Mom killer who threatened pope may go free

MEMPHIS, March 11 (UPI) -- A Tennessee man institutionalized for 26 years after killing his mother and threatening to kill the pope does not merit release, a state prosecutor said.

Tennessee "respectfully submits that (Charles Turner Harrison) should not be released into the community unless it can be shown that he no longer represents a danger to himself or others," Thomas Henderson said in court papers filed in state Criminal Court in Memphis.

Harrison, 63, has been institutionalized since putting a 9mm pistol to the back of his 65-year-old mother's head in 1984, pulling the trigger "and then telling police he thought he could freeze her and revive her at will," The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal said.

In 1981, shortly after Pope John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by a gunman at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Harrison went to a Memphis cathedral wielding a 12-gauge shotgun and threatening "to waste the Holy Father" to prove prayer was ineffective.

Now, officials at the state mental health department -- which has overseen Harrison since 1987, when he was found not guilty of killing his mother by reason of insanity -- say if all goes well with Harrison during his current 14-day furlough at a supervised residential group home near Nashville, Tenn., they plan to discharge him.

The court will hold a hearing on his release this month.