Psychiatric report says Saskatoon man 'acutely and severely psychotic' when he fatally stabbed partner in 2022
Detailed notes kept by Emily Sanche on partner Thomas Hamp's decline 'an incredibly important document'
A forensic psychiatrist who assessed accused killer Thomas Hamp said the 25-year-old "was acutely and severely psychotic" when he fatally stabbed his girlfriend Emily Sanche on Feb. 20, 2022.
"Psychosis was the dominant factor that drove his violence," Shabehram Lohrasbe wrote in a 25-page assessment.
"It is likely that his capacity to "know" that his actions were wrong, in the real world, was severely impaired."
Hamp was charged with second-degree murder and is appearing before Justice Grant Currie in a judge-alone trial at Saskatoon Court of King's Bench.
Defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle is not disputing that Hamp stabbed his partner. The point of contention between Pfefferle and prosecutor Cory Bliss is whether Hamp is criminally responsible for his actions.
Treatment trail
The defence hired Lohrasbe to do a psychiatric assessment.
Lohrasbe testified that he met with Hamp twice in person and then again by video, for a total of five hours. He also interviewed Hamp's parents and reviewed reports from his clinical treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
He also reviewed detailed notes and text messages written by Sanche, who was studying for a master's degree in counselling and expressed concerns about her partner's deteriorating mental health in the year before he killed her. Lohrasbe also reviewed notes take by Sanche's cousin, Catherine.
The notes included observations Emily made hours before her death, after the couple contacted the Saskatoon Crisis Intervention Service. Hamp was supposed to go to the hospital the day that he killed her.
"He seemed extremely agitated and upset," she wrote.
Lohrasbe said he's done thousands of assessments over his four-decade career and that the written records from the two young women "are incredibly important documents." He said Emily's text message chain "is poignant, and so close to the offence."
"I've never seen anything like it."
In his analysis, Lohrasbe said Hamp's worsening OCD symptoms and heavy cannabis use almost surely played a role in the psychotic episode, but "their precise potential roles cannot be delineated."
Day of the killing
Lohrasbe said Hamp was in the full throes of a psychotic episode the day he killed Emily Sanche.
Hamp believed that the couple were under police surveillance and that friends and family were pedophiles, Lohrasbe said. He was suspicious of medical professionals, fearing that he would be castrated if he went to the hospital.
"In some way the fear of going to hospital was intertwined with his fears of the police, surveillance, Tetris, technology, pedophilia, doctors, toxic medications, and the castration," Lohrasbe wrote.
Hamp said he was obsessed with video game Tetris because he believed it was being used to test him and as a spying device.
"The idea of killing Ms. Sanche and then himself came to him abruptly; 'I thought we both had to die to avoid a worse fate,'" the report said.
"The 'worse fate' that awaited Ms. Sanche was, 'that Emily would be made to breed and then tortured to death.' He believed that Ms. Sanche was a target for 'their breeding because she came from a smart family.'"
Lohrasbe concluded that the psychiatric assessment "would support the legal consideration for finding Mr. Hamp not criminally responsible."
The trial continues all week.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
