Judge threatens to evict Schoenborn from court

A B.C. man on trial for allegedly murdering his three children was threatened with eviction from the court after he repeatedly interrupted his trial Thursday while a Crown prosecutor tried to deliver his closing arguments.

Allan Dwayne Schoenborn, 41, is being tried on three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his children in April 2008 in Merritt, B.C. He has pleaded not guilty, even though he has admitted killing his daughter Kaitlynne, 10, and two sons, eight-year-old Max and five-year-old Cordon.

At issue in the B.C. Supreme Court trial in Kamloops, B.C., is whether or not he was legally sane when he killed the children.

Schoenborn sat quietly in the prisoner's box much of the day while his lawyer, Peter Wilson, went through his closing arguments.

As Crown counsel Glenn Kelt tried to deliver his remarks, Schoenborn heckled him several times.

When the lawyer said Schoenborn killed his children to get back at his estranged wife, Darcie Clarke, Schoenborn spoke aloud a final time.

"It wasn't to take the kids away from Darcie," he said. "It was to save them. Any father knows that."

'He saw reality in an entirely different planet than the rest of us' —Defence lawyer Peter Wilson

Justice Robert Powers, who is hearing the case without a jury, threatened to remove Schoenborn from the court if he did not end his outbursts.

The Crown contends that Schoenborn killed the children out of revenge against his wife and had therefore planned the slayings and was sane at the time.

Defence lawyer Wilson told the court that his client suffers from a severe mental disorder, so severe it rendered him incapable of understanding the nature of his acts or knowing they were wrong.

At the trial, two psychologists testified that Schoenborn had a history of mental illness, but only one was willing to say that he was mentally ill at the time of the killings.

Dr. Shabehram Lohrasbe said he agreed with Dr. Roy O'Shaughnessey, who testified that he had diagnosed Schoenborn as having a delusional disorder and, likely, schizophrenia.

But Lohrasbe said it was not possible for him to give the court a confident medical opinion on Schoenborn's state of mind at the time of the killings since he was not there, and he could not say if Schoenborn was mentally ill or motivated by anger when he killed his children in his wife's mobile home.

Scheonborn testified that his children were being sexually abused and that he was saving them from the humiliation of growing up as victims. No evidence was presented at the trial to support his suspicions of abuse.

"The delusional belief system governing Mr. Schoenborn's conduct was one where he saw reality in an entirely different planet than the rest of us. He believed his children were suffering a fate worse than death. And believed it was moral and right to [kill them]," Wilson said.

"The fact that at some times Mr. Schoenborn seems odd, bizarre and crazy and at other times normal doesn't mean he's not ill. In fact, it's a classic feature of delusional disorder. This isn't someone who became ill in April 2008. He's got a long history. Psychosis has plagued Mr. Schoenborn since he was 19 years old," said Wilson.

During the trial, court heard that Schoenborn had a variety of psychotic breaks as an adult, starting in 1987 and was institutionalized twice before the killings.

The trial is expected to wrap up on Friday.