Defense Tells Jurors of Rare Psychosis : Trial: David Lee Schoenecker was suffering from a mental disorder when he killed his wife at their Anaheim Hills home, a public defender says.

The county public defender told jurors Tuesday that David Lee Schoenecker was suffering from a rare mental illness last year when he killed his schoolteacher wife.

“He suffers from a major mental disorder . . . an obsessive-compulsive psychosis that causes gross impairment in regulation of both mood and rationale,” public defender Ronald Y. Butler said, quoting a psychiatrist who is expected to become a key defense witness.

Schoenecker, 50, is on trial in Orange County Superior Court for the murder of his wife, Gail Mae, 40. He is accused of shooting her in the head while she slept at their Anaheim Hills home on May 6, 1989, then disclosing the crime in a letter to a newspaper columnist and threatening to kill 54 others. Most of those on the “hit list” were from the Milwaukee, Wis., area, where Schoenecker and his wife lived before moving to California in the mid-1980s.

At the murder scene, investigators found a poem they said was written by Schoenecker: “I made my list, I’m checking it twice, I’m going to find out who’s naughty, not nice . . . all on the list will go to their grave, all with the help of friendly old Dave.”

Butler, who chose the Schoenecker case for his first return to the courtroom since he was appointed chief public defender 10 years ago, is presenting an insanity defense.

If jurors find Schoenecker guilty and sane and agree that he was “lying in wait” for his victim, he could receive life in prison without parole. But if they find that he was insane, he would automatically be sent to a state mental hospital.

Prosecutors believe Schoenecker, an out-of-work chemical engineer, killed his wife either because she knew too much about his plans to kill the others or because he blamed her for his financial troubles.

In concluding the prosecution’s case against Schoenecker, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans had put a witness on the stand who said Schoenecker had complained when seeking a home loan that “I wouldn’t be in this financial mess if my wife would take the damned bar exam.” She had a law degree in Wisconsin, but preferred to teach elementary school when they moved to California.

Less than a week after Gail Mae’s body was discovered, authorities arrested Schoenecker as he was hiking through the mountains in Montana, before he had made contact with any other would-be victims on his list. They found $7,000 on him that they said he had taken from his and his wife’s joint bank accounts. He had apparently given up on the home loan after bank authorities said his wife had to go in and also sign documents.

Prosecutor Evans told jurors that it appeared as if Schoenecker wanted to start a new life.

Defense attorney Butler delivered his opening statement to jurors on Tuesday, and hopes to present several hours of videotaped interviews between Schoenecker and his court-appointed psychiatrist. Newport Beach psychiatrist David Sheffner found Schoenecker to have “an impaired ability to test reality and to think along logical lines.”

Prosecutor Evans, who will not discuss the case outside the courtroom, is expected to oppose letting the jurors view all the tapes.

Butler and his co-counsel, Deputy Public Defender Carol E. Lavacot, lost a procedural battle Tuesday when Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald severely limited testimony from two close friends of Schoenecker’s who had flown in from Wisconsin to testify on his behalf.

The couple, Richard and Barbara Binder, had known the Schoeneckers when they lived in Wisconsin, where the two men were co-workers. Butler wanted them to tell the jury what they knew about problems the Schoeneckers had endured after they moved to California. But Judge Fitzgerald agreed with Evans that the testimony would have been hearsay.

The Binders did, however, tell the jury that David Schoenecker always appeared to be devoted to his wife.

“I remember one particular incident where they asked us if we would be references for them because they wanted to adopt,” Richard Binder said. “We were in a restaurant and he was holding her hand. . . . He was always very attentive to her.”

Two other witnesses, including Schoenecker’s minister from United Methodist Church in Yorba Linda, described him as a faithful churchgoer who taught Sunday school, and even helped his fifth- and sixth-grade classes put on a puppet show.