A man who thought he was fighting a werewolf when he killed a stranger in Old Town Alexandria last summer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity on Monday.
Instead, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney David Lord argued at trial that Bhasin was intelligent enough to fake his symptoms and emphasized the viciousness of the deadly assault.
After the mistrial, the commonwealth’s attorney’s office ordered its own psychiatric evaluation, and that doctor agreed Bhasin was clinically insane when he killed Jackson.
In light of that conclusion, Commonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Porter said it would be unethical to put Bhasin on trial again.
Bhasin drove from his New Jersey home to the D.C. area early on the morning of July 13, according to testimony at trial. After being kicked out of the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown for odd behavior, he made his way to Old Town, where he followed Jackson to an upstairs window store. He later told psychiatrists he thought Jackson, a shop worker, might know something about boxes of human DNA.
When Jackson confronted Bhasin, Bhasin beat him, stabbing him 53 times with a box cutter and gouging his eyes, according to testimony.
Bhasin left the building covered in blood and naked from the waist down. He got into the back seat of a Mercedes-Benz car parked in front of the store and stayed there until police arrived.
Bhasin told police and doctors that Jackson, a stranger, began turning into a werewolf during their encounter. Bhasin said he had to kill Jackson to “save 99 percent of the moon and planets.”
Friends and family testified that Bhasin had been a successful, happy person. He was living in Washington and working as a risk analyst before leaving his job to travel the world; he returned to New Jersey about eight months before the attack to help take care of his sick father.
It was then that those around him noticed he began acting bizarrely. He was drinking his own urine and gasoline and would claim to be the Hindu god of death Yama.
Bhasin was hospitalized in June 2018 after attacking his parents and responded to medication. He was released after six days, quickly deteriorated and then disappeared. His parents were looking for him when the police called to say he was in custody in Virginia.
Jackson had moved to Old Town from Michigan 30 years ago to raise his son and became a well-loved fixture in the community. His brother described him as a “hopeless romantic.”
Defense attorney Peter Greenspun on Monday noted that Virginia’s standard for insanity is very strict.
“This is a case of tragedy for the Jackson friends and family and also for PK Bhasin and his family,” Greenspun said in a statement. “The sudden and heartbreaking serious mental health deterioration of a man suffering from severe bipolar disorder was the sole cause of this random and otherwise inexplicable act.”