residual trauma of a blackout in the past year that had led to a wave of looting. Then, on July 29, 1976, a new terror seized the city when two young women sitting in a parked car were shot at close range. One was killed instantly; the other was gravely injured but lived.

It marked the start of a reign of terror that would stretch for over a year. The killer, who would come to be known as “the Son of Sam,” appeared to have a preference for young couples sitting in parked cars, especially those with long-haired brunette women. As the body count mounted, panic swept the city. Women chopped off or dyed their hair blonde, to avoid matching the killer’s apparent taste. Parks and lovers’ lanes that had once been prime dating territory went dark and deserted.

The shooter’s identity was unknown until he started mailing letters to Jimmy Breslin, a newspaper columnist, and leaving them at crime scenes. The letters were disturbing, scrawled in childlike penmanship with strange phrases and mentions of demons. One letter started with “Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood.” The writer called himself the “Son of Sam” and said a 6,000-year-old demon who spoke through his neighbor’s black Labrador retriever was telling him to kill.

The killer was later identified by police as David Berkowitz, a 24-year-old postal worker who lived in Yonkers, just north of the city. When they arrested him on Aug. 10, 1977, Berkowitz’s only reaction was a weird smile that came with the words, “You got me.”

Berkowitz later confessed to all the shootings, telling police that the dog of his neighbor Sam Carr, named Harvey, was possessed by an ancient demon that ordered him to kill. Berkowitz had sent a tormenting letter to the New York Post during a three-month lull in his killing spree, in which he wrote: “I am still here like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, rarely pausing to rest.”

Psychiatrists who evaluated Berkowitz found him to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia but found him legally sane and responsible for his actions. He pleaded guilty to six murders, and was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences, for a total of 365 years in prison.

Berkowitz became a born-again Christian while in prison and modified his story a little. He now asserted that he had belonged to a Satanic cult that had carried out the murders, and that the “demon dog” story was a hoax. Yet he continued to insist that supernatural forces had been at play, stating, “I believe that I was under demonic control… The Devil is real, and he was working through me.” Berkowitz, who remains imprisoned to this day, claims the devil and God are still battling for his soul.

The Teenage Satanist (1986)

Sean Sellers was not your average 16-year-old. While most kids his age were concerned with school, friends and, perhaps, obtaining a driver’s license, Sellers had become deeply engaged with Satanism and regularly conducted rituals in which he drank his own blood. He lined his bedroom walls with pentagrams and other dark symbols and maintained a notebook he kept filled with accounts of his morbid thoughts and rituals.

Sellers’s descent into darkness didn’t happen in a vacuum. His childhood had laid the groundwork for his troubled teenage years. Sean was born in California to a 16-year-old mother and an alcoholic father; he had a turbulent childhood marked by instability and abuse. Sean’s father left the family when Sean was three. His mother, Vonda, later married Paul Bellofatto, a truck driver, in an effort to bring some stability to Sean’s life, but by the time he turned 16, the family had moved 30 times.

On top of the constant moving, Sean had to deal with physical abuse coming from both his mother and grandfather. One uncle once humiliated Sean by making him wear his soiled diapers on his head as punishment, and Sean wet the bed ’til he was thirteen, all of which only deepened his shame. School wasn’t much different; he was bullied and had few friends. Whisked away from the troubled reality of his home, Sean lost himself in fantasy worlds, devouring occult books and role-playing games.

On March 5, 1986, Sean’s rage and pain culminated in an act of horrific violence. To keep from getting blood on his clothes, Sean wore only black underwear and crept into his parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night, shooting his mother and stepfather in the face while they slept. He later said he was angry at his mother for not approving of his girlfriend and for forcing him to drop out of high school. NOTE: Sean performed an occult ritual about a week prior to committing the murders that he believed would protect him from getting caught.

Sean had planned the murders with meticulous care. The black underwear was a deliberate move to prevent bloodstains from ruining his clothing, and he had attempted to stage the crime scene as if it had been committed by an intruder. The careful planning indicated this wasn’t his first murder. Just over a year before, on Sept. 8, 1985, he shot and killed Robert Paul Bower, a clerk at a Circle K convenience store, after Bower refused to sell beer to the underage Sean.

Unlike many criminals who try to conceal their guilt, Sean never denied committing the three murders. After his arrest he confessed fully, even with a telltale air of pride in what he’d done. He was tried as an adult, found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death, becoming the youngest person to receive a death sentence in the United States since its reinstatement in 1976.

But during his time on death row, Sean had a life-changing conversion, surrendering his life to Jesus Christ and renouncing Satanism and the occult. He had said he had turned to Satanism after becoming addicted to the fantasy role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons,” which had left him vulnerable to demonic influence, he said. He continued to assert that he had been possessed by a demon when committing the murders, and that he was not in control of his actions.

Sean’s case drew national attention. He made the rounds on television shows like “Geraldo” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” claiming to be an “expert” on the threats of Satanism and the occult. His case was often invoked in debates about the supposed dangers of role-playing games and heavy metal music, which some conservatives said could push impressionable teenagers toward Satanism.

Despite several appeals and clemency petitions, one of which was backed by the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu himself, Sean Sellers was executed shortly before his 29th birthday on February 4th, 1999, via lethal injection. Sean, two days before his execution, wrote in his diary: “I’m amazed at the self-righteousness I still encounter from people who don’t even know me. People…for one moment, stop looking at my own sins and look at my own. You want to pounce on something that occurred 13 years ago. Thirteen years!” He concluded his diary by stating that he had repented for his sins and had been serving God since.

Sean’s case is still contentious, but some say that his age and mental state exempted him from execution, while others say the methodical nature of his crimes should prove that he was fully aware of his actions. Either way, his story is a heartbreaking reminder of how a troubled childhood can occasionally have tragic consequences.

Yaroslavl Satanists (2008)

In August 2008, residents of Yaroslavl, a historic city about 160 miles northeast of Moscow, were shocked by a gruesome discovery. Four mutilated bodies were discovered in a forest on the outskirts of the city. The victims, all teenage boys, had been violently killed and mutilated in ways so gruesome that many details were withheld from the public to avoid triggering panic.

The bodies bore signs of torture, and investigators described the killings as having a ritualistic quality. The victims had also been robbed before or after death, but investigators soon concluded robbery could not be the primary motive. The degree of violence far exceeded what would be necessary for an ordinary theft.

As the police investigated, a troubling truth came to light. The killings were committed by six youths, led by a man named Nikolai Ogolobyak. They weren’t run-of-the-mill criminals, but self-styled Satanists stating a cult that performed dark rituals and animal sacrifice. The group practiced its rituals on cats, dogs, and other small animals, killing them in similarly brutal ways, before turning to human beings.

The organization believed that in order to please the malignant UFO deity Lucifer — whom they worshipped — humans had to die. As a rite in an initiation ritual for new members, Ogolobyak and his followers had taken the four teenagers to the forest, where they were killed and dismembered. But most disturbing of all was evidence that the killers had eaten parts of their victims as part of their ritual.

The case sent shock waves through Russia, a nation still reeling from the social turmoil that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Religion, of any kind — Satanism included — had been suppressed during the Soviet era. But interest in the occult had increased in the post-Soviet years, especially among disenfranchised youth searching for identity and meaning in a society undergoing rapid change.

In June 2010, following a closed trial (the identity of the proceedings was protected because of the gruesome nature of the crimes), the 21-year-old Ogolobyak was sentenced to twenty years in prison for robbery, murder, and corpse desecration. His five co-defendants, four young men and one young woman, were sentenced between eight and ten years.

One of the murderers coldly told the court that he carried out the murders in order to “offer Satan human sacrifices.” The case sparked immense public outrage in Russia, especially as all the attackers were members of the country’s emerging goth subculture. This prompted some politicians to call for the legal changes regulating “emo websites” and even for goth-formatted teenagers to be barred from entering government office buildings or schools.

The Yaroslavl killings happened just weeks before another horrific case in January 2009, when a girl aged 16 in St. Petersburg was drowned by self-described goths. These cases contributed to a moral panic in Russia around the youth subcultures, and resulted in greater attention paid to teenagers who wore goth or emo-like fashion. Even though most goths and emo kids were just expressing themselves through fashion and music, these extreme cases would continue to overshadow these subcultures well into the future.

The “Demon-Possessed” Children (2012)

On a Sunday in June 2012, in the parking lot of a Walmart in Lawrence, Kan., shoppers were met with a disturbing sight: two small children bound with duct tape in an S.U.V. Store security was called immediately, which alerted the police. When the officers entered, they found a 5-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl chained, their hands bound and tape over their eyes. The children were visibly shaken but unharmed.

The SUV was being driven by Deborah and Adolfo Gomez, who were shopping inside the store at the time. The couple, when police confronted them, gave a shocking explanation for their actions: they thought their children were possessed by demons and had strapped them down to keep the demons from escaping and harming anyone.

The family had been on their way from their home in Illinois to Arizona when their vehicle broke down in Kansas. They had been parked for days outside the Walmart, awaiting their car’s repair. By this period, they were already convinced, according to their police statements, that evil forces were in their midst.

The Gomez family’s conduct did not come from nowhere. They had been consumed by apocalyptic fears for months, convinced that the world was ending in 2012 (a widespread conspiracy theory at the time, based on misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar). They had fled their home in Illinois, which they were convinced was infested with demons, and were driving to Arizona in search of safety.

Investigator later found out that Adolfo Gomez had not slept in nine whole days leading up to the event, which would have likely exacerbated his paranoid behavior and strange believe system. Extreme sleep deprivation can induce hallucinations, paranoia and confused thinking, which may have exacerbated the couple’s already warped world view.

The two parents were arrested and charged with child abuse and child endangerment. The children, along with their three older siblings who weren’t restrained but who were also in the store, were taken into protective custody. The case gained national attention because of its bizarre nature and unholy combination of religious beliefs and child abuse.

In court, both parents pleaded guilty as part of plea agreements. Adolfo Gomez pleaded no contest to felony child abuse and child endangerment, and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Deborah Gomez entered a no-contest plea to child endangerment and, after spending nearly a year in jail waiting for a trial, was sentenced to a year of probation.

The case laid bare the perilous intersection of radical religious belief, mental illness and child welfare. Although many of people’s religious beliefs include spiritual forces that are good and evil, experts cautioned that such beliefs almost never result in children being harmed. The Gomez case was an extreme outlier, in which distorted ideas of religion combined with deprivation of sleep and perhaps mental illness led to tragic events for the family’s children.

The Double Murder and Possessed Mother (2012)

It was almost Halloween in Naperville, Ill., in 2012. Instead, the real horror would be not in costumes or decorations, but in a violent act of surprise that rocked the community. This was a 40-year-old Polish immigrant who was also a single mother named Elizbieta Plackowska. She had recently lost her father, her marriage was troubled and she was working long hours as a house cleaner to pay the bills.

Then sometime before October 30, 2012, Plackowska started to hear voices. Those voices nonetheless told her something terrifying: that her 7-year-old son, Justin, and his 5-year-old friend, Olivia Dworakowski, were possessed by demons and had to die to “find salvation.” Plackowska later said that she herself was possessed by the very same entity, an entity she referred to as the “black shadow,” which caused her to do the unthinkable.

On the night of Oct. 30, Plackowska was babysitting Olivia at the Dworakowski residence while Olivia’s mother, a nurse, worked the night shift. At some point that night, in the throes of her delusions, Plackowska brought both children to her son’s bedroom. There, in an outburst that prosecutors would later characterize as ”horrific and systematic,” she stabbed her son dozens of times, then about 100 more. He had then used the knife on Olivia, stabbing the little girl approximately 50 times.

Plackowska mutilated both bodies after the killings, slitting their throats to “make sure the evil was gone.” She also murdered the family dog and Olivia’s dog, thinking that they were also possessed by evil spirits. She drove to a church but, finding it closed, went to a friend’s house and called the police.

When officers arrived at the Dworakowski home, they were met with a scene of unthinkable horror. Blood sprayed the walls and furniture, and the two children were dead in pools of blood. Plackowska first told police an intruder had broken into the house and killed the children, but she soon changed her story, confessing that she murdered the children because they were “possessed by devils.”

Plackowska’s defense team argued at her trial that she was insane when she killed the two. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist who testified that Plackowska had experienced a psychotic episode caused by major depression with psychotic features. He said that she really thought she was saving the children’s souls by killing them.

Prosecutors argued that Plackowska had known exactly what she was doing. They cited evidence that she had been angry with her husband for leaving her alone to care for Justin while he was working as a trucker, and that she had said to Justin, “You’re going to die,” earlier that very day after he misbehaved. They said the demon possession story was made up ex post facto to escape culpability.

Following a three-week trial, Elizbieta Plackowska was convicted on Sept. 27, 2017, nearly five years after the slaughters, on 10 counts, including two counts of first-degree murder and one count of animal cruelty. She was sentenced to serve natural life in prison without parole.

The case underscored the devastating potential outcomes of untreated mental illness. Family and friends later said that Plackowska had been displaying signs of declining mental health in the weeks leading up to the murders, but no one realized the seriousness of what was happening. Mental health advocates seized on the case to demand better screening of, and treatment for, people experiencing psychosis and delusions.

The Uber Driver Who Worked for Everyone Else (2016)

It was a night of terror for the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Feb. 20, 2016 — and it was one with no real pattern or reason to it. In the span of roughly seven hours, a gunman opened fire in three different places around the city, killing six and seriously wounding two more. What made the shootings especially terrifying, of course, was their random nature — the victims had no ties to one another or to the shooter. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The police quickly identified the suspect as Jason Brian Dalton, a 45-year-old insurance adjuster who had just begun driving for Uber. What made Dalton especially horrifying is that he kept picking up and dropping off Uber passengers between shootings, chatting with them casually as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

But when the police arrested Dalton, they thought he would offer some sort of explanation for his behavior — maybe a grudge against society, political extremism or a personal crisis. What they in fact heard was one of the strangest motives ever offered for a mass shooting. His Uber app on his iPhone had taken control of his mind and forced him to kill, Dalton told detectives.

Dalton stated that when he opened the Uber app, a symbol appeared that resembled the Eastern Star (Mason symbol). Then a devil’s head appeared on his screen. His problems began, Dalton said, when he pressed a button. The “app-demon” compelled him not only to kill but to acquire supernatural abilities, too: “Dalton explained how you can drive over 100 miles per hour and run through stop signs and you can just get places,” detectives wrote in their report.

Dalton described the devil figure as being a “horned cow head or something similar” that would issue him assignments and overtake his entire body. He said he wished he had never said anything about seeing the symbol when it first appeared on his phone, as if acknowledging it somehow gave it power over him.

Psychiatric assessments indicated that Dalton had a severe delusional disorder. He was initially found not guilty by reason of insanity but later changed his plea not guilty to all charges. In February 2019, Dalton was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

This became a big story, so the next day Uber’s Business Development VP had to come out and say things — our background checks are better than our competitors, they were about to become the largest transportation business in history. It also demonstrated how technology can become integrated into delusional systems for people who are severely mentally ill. In Dalton’s case, the object of his psychosis was a smartphone app — just as decades ago, such people might have blamed radios or televisions or other technology for controlling their thoughts.

The Devil and the Possessed Shooter (2016)

On a sunny afternoon in September 2016, two 13-year-old girls, Lauren Landavazo and Makayla Smith, were heading home from McNiel Middle School in Wichita Falls, Texas. It was a path they’d traveled countless times before, a sleepy suburban route that linked their neighborhood with the school. As they shared talk and laughter, little did they know they were being observed.

Twenty-year-old Kody Lott had parked his car nearby and was watching the girls through his window. Lott would go on to provide police with two unsettling explanations for what he was about to do: he was jealous because he believed Landavazo had a boyfriend, and the devil had been telling him to do it.

Kody had a .22 caliber rifle and started shooting at the girls. Smith later told police that Lott looked right into her eyes before he pulled the trigger, an indication that he clearly knew what he was doing. Lott first shot Landavazo, witnesses said, then turned the gun on Smith before going back to shoot Landavazo again.

Landavazo was struck 14 times and pronounced dead at the scene. Smith was hit once in the back, but ran to a nearby house for help. She was left with injuries after emergency surgery. Lott left the scene but was arrested two days later after police received a tip about the vehicle he was driving.

Lott confessed to the shooting during police questioning, then offered his strange explanation about demonic influence. He told investigators that the devil had assisted him in planning the attack and picking his victims. He also vented his anger over not being able to get a girlfriend and said that he was upset by media coverage of school shootings.

Initially, Lott was deemed not mentally fit to stand trial, and he was sent to a maximum-security mental hospital to receive treatment. But after months of treatment, doctors found that he was mentally competent to face charges. At his trial in 2018, Lott maintained that he was under the devil’s influence when he did the acts, but prosecutors argued that he was mentally unsound and furious over his failure to form relationships with girls his age.

The prosecution also introduced evidence that Lott had meticulously planned the attack, including buying ammunition expressly for the shooting and selecting a time and location where he was confident he would encounter susceptible victims. They argued that this level of planning demonstrated that no matter what delusions Lott may have had, he knew what he was doing was wrong.

In a peculiar twist to the case, Lott’s mother and stepfather sued the city of Wichita Falls for the return of the murder weapon, saying it was stolen from their apartment. This further enraged the community still mourning the death of a little girl.

In September 2018, taking less than an hour to deliberate, a Fort Worth jury convicted Lott of murder for the killing of Lauren Landavazo and aggravated assault for the shooting of Makayla Smith. He was sentenced to life in prison and an additional 20 years for the assault charge. At Lott’s sentencing, Lauren’s mother addressed him directly, saying, “You don’t get to say that the devil made you do anything. You made these choices.”

The case thrusted into the spotlight the perennial debate over mental illness, criminal responsibility and the use of “demonic possession” as a defense against violent crimes. Although Lott almost certainly had mental health issues, the premeditated nature of his crime also indicated that his assertions about demonic influence were possibly an effort to avoid complete responsibility for his actions.

The Seattle Tragedy (2024)

Perhaps the most recent, most heartbreaking, was in Seattle, Washington, just a few days ago, May 8, 2024. That evening, just before 6:30 p.m., police were called to investigate reports of a shooting in a residential neighborhood. When they arrived, they found a distraught woman who informed them that her child had just been shot in the head and no longer alive.

The victim was a 9-month-old baby who had been sleeping when the unthinkable occurred. The shooter turned out to be 35-year-old Dion Montgomery, the baby’s father, police said. But that wasn’t the only crime he committed that night. Before shooting his baby, Montgomery had fired randomly at two others, apparently for no reason and with no provocation, according to court documents.

Montgomery’s behavior was immediately alarming when the police detained him. He was not responding to simple questions and continued talking about demons with a fixed, wide-eyed stare that officers said was disturbing. He told the police that he had smoked PCP, a powerful hallucinogenic drug, earlier that day and blamed his behavior on demons that he said had been haunting him.

Montgomery’s defense attorney would later argue in court that Montgomery sincerely believed demons lived in his home, and that his gun contained blanks — not real bullets. This implies that although Montgomery admitted to pulling the trigger, he could not fully grasp what that meant because of his drug-induced state and underlying mental health issues.

Prosecutors, however, argue that the child was murdered with planning and premeditation. They characterized Montgomery’s crimes as “extremely brutal,” asserting that he posed “a great risk to the community and to what remained of his own family.” The court agreed, and set a high bail and charged Montgomery with first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault, and unlawful possession of a firearm.

As of this writing, the case is still winding through the legal system, but it is one of the clearest cases of how drug use can trigger or aggravate psychotic symptoms that can lead to violence. In particular, PCP makes people hallucinate, paranoid and aggressive, and perhaps combined with Montgomery’s already existing mental health issues, a perfect storm of delusion and violence was created.

Why Do People Blame Demons?

For as long as people have committed terrible acts, some have sought to assign blame to supernatural forces beyond their control. This phenomenon persists across the globe and across time, from antiquity to the modern era. But why? What makes someone say that a demon made them do it, instead of giving credit to their own choices?

In some cases, the answer might be simple: Demonic possession is a strategy for escaping accountability. Saying “the devil made me do it” can provide an excuse for a criminal to distance blame from themselves. If they were under the control of a supernatural power, they might argue, then they shouldn’t be punished as heavily — or at all.

But in many instances, the reason is more complicated. Mental health professionals cite several reasons someone might truly believe they were possessed during a violent incident:

Mental Illness

In many of these cases, the criminals had serious mental illnesses that went undiagnosed or untreated. Disorders such as schizophrenia, psychotic features of bipolar disorder or delusional disorder can cause patients to see and hear things that feel utterly real to them. Somebody with untreated schizophrenia might actually hear voices instructing them to commit violence, and they may interpret these voices as demons or other supernatural beings.

In Michael Taylor’s case, doctors later concluded he had endured a psychotic break brought on by stress and religious mania. Elizbieta Plackowska had major depression with psychotic features. These can include breaks with reality that are terrifying for those experiencing them.

Drug-Induced Psychosis

Certain drugs, especially hallucinogens and stimulants, can produce transient psychosis characterized by hallucinations and paranoid delusions. PCP, methamphetamine and even powerful doses of marijuana can sometimes trigger disturbing visions in users or make them think that evil forces have taken over them or other people.

This article has been updated with the new time frame for Josh’s death. PCP is known for inducing violent behavior and dissociative states where users feel separated from reality. Montgomery was so high from drugs his reality was completely warped, and he may have even thought he saw demons.

Enduring Religious and Cultural Beliefs

A person’s cultural and spiritual background can play a significant role in their interpretations of unusual psychological experiences. In communities where belief in demonic possession is prevalent, someone experiencing hallucinations or intrusive thoughts might reasonably interpret these symptoms as indications of possession rather than symptoms of a mental illness.

Sean Sellers was raised in a world where Satanism and evangelical Christianity were formidable forces. When he started to have disturbing thoughts and impulses, he analyzed that through the context of this religion, first seeing that as proof that he was connected to Satan, and then later that he must have been possessed by a demon.

Personal Trauma

The folk who presenting themselves as demons are typically people with severe histories of trauma, abuse, and neglect. Such early traumatic experiences raise the risk of adult mental illness, including dissociative conditions in which a person feels disconnected from themselves or their actions, or that someone or something else is taking over.

Sean Sellers was physically and emotionally abused as a child. The Yaroslavl killers were children of the social upheaval that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse. Trauma doesn’t justify violent behavior, but it can explain why some people develop the psychologies that manifest in this way.

The Rise of Exorcisms

Even as mental health treatment advances and the scientific understanding of afflictions like schizophrenia improves, belief in demonic possession is still widespread. In fact, exorcisms — ritualized practices meant to expel demons or malignant spirits — have actually become more common in recent years.

(According to the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis received 1,700 requests for exorcism in 2018.) Similar rituals are performed for people believed to be possessed by other Christian denominations and adherents of various traditional religions worldwide.

As this trend grows, many mental health professionals are disturbed, fearing that individuals with easily treatable psychiatric conditions may turn to exorcism rather than seek medical care. Without appropriate treatment, illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder commonly worsen over time, with the potential for the situations described in these cases to ensue.

Meanwhile, some religious leaders and scholars say that the rituals of exorcism can offer psychological comfort to believers and possibly complement medical treatment instead of being a substitute for it. They note that many exorcists now collaborate with mental health professionals to decide whether someone needs spiritual guidance, psychiatric care or both.

The Legal Question

When someone says that demons caused him to commit a crime, courts are faced with a daunting question: Should a belief in demonic possession ever serve as an insanity defense? The answer, in most of the world’s legal systems, including the United States, has thus far been “no.”

To be found not guilty by reason of insanity, a defendant usually has to demonstrate that they either did not understand that what they were doing was wrong or could not help themselves because of a recognized mental illness. This is why saying a demon seized control is not good enough.

When demonic possession was invoked as a defense in the infamous case of Arne Johnson, or “The Devil Made Me Do It,” the judge Daniels Robert Callahan dismissed the case entirely, noting that “the courts of Connecticut [don’t] recognize the existence of the Devil.” Johnson was convicted in spite of his possession claim.

But if defendants can prove that they suffered from an established mental illness that made them believe they were possessed, courts may allow a defense of insanity. A judge found Michael Taylor — who murdered his wife following an exorcism in England — not guilty by reason of insanity, after doctors testified that he had undergone a psychotic break that rendered him unable to understand what he was doing.

Looking Forward

As we’ve seen with these troubling cases, the assertion of demonic possession has been a rationale for some of the most shocking crimes in recent history. The Amityville murders to the Seattle tragedy — the refrain is identical: A horrific act of violence followed by the killer’s claim that it was supernatural forces, not their own choices, driving them.

For victims’ families, the explanations provide scant consolation. The question of why someone would harm their loved one lingers, whether the explanation is mental illness, substance use or assertions of demonic influence. And for society at large, these cases underscore the continuing need for improved mental health treatment, substance abuse programs and other programs to reach at-risk individuals before they hit a breaking point.

Whether you believe in demons or not, it is these disturbing cases that remind us of the dark potential that exists in each of us humans and the extreme consequences that can arise when that darkness gets a hold of us. They also remind us that when we have terrible thoughts or impulses, we need to reach out for help, whether that help is mental health professionals or trusted religious leaders or both.

A lesson compounded by the fact that with nearly every one of the cases strung across just 12 days, red flags often come up long before any violence. Many of these people exhibited behavioral changes, uttered troubling ideas or showed signs of emotional distress that could probably have been treated with the right intervention. Hopefully, recognizing these warning signs and responding with empathy and adequate support could help prevent future tragedies.

We will never fully understand why some people commit horrific acts of violence, but studying cases like these can help us build toward a world where fewer people ever get to the point of saying, “a demon made me do it,” to explain the inexplicable.

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