A Perth woman who believed she was being stalked by the devil when she strangled her aunt has been found not guilty of murder on the basis she was of unsound mind.
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Sarah Anne Knock, 42, faced trial in the West Australian Supreme Court charged with killing 57-year-old Jennifer Ruth Lanciano in November 2018.
She admitted killing her aunt but claimed she was not criminally responsible because she was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
Prosecutors argued Knock, who had been drinking the day before the killing, had been voluntarily intoxicated and therefore could not rely on the defence of insanity.
But Justice Anthony Derrick, who heard the case without a jury, on Thursday said he was satisfied Knock had been in a state of psychosis but was not intoxicated.
Knock will be subject to a custody order, meaning she will remain in a secure psychiatric facility indefinitely to receive treatment.
Ms Lanciano was killed at the house next door to hers in Armadale where she had been caring for her elderly father-in-law.
The court heard Ms Lanciano's husband Enzo woke in his bedroom in the early hours to the sound of a car horn after attending work.
He found Knock in his wife's car with the boot open and grabbed the keys off her, then noticed a stain on Knock's shirt and asked where his wife was.
When he noticed the expression on her face, he raced inside and found Ms Lanciano's body.
Knock, a mother of eight who was separated from her children and had a history of methamphetamine use, denied that she had been planning to hide Ms Lanciano's body.
She testified that she had been hearing voices and "experiencing the devil or demons" for about a year prior to the killing.
"While she was staying with her uncle and the deceased she started to mistrust both of them," Justice Derrick said in his judgment.
"She saw some ropes, some blankets and a straw broom in the back of her uncle's ute. On seeing these items she believed that her uncle and the deceased thought that she was a witch.
"She knew that her uncle and the deceased were Jehovah's Witnesses. She had a belief that Jehovah's Witnesses watched people die. She believed that they were going to witness her family dying."
Knock told the court the voices were telling her to kill Ms Lanciano and it was an "out of body experience" that she could not control.
The court heard Knock had previously experienced delusional beliefs, claiming in 2017 that the Crown casino had inserted a microchip into her neck.
Australian Associated Press
