Man beheads rival, puts head on hood of car

[Harveylives]

Man beheads rival, puts head on hood of car

Reuters
Posted February 4 2002, 5:13 PM EST

ST. PETERSBURG -- A man beheaded his rival during an early morning fight Monday and then placed the severed head on the hood of a car for neighbors to see, police said.

Officers came upon the scene as the man was trying to arrange a mirror in front of the decapitated head. Police said the suspect, Dennis George Roache, 34, has a history of mental illness.











``One officer at the scene said this was the most gruesome thing he'd seen in a really long time,'' police spokesman George Kajtsa said.

Police were called to the home in south St. Petersburg shortly before 8:30 a.m. by a woman who said she had barricaded herself in a bathroom when her former boyfriend broke into the home of her current boyfriend, Gregory L. Shannon, 18.

The woman told police Roache was wielding a 2½-foot machete. Police said he'd bought the machete Sunday at a Pinellas Park flea market.

Roache and Shannon began fighting and Shannon was stabbed several times with the machete. Roache then used the machete to decapitate Shannon, Kajtsa said. Roache then walked out of the house carrying the head in full view of neighbors, including a little girl on her way to school, police said. They watched in horror as he placed the head on the hood of a parked car facing the street and began adjusting the rear-view mirror.

``He was adjusting the mirror so the head, if it were alive, could see itself,'' Kajtsa said.

Police arrived four minutes after the woman placed her call, just as Roache was adjusting the mirror.

The woman, still barricaded inside the house, was not injured.

``He didn't give the officers any trouble at the scene,'' Kajtsa said. Later at the police station, though, Roache became unruly during questioning and was transported to the Pinellas County Jail.

Roache is being held without bail on a first-degree murder charge. He did not yet have an attorney representing him Monday afternoon. Email story
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Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

[studentsteve]

The worlds gone mad.

[fermicat]

:news:

Harveylives --- you are really outdoing yourself tonight! Thanks for making my evening more interesting!

[Harveylives]

I have found a new website for some interesting news. OH YEAH!!!

[Lord Loser]

Well that's one way to break up the happy couple...

[Frunium Slip]

Maybe he was just making a point, although I thought he should have put the head on a stick...

This is truly bizzare, and that poor little school girl, hope she is not traumatized for life, a severed head, society is going to hell in a handbasket.

[Antrobus]

Get out of here! That's perverted!

[BlackThorn]

No, society is going to hell in a bus, and I'm driving!

[Judith]

This scares and sickens the hell out of me.

[Antrobus]

On second thought, people shoot deer and such and mount the heads on their living room walls!

Maybe he should have taken the head to a taxidermist first

[Judith]

I don't understand how you guys can joke about this.

[Antrobus]

Seriously, it is gross and disturbing.

I'm just at work and am very bored and feeling warped.
But it's almost 10 and time to go home.

[trubador]

Quote: "Police said the suspect, Dennis George Roache, 34, has a history of mental illness."


Uhhhhh.... NO SH*T! :eek:

[grinner]

Originally posted by Harveylives
I have found a new website for some interesting news. OH YEAH!!! PM me with that addy... if you would. Thanks.

[BlackThorn]

Originally posted by Judith_Shakespeare
I don't understand how you guys can joke about this.

Well, I'm a sociopath. I don't know what everyone else's excuse is.

[Judith]

I guess every once in a while an article just really gets to me. People who do stuff like that don't fit into my understanding of how the world works. And I'm not sure if I'm ready to alter my understanding of how the world works to include events like this.

[Lord Loser]

What else are you going to do? Cry? That doesn't help either. Sure we feel bad for the people involved, but making light of a subject makes it easier to stomach. I must admit, I had to cringe a bit when he was adjusting the mirror so the head could see himself.

but then again, according to the evil test, I am twisted. :dunno:

[Judith]

I guess turning it into a joke so soon as it happened seems disrespectful to the victim. This is a real life that was ruined.

[BillFrugge]

Harveylives, you've got a head for news...

I hope they lock this guy up for the rest of his natural life. How much do you want to bet that the guy gets off because he didn't understand his Miranda rights?

[grinner]

Lock him up... no... capitol murder. Give him the Death Sentence.

[Darth Buddha]

If he IS mentally ill (a history means that it isn't a lie concocted by a lawyer), then in truth, he needs treatment.

However, I hope they have something like Guilty AND Insane, rather than Innocent by Reason of Insantiy. A short stay in a hospital followed by release should not be in the cards.

[BillFrugge]

In this case, I think that the insanity plea would amount to criminally insane. Someone like that should never be let loose upon the general public, meds or no meds.

[Darth Buddha]

Originally posted by BillFrugge
In this case, I think that the insanity plea would amount to criminally insane. Someone like that should never be let loose upon the general public, meds or no meds.

EXACTLY!

[Frellster]

*giggle*

The guy was disturbed enough to not even consider hiding the body. Was he planning to bolt it to the hood and go for a spin?

(wonders if I should feel guilty for being amused by this story)

The insanity plea only works if you actually have no concept of right & wrong. I'm not his physciatrist, so I don't know. This happened in Russia, and I'm not familiar with criminal law over there.

[Harveylives]

Actually Frellster it took place in St. Petersburg, Florida.

[JasonF]

Originally posted by Judith_Shakespeare
I guess turning it into a joke so soon as it happened seems disrespectful to the victim.
Look at the date of the article. I remember hearing about this one long ago.

[Harveylives]

Sorry, that's my bad. I just saw the article and ran with it without checking the date. I'm a moron. Please don't Jason Blair me.

[Darth Buddha]

Harv.L., I don't care what the date was, that was really bizarre, and I hadn't seen it before. I'll bet a lot of people haven't either.

It is a good post.

And here is some more...

18-year-old dies in St. Petersburg machete slaying
The suspect's stepmother says he is a victim of mental illness - and the system.

A crowd gathers Monday along a line of police tape outside 1635 39th St. S in St. Petersburg. A man was killed in his girlfriend’s home, and her ex-boyfriend is in custody, charged with first-degree murder.

Dennis George Roache, 34, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Gregory Shannon.

Gregory Shannon, 18, was decapitated and his head was propped against a car windshield.

Monique Pennywell, 29, ran to the bathroom and dialed 911 as the attack occurred in her bedroom.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Dennis George Roache lived in a mobile home with no furniture. Neighbors often saw him carrying a piece of wood and talking to it. He yelled at flowers and disturbed neighbors at night by blowing a whistle and chanting things they didn't understand.

Roache, 34, is schizophrenic and needs daily medication, his stepmother said. He is paranoid that pills are an attempt to poison him, so he refuses to take his drugs, she said.

More than once, courts have found that Roache is mentally incompetent to stand trial for crimes. He spent time in the Florida State Hospital for the severely mentally ill in Chattahoochee. His ex-girlfriend once tried to get a restraining order against him, but a judge denied her request.

About 8:20 a.m. Monday, Roache showed up with a machete at the woman's tiny house in the Childs Park neighborhood. He broke in through a window and found Monique Pennywell, 29, in the bedroom with boyfriend Gregory Shannon, 18, police said.

"Hey, listen, man -- I told you to stay away from my baby's mother," Pennywell heard Roache say.

Then he repeatedly swung the long blade at Shannon as Pennywell ran into the bathroom with the phone and called 911.

Across the street, Tessara Jackson's 10-year-old daughter opened her front door and cried to her mother, "That man has a head in his hand."

"At first, I didn't want to believe it, but I saw it was a head," Jackson said Monday afternoon.

When police arrived at 1635 39th St. S, Roache was standing next to an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. He had propped the head against the windshield and placed a mirror in front of it "so that if the head were still alive, it could see itself," St. Petersburg police spokesman George Kajtsa said.

Pennywell emerged from the bathroom to find Shannon's body beside the bed. She said she is two months pregnant with his baby.

Roache was being held without bail late Monday in the Pinellas County Jail. He is charged with first-degree murder.

Troubling signs
Many documents about Roache's mental health history are confidential or under court seal. But public records provide some window into his troubled life.

In 1993, his wife of two years, Ellender Jackson of St. Petersburg, asked for a restraining order, saying that Roache had been "pulling hair, choking around the neck verbally threatening me to the point of making me suffer."

She eventually filed for divorce and dropped her request for the restraining order.

Roache was charged in 1995 with trespassing and resisting arrest, and accused in 1997 of violating his probation. That led to a mental examination and the state's decision in 1998 to send him to the forensic section of the Chattahoochee mental hospital.

By 1997, Roache and Ellender Jackson were separated, but Jackson let him stay at her house after he got evicted from his place. Soon, she was seeking another restraining order, saying he had exposed himself and had threatened to damage her home.

She said in court filings that Roache "is not taking his medicine because in his mind it's poisoning him." She said he "talks to himself loudly all day long."

In 2000, after Roache was released from the state mental hospital, he and Pennywell had a son together. Soon after, she, too, sought a restraining order. She said he had come to her house, grabbed their son, then 3 months old, and left on his bicycle.

But a circuit judge found that "none of the allegations establish that the petitioner is in any immediate and present danger."

In the fall of 2001, Roache wrote this in a handwritten lawsuit he filed against Boley Centers for Behavioral Health Care, a nonprofit mental health agency.

"Defendant are constantly stocking my family spraying flammable poisonous, hazardous materials in the atmosphere, publicizingly slave trading frivilous matter about my privacy. Ruining the life of my kids won't tolerate, unwelcome request for sexual favours."

Roache's mental state became an issue even in traffic court. In May 2000, he voluntarily surrendered his license after being found medically unable to drive a car safely.

He pleaded not guilty to driving without a license later that year. Pinellas County Judge Thomas Freeman ordered a mental competency evaluation. Based on the results, Freeman found him incompetent and eventually dismissed the charge. That, Freeman said, was the only option state law gave him.

"We have the people who have diagnosable mental illnesses and need medication, and we have people who have substance abuse problems and they're not rational," Freeman said Monday. But the law only allows a person to be forced into psychiatric care if they are clearly an immediate danger to themselves or others.

"It's a common occurrence," Freeman said. "Hopefully one of these days the Legislature is going to give us better tools and not close down places like Arcadia," a state mental hospital being phased out.

Chief assistant prosecutor Bruce Bartlett agreed.

"It's not at all uncommon for these folks to go to a state facility and be medicated and be in a state when they are returned to competency," he said, adding that often the patients fail to take their medication and then show up in court only to be declared mentally incompetent again. "I've got a couple of murder cases where they're in and out, in and out."

'He's been sick'
Patricia Roache, the suspect's stepmother, said her son's schizophrenia makes him hear imaginary voices. She said he told police he heard on the radio Monday morning that the man staying in Pennywell's house was sexually abusing her children.

"We knew that he's been sick, and we called the police to have them do something to help him. The response we got was that if he doesn't hurt somebody or himself, they can't do anything about it," Mrs. Roache said. "He said everybody's trying to get him to take drugs. He feels that way about his medication, that everybody's trying to tranquilize him."

Roache moved to St. Petersburg about 11 years ago from Montego Bay, Jamaica, leaving behind a wife and a child. Since then, Roache occasionally has stayed with his father and stepmother in St. Petersburg, the stepmother said.

Once he threatened to kill his father, she said.

In December 2001, Roache moved to Bay Mobile Home Park, 3049 6th St. S, where he rented the trailer. Always afoot and awake at late hours, neighbors said Roache terrified them.

On Friday, the father dropped Roache at the Social Security office to pick up his disability check, which he uses to support himself and his daughter in Jamaica. Roache's mental health had limited him to low-paying jobs such as bagging groceries and washing dishes.

Roache, his parents said, needs constant help.

"This all could have been avoided if the law didn't say that he couldn't be helped if he didn't hurt himself or somebody first," Roache said. "Dennis would have been in the hospital already if the police didn't have their hands tied behind their backs. This 18-year-old man lost his life because of this law. It's a shame."

By RYAN MALDONADO, BRYAN GILMER and CURTIS KRUEGER
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 5, 2002

[Darth Buddha]

Suspect ruled incompetent
By Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 28, 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LARGO -- A man accused of decapitating his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend with a machete last month has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial on a first-degree murder charge.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Mark Shames declared Dennis George Roache incompetent on Wednesday and ordered him to undergo treatment at a secure facility until he is again able to understand the charges against him.

Three court-appointed psychiatrists examined Roache and found him incompetent.

A review of Roache's competency is scheduled for Sept. 19.

In two previous criminal cases and a traffic case, Roache, 34, had been found mentally incompetent, which meant the cases were halted until he could receive treatment.

Gregory Shannon was in bed at his girlfriend's house in St. Petersburg's Childs Park neighborhood when Roache broke in through a window and beheaded the 18-year-old with a machete, police said.

Roache had dated Shannon's girlfriend, Monique Pennywell, 29, and he was angry because Shannon was dating her, police said.

[grinner]

what crap

[Darth Buddha]

yep. He's frelled in the head... but dangerously frelled in the head.

He doesn't need treatment so much as he needs a long term storage facility.

[grinner]

lobotomy would work. Just de-cerabrate him

[Frellster]

F-L-O-R-I-D-A

*Doh*

O.K.

[Darth Buddha]

Lobotomy would probably just slow him down enough to make his bad tendencies not as much of a threat.

In cases like these, I DO think psychosurgery should be on the table, though. There are several places you can burn out and make animals wholly unable to agress ... even in defense (I recall a lab cat that couldn't do anything to defend itself... from a mouse... it really wrecked the poor cat's ears). Of course, the opposite is possilbe too... remove all inhibition from aggression (better memory... a rat chasing a lab tech around the room.. with animals like that, it isn't if they get out, it is when!).