Man says spirit told him to beat up two women
76-year-old Peter Brooks pleads not guilty to first-degree murder of nursing home resident
A “bad spirit” came to 72-year-old Peter Brooks in a dream and told him to use his walking stick to “beat the crap” out of women who had been annoying him, Brooks testified Tuesday at his trial for first-degree murder and attempted murder.
Brooks, now 76, is accused of using his walking stick to kill 72-year-old Joycelyn Dickson and injure 91-year-old Lourdes Missier at the Wexford nursing home on March 13, 2013. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Brooks, a short man hunched over from age, got out of his wheelchair and slowly walked without support to the witness stand as the jury watched.
He told the jury he was “aggravated and provoked” by three women in the longterm-care facility he called his “enemies” and “bullies”— Missier, Dickson and a third woman, Margaret Burke.
“Bang, bang, bang, it’s annoying,” he sighed loudly, describing how Burke would tap her pen on the table. He described her as a “bad little witch or b----” and laughed as he said she was “ugly.”
He said he believed Missier, Dickson and Burke were being given extra food or cash by management to annoy him into moving to the more expensive independent living side of the seniors’ residence.
“I can hardly walk, hardly stand . . . I don’t know Monday from Wednesday,” he said, expressing concern he wouldn’t be able to look after himself.
Dickson and Missier would wave their arms and say: “get out, get out, we don’t want you anymore,” he said.
“I was aggravated night and day,” he said. “There is only so much a sinner can take.”
His memories of what happened on the night of March 13, 2013, appear to be hazy in parts.
Brooks testified that he was unable to remember certain interactions or conversations — such as telling the janitor who helped restrain him that he was acting out of “revenge.”
He does recall going to bed that night and having a “beautiful dream” where the devil or “bad spirits” told him “to use my walking stick to beat them up and I did,” he said.
“I’m an obedient old man . . . I did what they told me to do,” he testified.
“I just take stick and beat them up and satisfy my pride,” he said. “Not intentionally did I want to hurt somebody. I never hurt a fly in my life.”
He offered an apology for his actions during his testimony.
“I’m sorry about that, if there any family members here in court,” he said.
When asked by his lawyer, Charn Gill, what he thought would happen to him as a result of attacking the women, Brooks said he “had no second thought of what is the consequence of what will happen.”
He said he was told in his dream that nothing would happen to him.
“Just give them a few blows and get out . . . I didn’t really really think anything would happen to me or them,” he said.
Later he said: “Dreams lie like people do. I’m in jail for the rest of my life because of a dream.” Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Donna Kellway, he denied killing Dickson.
“I did not kill her. Please, you guys say I kill her,” he said. “Was I in my normal sense? I don’t kill a fowl, I don’t kill a chicken. Take back your words please.”
He also denied threatening to kill Dickson.
Brooks claimed he had a meeting with a staff member that night who was burning some incense in his office and that he was “drugged up” or that the incense put him in a trance.
Kellway said that, according to witness testimony, the meeting happened much earlier that night and no incense was being burned. A psychiatrist who examined Brooks in 2012 has testified it is his opinion that Brooks could discern right from wrong and understand the nature and quality of his acts.
He also found that Brooks was a “chronic risk” to the frail, elderly nursing home residents and suggested he be moved to a psychiatric group home.
When asked by Kellway whether he understood that “beating the crap out of someone” is wrong, Brooks said he understood it when he was 20, 30 and 60 but “if you are out of your moral sense, you don’t know what you are doing.”
Brooks denied or could not remember having several conversations testified to by nursing home staff earlier in the trial and gave several confusing or contradictory answers about what he did and thought in March 2013.
In one instance, he denied ever gambling and buying lottery tickets, but when shown a lottery ticket found in his wallet admitted he could have bought it at the corner store.
“I’m a gambler,” he said in direct contradiction to his testimony earlier in the day. “Those were the good old days.”
Some of his answers appeared to be sarcastic.
“I wonder why?” he would reply when asked if he disliked the women he is accused of attacking.
“It’s good to annoy a person,” he said in response to a question about whether he disliked Missier because she reported his behaviour to a manager at the nursing home. “That is joy, that is love, peace of mind . . . Her behaviour was perfect.”
Police found six unopened beers in Brooks’s room, the jury has heard. Brooks maintained he had no idea how the beers got there and said they must have been planted by someone since he does not drink beer — only vodka.
During cross-examination Kellway played a video of Brooks at the police station after his arrest admitting he had beers in his room.
“I was drugged up so I don’t know if I was telling the lie or the truth there,” he said.
Kellway suggested he was lying when he said he didn’t know about the beer.
“My lady,” Brooks said. “I don’t tell lies.”
Kellway suggested Brooks lied when telling a psychiatrist about having committed robberies and done time in jail.
“I’m a sinner,” Brooks said. “We all are human, we all are liars.