Mentally ill man found not guilty in mom’s killing
A Windcrest man charged with murder in the fatal shooting of his mother in 2017 was found not guilty by reason of insanity Wednesday and likely will remain at a treatment facility “for a long time.”
Thomas Nathan Clark was 37 when he was arrested in the death of Susan Jean Clark, his 62yearold mother. Windcrest police went to their home in in the 8900 block of Willmon Way on Feb. 1, 2017, to conduct a welfare check after she did not report for work the day before.
Authorities found her lying in a pool of blood in the living room of the home, covered with a blanket. She had been shot three times in the head with a .22 caliber pistol, according to court documents.
When police asked him if that was his mother, Clark replied, “That’s not Susan. I shot her. My mother is Carrie Fisher. That’s not my mother at all,” the documents state.
Police found multiple weapons inside the home. Susan Clark last spoke to her daughter, Michelle Clark, around noon Jan. 31, 2017, and the two were supposed to have lunch the day the woman’s body was found, court records indicate.
According to the documents, Susan Clark told her daughter that she believed her son was “fighting with himself to not kill her.”
Windcrest police responded multiple times to the home “over the years” because of problems stemming from Thomas Clark’s mental problems. He had been hospitalized several times and believed his parents were “imposters,” that the home he lived in was his, and he accused his mother of “stealing” it from him, the documents state.
Records indicate Clark believed Jesus Christ was the Olympian god Zeus, whom Clark also believed to be the Antichrist.
Susan Clark had filed a mental health warrant in early January 2017 to have her son committed, but no one came for him, according to the documents.
Clark, now 39, sat qui
etly and conferred with his attorney, Sean KeaneDawes, in the jury box of the 437th state District Court on Wednesday. He wore an orange Bexar County jail jumpsuit, and his beard had grown to his midchest. At times he glanced at his sister, Michelle Clark, who sat in the gallery.
He responded politely and affirmatively when Judge Lori Valenzuela asked him if he understood the proceedings.
As part of an agreement reached between KeaneDawes and prosecutor Oscar Leos, Clark pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the fatal shooting of his mother.
Valenzuela agreed to the plea after finding “sufficient evidence of insanity at the time of the incident.” She said he would be placed in a treatment facility to await a commitment hearing.
His sister said after the sentencing that she was glad it was finally over. She said their mother tried tirelessly to get her brother the mental health care he needed for 10 years before the tragic incident occurred.
“It’s not like she was ignoring it,” Michelle Clark said of her mother.
“He thought he was saving the country,” she said of her brother. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Clark’s attorney said he would either be placed at the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon or Rusk State Hospital in Southeast Texas, and would be evaluated every six months to a year.
“He will be there (in a treatment facility) for a long time,” KeaneDawes said.
ezavala@expressnews.net