KILLER: YES, I’M CRAZY ‘Insanity’ defense

A young veterinary technician was “crazy” and did not know right from wrong when she slit the throat of her 70year-old neighbor several years ago, the defendant’s attorney said in court as he pursued an insanity defense in the gruesome case.

“We are telling you, she did it,” attorney Jeremy Schneider said to jurors in his opening statements Friday.

Nevertheless, he argued they should find his client Anya Johnston, 29, not guilty by reason of insanity for the October 2018 slaying of Sue Trott inside her apartment, located a floor below Johnston at their co-op on the Upper West Side.

“The blood, the DNA, the photographs of the knife, the gruesome pictures of the wound, it doesn’t help you. I’m making your job easy,” Schneider continued.

“[Trott] was killed by that woman right there by stabbing her with a knife. It was not an accident. It was not self-defense,” he said, gesturing toward Johnston, who looked pale and gaunt.

Schneider, however, said that Johnston had been off her medication, and was so irrational that she had even started to hurt her beloved cat, Sammy.

‘Every NYer’s fear’

“It’s kinda like every New Yorker’s fear — you see it and hear about it in the newspapers happening on the streets or subway, where someone is attacked by a mentally ill person with no rhyme or reason,” he said.

“It doesn’t make sense. It’s completely irrational . . . . It is, in a word, crazy. This particular crime is just like that.”

Trott, an “active and ambitious” copywriter and advertising rep, was left to rot for four days before authorities found her remains, prosecutor Hannah Yu explained in her opening statement, in which she pushed back on the insanity defense.

“The defendant was never delusional and never hallucinating,” Yu said. “She held down a job . . . and performed her functions as a vet tech and receptionist.

“Anya Johnston is guilty of murder in the second degree, as she intended to kill Sue Trott and did kill Sue Trott.”