Man Chopped Off His Mom’s Head Then Took A Selfie And Uploaded It On Facebook

#1

The defence lawyer of a Bronx man who dismembered his mother with a power saw and then took a selfie with her severed head has told a court he was mentally ill at the time of the act and didn't know right from wrong.

Bahsid McLean, 26, is standing trial charged with murdering his mother, Tanya Byrd, 52, at their Morrisania apartment on 26 February 2013.

#2

McLean allegedly stabbed the 52-year-old after she told him he was a bad father.

His defense team are arguing that jurors should acquit McLean by reason of mental defect or disease, claiming he is 'broken' and has had voices in his head since he was a child.

#3

After McLean killed his mother he then went to a hardware store and bought a power saw to carve up her body and deposit the parts around the neighborhood before calling the police to report his dead mum as 'missing', police said.

#4

His lawyer Lynn Calvacca held up a picture to the court, showing McLean smiling as he held up his mother's severed head.

'Does this look like someone who knows what he is doing is wrong?' she said in her opening statement at the trial in Bronx Supreme Court.

#5

She told jurors that McLean was a 'broken' man, who had been hearing voices since he was 10-years-old, and had received treatment in mental hospitals for much of his life.

After McLean killed his mother he then went to a hardware store and bought a power saw to carve up her body, police said.

He then stopped to take a smirking selfie with her dismembered head before stuffing her remains into trash bags and placing them around his neighborhood.

#6

Her dismembered corpse was found in the trash bags inside four different suitcases that had been dumped around the neighborhood, and police later discovered the smiling selfie on McLean's phone.

#7

Prosecutors called the killing 'cold-blooded', arguing McLean knew exactly what he was doing when he carried out the killing.

They have so far presented four witnesses against McLean, including a man who stumbled on part of the victim's body as he walked his dog in the middle of the night. The man said his dog pulled him towards a suitcase in which he found dismembered body parts.

#8

Cassandra McLean, 53, the sister of the deceased, told the New York Daily News that her nephew was a danger to society and should be jailed for life.

"If he could do that to his own mother, imagine what he could do to a stranger. I don't hate him I pity him," she told the paper.

#9

The trial continues but a conviction is almost a certainty.

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