Abstract

Vascular Dementia with Overlapping Delirium as a Cause of Murder Combined with Attempt to Body's Fumble: A Case Report

Author(s): Iwona Ptaszynska-Sarosiek, Agnieszka Kulak-Bejda, Napoleon Waszkiewicz, Anna Niemcunowicz-Janica

The authors present the case of 79-years-old male who after murdered his wife, has diagnosed a vacluar dementia combined with delirium. He killed the victim by the task of stabbing a chest and extensive cut in the left inguinal area, which result was a haemorrhagic shock. Man who was a retired butcher tried disintegrated the victim’s body in the similar way like the animals bodies are treated in the butchery. About three weeks before man killed his wife, he became sad, irritable and agitated, had difficulty to sleep at night, seemed to be confused and disoriented. Moreover he said that he waiting for ‘Our Lady’ and saw the devil. These symptoms alarmed man’s family which tired to seek help from a psychiatrist and psychologist. Over time the symptoms grew and man killed his 80-years-old wife. After murder he was brought to the high secure forensic psychiatry unit for psychiatric observation, which showed that the underlying behavior were vascular dementia and comorbid delirium. An interesting point of cognitive problems seems to be involved in abovementioned homicide is increased activity of procedural memory during the delirium state, that was directly associated with body defragmentation.