'Kill mummy for God'
In the grip of a psychotic delusion, Enoch "Sam" Walsh could not ignore the loud voice in his head ordering him to "kill mummy for God".
Hearing his mother Patricia Wright mumble as she took out the bins that morning, the 29-year-old believed she was the "false Prophetess" referred to in the Book of Revelation - the apocalyptic account of the wrath of God that had been consuming his thoughts - and he had to kill her.
Mr Walsh was found not guilty of the October 2005 murder of his mother on grounds of unsoundness of mind.
Evidence from his 2007 trial revealed that as she walked in the back door of the Kalgoorlie home they shared, he struck her in the head with a ceremonial sword, knocking her to the ground unconscious.
Mr Walsh, who had been his schizophrenic mother's primary carer, later told a psychiatrist that he had tried not to hit her because he loved her.
But his fear of God and the powerful thoughts in his head were overwhelming. After striking her, he dropped the sword and debated calling an ambulance.
"(But) the thought came back louder and stronger: 'Kill the witch or the world will burn', so I grabbed the bread knife from the kitchen and cut her throat," he later told a psychiatrist.
He said the powerful thoughts did not stop until he also killed his pet dog, cleaned the house and buried his mother in a shallow grave in their backyard.
Then, the voice in his head gone, doubts started to creep in that he had made the wrong decision.
Alone and scared, he waited, but hours later when he heard nothing else, he handed himself in to police and confessed.
The court documents described a difficult childhood. Mr Walsh was the second youngest of four children. His eldest sister had committed suicide and his parents had separated.
He had dyslexia and left school at 17 before doing a series of part-time jobs - working in a vegetable shop, driving and in drilling positions in the bush.
But he also made grandiose statements, telling psychiatrists he was an intellectual genius, related to Jesus and from a planet called Dahuba.
A day before killing his mother, Mr Walsh had burst into a Sunday service at Kalgoorlie Church of Christ, brandishing a sword in one hand and a Bible in the other.
As he started reading aloud from the Bible, members of the congregation grabbed the sword and escorted him out.
Mr Walsh was treated in the maximum-security Frankland Centre at Graylands Hospital after his arrest.
Psychiatrists who spoke to him in the following months agreed he was a chronic schizophrenic who had been controlled by his delusions when he killed his mother.
The court was told that psychiatrist Zdenek Srna's opinion in November 2006 was that Mr Walsh "continued to be a significant risk to himself and others".
Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Miller found Mr Walsh not guilty of murder, ruling that he was in such a state of mental impairment at the time that he was deprived of the capacity to control his actions and know what he was doing was wrong.
Justice Miller ordered that Mr Walsh stay in custody in an authorised hospital, detention centre or prison as determined by the Mentally Impaired Accused Review Board, until released by the Governor.
