by Gary Dimmock
Ottawa Citizen
Days before Vanier rapper Adrian “Mook” Daou confessed to the 2010 axe killing of sex worker Jennifer Stewart, he told a jailhouse psychologist that he was possessed and needed to cut off his finger to rid himself of demons.
This bizarre new detail about the accused’s state of mind was revealed at Daou’s first-degree murder trial on Wednesday during testimony from Ian Shields, the longtime staff psychologist at the Innes Road jail, where the 24-year-old crack dealer was serving time on drug charges.
Shields paid him a visit on a Friday afternoon in February 2013 at the segregation unit, where Daou was being held under suicide watch. The jury has heard that Daou said he wanted to harm himself so he could get out of jail.
Shields, who has worked at the jail since 1987, described its segregation cells as draconian. Inmates on suicide watch, like Daou, are afforded nothing beyond a “suicide jacket” and a mattress — not even a Bible, he testified.
The psychologist testified that the jail is so understaffed that his job for the past few years has been almost exclusively to determine which inmates are more suicidal than others because there is a limited number of segregation units.
In a more detailed session at the psychologist’s jail office on Feb. 20, 2013, Daou said that if he mutilated himself it would end all of his problems, Shields testified.
The psychologist asked the inmate an admittedly odd question: Have you ever considered eating your cellmate?
“He laughed at it in a peculiar way,” Shields said. “It was an odd cackle. I surmised that he didn’t think it was an odd question.”
Shields pressed him. “I asked him if he had ever tasted human flesh. He pointed to a wound on his right arm.”
Daou was also “inappropriately giddy” during his sessions, didn’t appear frightened to be in jail, and seemed “matter-of-fact” about his lot in life, Shields said.
Days after the psychologist met Daou, a psychiatrist interviewed him and noted that the inmate wanted to wound himself in an attempt to get out of jail, and at the very least get into a hospital.
Dr. Shirley Brathwaite told court: “He wanted to use my influence to get him out of the jail.”
Days later and desperate to get out of segregation, Daou told a jail guard he wanted to confess to a murder.
Ottawa police detectives paid him a visit hours later at the jail. Daou was suicidal and under a psychiatrist’s care when he gave a series of ever-changing confessions to police. The jury has also heard that he has falsely confessed to murder in the past.
In the first confession, Daou initially got the murder weapon wrong and immediately asked if he could get a transfer to a prison so he’d have more space to do his time, court heard. He also asked police if a friend could collect a $50,000 reward in the case if he “ratted me out.”
In a videotaped confession by police the next day, on Feb. 26, 2013, Daou — who had been in segregation for 22 days — was fed Colonnade Pizza, loads of coffee, and hot chocolate.
He also changed his story about what happened to the murder weapon, which has never been recovered. He first said that he dumped the axe. But in another confession he said it was his father who got rid of the murder weapon. Beyond leaving a single voice mail for the father, the lead detective in the case has not taken any other steps to interview this key witness, court has heard.
The defence launched its case on Wednesday, and in an opening statement to the jury, lawyer Robert Carew said, “The reliability of (Daou’s) statements is in dispute.”
Carew told the jury that if they do find Daou guilty of murder, they must then consider whether he is criminally responsible. He told the jury that they’ll hear evidence that Daou was suffering from a psychotic illness at the time of the crime and would not have had the mental capacity to form the intent to kill, let alone know it was wrong.
Daou, who told police that he hatched the murder plot for hip-hop fame, has pleaded not guilty. He’s accused of killing Stewart, 36, in a Vanier parking lot on the night of Aug. 19, 2010