Kolodziej Insane When He Killed Woman, Court Told

Kevin Kolodziej did not understand that he was committing murder when he stabbed 90-year-old Velasta Johnson to death, a psychologist testified Tuesday in the sanity phase of his murder trial.

Kolodziej, 25, was convicted of second-degree murder last week by a judge who ruled that the former Virginia drifter fatally stabbed Johnson in her Agnus Drive home on Jan. 17.

Now, Ventura County Superior Court Judge James M. McNally is trying to decide whether Kolodziej was legally sane at the time.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris argued Tuesday that Kolodziej admitted killing Johnson, and even corrected police assumptions about the murder weapon when he told investigators, “It’s not a gun; it’s a knife.”

“The people contend that he understood what he had done,” Kossoris said during opening arguments in the non-jury proceeding.

But the defense began its case with a psychologist who testified that Kolodziej’s mental state during the murder, twisted by schizophrenia, fit the legal definition of insanity.

Kolodziej’s reflexive attack on Johnson was a paranoid, “fight-or-flight” response to suddenly encountering the elderly woman as she rounded a corner in her home, testified psychologist Randy Wood.

“I do not believe that Mr. Kolodziej was capable of understanding or appreciating the nature and quality of his actions that morning when he stabbed Mrs. Johnson,” Wood testified.

Wood said of the attack on Johnson, “I believe it was due to a mental illness . . . schizophrenia.”

Before, during and after the murder, Kolodziej showed signs of schizophrenia and irrational behavior, Wood testified, under direct examination by Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn.

While recuperating at Ventura County Medical Center from self-inflicted knife wounds, an enraged Kolodziej kicked a nurse in the face, then later apologized to her, Wood testified.

On Jan. 17, he walked out of the hospital in pajamas and asked strangers to let him shower in their homes--”without any real understanding or appreciation of how that doesn’t fit into the social context of the world,” Wood said.

Kolodziej heard voices that he feared that day, real and imagined, Wood testified, under cross-examination by Kossoris.

He had auditory hallucinations before entering Johnson’s home, and then heard the voices of her husband, Clyde Johnson, and grandson, Kevin Hildreth, outside the house while he was inside, Wood testified.

“The defendant had a rational and irrational basis for feeling fearful,” Wood testified. During interviews after his arrest, Kolodziej told Wood that he also sometimes had visual hallucinations: “He reported that faces would stick out and would move and scare him, and he reported seeing transparent numbers, 1, 2 and 3, sticking up out of the ground,” Wood said.

Kolodziej also recalled hearing voices chanting his name months earlier, compelling him once to stab himself with scissors.

“The voices said, ‘Kevin will do this,’ ” Wood read, from his own notes on the interview. “The voices told me to hurt myself. Voices, God and angels telling me to hurt my body.”

Kolodziej made conflicting statements about the murder after his arrest.

Wood said Kolodziej told him that he went into Johnson’s house to use the phone, picked up the knife and when Johnson came around the corner, stabbed her by accident.

Later, Kolodziej “made a statement that he didn’t do anything wrong. He said, ‘They said I killed a lady, but I didn’t,’ ” Wood testified. “He said, ‘I don’t know why they have me here. I want to go back to Virginia. Can I leave now?’ ”

Instead of trying to escape after the stabbing, Kolodziej irrationally moved on to a neighbor’s house to ask for a shower, Wood testified. When the occupant told him to go away, Kolodziej instead lay down on a patio chair and covered himself with a blanket.

“A rational person would have left that area, particularly if they’d just committed a crime,” Wood testified. “To stay in the area and lay down makes little sense.”

Another psychiatrist is scheduled to testify this morning for the defense, then Kossoris will present his case.

If Judge McNally’s verdict is not guilty by reason of insanity, Kolodziej will be hospitalized indefinitely in a psychiatric institution, until he is determined to be sane.

If found sane, Kolodziej faces a possible sentence of 15 years to life, meaning that he would spend at least 10 years in prison.