Jury deliberating in death of woman
Suspect has pleaded insanity in homicide
Jury deliberations began Friday afternoon in Oakland County Circuit Court for the case against Thomas Sudz, 74, charged with first-degree premeditated murder in the slaying of his wife, Beth Alsup-Sudz, at their Waterford Township home.
Sudz was just days from his 72nd birthday when he killed Alsup-Sudz, 56, who was found dead March 17, 2019. While the prosecution maintains that Sudz murdered her out of anger and jealousy, his defense team says he was insane at the time of the slaying — driven to madness over his wife’s infidelity and her denial of her most recent affair, compounded by adverse effects from psychotropic drugs he was taking for depression and other mood disorders which he had been diagnosed with weeks earlier.
According to witness testimony, Sudz claimed he didn’t remember the slaying. He recalled taking two sleeping pills an hour apart and then approaching his wife with a hammer while she was lying in bed. He then reportedly claimed that the next thing he remembered was awakening to find her covered in blood. Sudz then attempted suicide.
Waterford police officers called to the home on a welfare check found AlsupSudz dead and Sudz unconscious during a welfare check at their home. Alsup-Sudz had been stabbed more than 20 times and had severe trauma to her head.
In her closing statement, assistant prosecutor Heather Brown told the jury “the facts will drive you to (Sudz’s) intent. He was angry, he was angry at her.”
Sudz, Brown said, was enraged because he couldn’t control his wife and her intentions to leave him. “She was done (with the marriage),” Brown said.
“She wants out. And her date to get out was April 1. She never got to that date. He didn’t want to let her go,” Brown said.
‘Upset with what he did’
Arguing for a guilty verdict for first-degree premeditated murder, Brown said Sudz had time to think about what he was about to do as he brought a butcher knife from the kitchen up to their bedroom, then stabbed Alsup-Sudz multiple times. Evidence showed Alsup-Sudz had defensive wounds, she said, adding that “her fighting gives time to think about what he’s doing, think about choices. But he didn’t stop.”
Brown acknowledges Sudz’s depression but maintains it doesn’t meet the legal definition for mental illness, which is defined by statute as “a substantial disorder of thought or mood that significantly impairs judgment, behavior, capacity to recognize reality, or ability to cope with the ordinary demands of life.”
Referencing testimony presented at trial, Brown said Sudz was functioning — able to drive, attend therapy sessions on his own, pay bills and carry on dayto-day activities such as yard work. She also said he demonstrated organization and order, leaving the murder weapon wiped clean, placing his bloody clothes on top of the dryer after the slaying and leaving a suicide note in which, she said, “blames everyone but himself.”
She also referenced testimony from crisis counselor Paula Goodman who interviewed Sudz in the Oakland County Jail after he was released from the hospital following his recovery from the suicide attempt, and was told he overdosed “because he was upset with what he did and wanted to kill himself.”
A person is legally insane, as defined by Michigan’s mental health code, if, because of intellectual disability that occurred before age 18 or mental illness, he or she “lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the nature and quality of the wrongfulness of his or her conduct, or to conform his or her conduct to the requirements of the law.”
For an insanity claim, it’s up to the defense to prove that Sudz was legally insane at the time of the slaying — and defense attorney David Kramer maintains that burden has been met. Kramer and co-counsel Deanna Kelley called mental health professionals to the stand to support that claim, including psychiatrist Gerald Shiener, MD, who testified that his evaluation of Sudz and review of his records led him to conclude that he was impaired by a serious disorder due to brain damage as indicated by a CT scan, multiple medications and major depression. Those factors also caused a loss of impulse control, Shiener said.
With family members and a former co-worker testifying that Sudz was known as a gentle, peaceloving man with no history of violence, Shiener said “Good people under certain circumstances can do evil things.”
Shiener, whose background in psychiatry spans 43 years, also said “a finding of insanity can be of a moment in time” — rather than something that, necessarily, persists.
In their deliberations, jurors are being provided volumes of Sudz’s medical records from prior to the slaying and his hospitalization afterward, as well as Sudz’s evaluation at the state’s Center for Forensic Psychiatry. According to testimony from psychologist Elizabeth Toplyn, Ph.D. who evaluated Sudz there, “he wasn’t mentally ill as defined by statute.”
Yet Kramer insists there’s no question Sudz was mentally ill when he killed his wife and likely remains so, urging jurors to find him not guilty and allow him to “get the help he needs.”
“Anyone who says (Sudz) didn’t have a mental illness, they may have a mental illness,” Kramer said.
Jurors, as instructed by presiding Judge Michael Warren, can consider these verdicts:
• Guilty of first-degree premeditated murder
• Guilty of second-degree murder
• Guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, but mentally ill
• Guilty of second-degree premeditated murder, but mentally ill
• Not guilty by reason of insanity
• Not guilty Deliberations are set to resume this morning.