Acquittal: Capitol Hill killer who hacked two to death ruled insane

SEATTLE -- A King County judge has acquitted a homeless Seattle man who killed two strangers in a pair of hatchet attacks, finding the mentally ill man was insane at the time.

After more than two years of litigation and psychiatric evaluation, Michael LaRosa was quietly found to be insane following a bench trial before King County Superior Court Judge Bill Bowman. Charged with first-degree murder, LaRosa, 28, was found not guilty because he was insane when he killed the men.

LaRosa's acquittal means he'll remain at Western State Hospital, a secure psychiatric facility where he's spent much of his time since the November 2010 slayings of Dale Richard Holme and Joseph M. Lamagno.

Bowman's decision followed an extensive evaluation of LaRosa, a mentally ill man accused of hacking Lamagno to death in front of a group of school children on Capitol Hill. LaRosa killed Holme in the International District and was accused in that slaying only after Lamagno's murder.

A New York native with ties to Sarasota, Fla., LaRosa moved to Seattle to live with a woman but found himself homeless as his mental health deteriorated. Court records show he has been hospitalized several times due to severe delusions and hallucinations. Living on the street, LaRosa claimed he was unable to obtain his medications but instead took pills offered to him by friends.

Arrested shortly after that Nov. 22, 2010, slaying of Lamagno, LaRosa was immediately suspected in Holme's death, which had occurred the day before. LaRosa was later charged with first-degree murder in both hatchet attacks, and pleaded not guilty to all counts.

King County prosecutors contended LaRosa attacked Holme hours before he killed Lamagno, 58. Holme, 66, was found seriously wounded near the intersection of Fifth Avenue South and South Weller Street in Seattle's International District.

Responding officers found Holme unconscious and bleeding heavily from injuries to his head. He was rushed to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he died five days later without regaining consciousness.

LaRosa was taken to Western State shortly after his arrest and has remained there most of the time since. Evaluators there and at King County Jail consistently found LaRosa to be suffering from mental illness, but until Bowman's decision it remained unclear whether he would face a jury.

In a written ruling, Bowman found that LaRosa had, as prosecutors asserted, killed Holme and Lamagno. But Bowman found he was insane when he did so.

"At the time of the acts charged," Bowman opined, "the defendant was suffering from a mental disease or defect affecting the defendant's mind to the extent that either the defendant was unable to perceive the nature and quality of the acts with which he is charged. …

"The defendant was unable to tell right from wrong."

Bowman also found that LaRosa presents a "substantial danger" to public safety. LaRosa, the judge ruled, should remain institutionalized.

Evaluators previously found LaRosa suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and drug addiction, and is only able to competently assist in his own defense while medicated. LaRosa continued to hear voices and suffer from delusions, and he contended others could control his mind.

In November, another King County judge found LaRosa capable of assisting in his own defense and understanding the charges against him. But that decision didn't resolve the claim that LaRosa was insane when the slayings occurred, which was the issue before Bowman on Friday.

LaRosa's public defender, Carlos Gonzales, secured a psychiatric evaluation concluding that LaRosa was insane at the time of the killings, according to court documents. Prosecutors were unable to prove otherwise.

Key to the defense's claims was a Dec. 3 report issued by a Western State Hospital psychologist who evaluated LaRosa at the request of prosecutors.

That psychologist found LaRosa was locked in severe delusions at the time of the killings. His ability to determine right from wrong, she found, was significantly impaired.

"Mr. LaRosa reported experiencing visual hallucinations stating he sees 'demons,' which look like 'medieval men' and are 'bigger than people,'" the state psychologist wrote after interviewing LaRosa late last month. She said LaRosa reported experiencing these hallucinations as recently as late this year, but continues to deny having a mental illness.

According to prosecutors, LaRosa used a camping ax to kill Lamagno 14 hours after the attack on Holme. Prosecutors characterized the slaying as an "unprovoked" attack on a stranger.

At 10:35 a.m. the day of the second killing, LaRosa approached Lamagno in the 1400 block of East Union Street and set upon him, according to prosecutors.

LaRosa knocked Lamagno to the ground with the hatchet, and then continued striking the man in front of a group of witnesses, including children walking home from school after classes were canceled due to snow.

Covered with Lamagno's blood, LaRosa was arrested at the scene and interviewed by police. LaRosa purportedly told investigators he'd never met Lamagno, who just happened to be in the same grocery store as LaRosa moments before the attack.

Investigators later found DNA from both Lamagno and Holme on LaRosa's backpack, according to charging documents.

Discussing the slayings, LaRosa told the psychologist he was wandering downtown Seattle when he crossed paths with Holme. Per LaRosa's account, Holme - a stranger to him - gave him a cigarette; LaRosa thought it was poisoned and attacked Holme.

"The voices were trying to help convince me to hurt the guy before I die," LaRosa said, according to the psychologist's account. "I had to get him back and I was doing something good for him."

LaRosa said he killed Lamagno after visiting a corner store. LaRosa planned on shoplifting breakfast; leaving the store, he passed by Lamagno and a voice told him Lamagno had harmed his family. Again, the psychologist noted, LaRosa claimed voices threatened to hurt him in the afterlife if he didn't kill Lamagno.

While LaRosa knew he was hurting the men, he was unable to see that doing so made no sense, the state psychologist said in the report. LaRosa, the psychologist opined, "was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of these incidents, and the symptoms of his mental disorder were likely causally related" to the murders.

"It appears that Mr. LaRosa's ability to perceive the nature and quality of the act and ability to tell right from wrong with respect to the acts charged was substantially impaired," the state psychologist found.

Bowman agreed Friday and ordered that LaRosa be held at Western State Hospital. LaRosa remains at King County Jail pending his transfer to the state mental hospital.