WILKES-BARRE, Pa. -- George Banks was suffering from a 'severe and rare' mental disease when he allegedly shot 13 people, including his five children, last September, his lawyer said Friday. Dr. Anthony Turchetti, a defense psychiatrist who examined Banks several times last October and again in February, testified the defendant suffered 'psychosis paranoia.'
Because of the illness, described as a 'chronic mental disorder,' Banks suffers delusions that affect his discretion and judgment and makes him unable to distinguish between right and wrong, the psychiatrist said.
In his opening statement, Luzerne County public defender Basil Russin said the defense plans to prove Banks did not know what he was doing when he allegedly killed his five children, their four mothers and four other people.
'George Banks is suffering from a severe and rare mental disease,' Russin said. 'George Banks has been suffering from a severe and rare mental disease for years. George Banks suffered from a severe and rare mental disease on Sept. 25,1982, (the day of the killings).'
Turchetti testified when he asked Banks in February about killing his children, the defendant replied:
'I felt it was okay to kill my kids because I didn't want them to suffer the pain and racial prejudice I suffered all my life. They were pure. Their deaths were pure. And now they're in the hands of God.'
Banks' mother, Mary Yelland, burst into tears as she described how she drove her son to the house where he surrendered to police.
As Banks stepped out of the car, 'he reached in and kissed me goodbye and said he loved me,' Mrs. Yelland said. 'He said I would never see him again.'
Earlier she testified Banks, wearing wet clothes and smelling of liquor, came to her house after the shootings and told her, 'I think I did it. I think I killed them all.'
As Mrs. Yelland stepped away from the witness stand, she stopped and kissed her Banks, 40, a former prison guard from Wilkes-Barre.
Later, when deputies led Banks from the courtroom, the defendant leaned close to his mother and said, 'I love you.'
Russin told the jury Banks, the son of a white mother and black father, was obsessed with racism, believed there would soon be 'racial wars' and was rejected by both blacks and whites because of his mixed racial background.
He said the defense would also show that Banks could also be a 'very normal man' who held a job at the state prison in Camp Hill, bought a house in Wilkes-Barre and wanted his children to get a good education.
'Above all else, the evidence will show George Banks was a man who loved his children,' Russin said. 'The evidence will show that in his delusional thinking, George Banks killed his children to save them from the world as he knew it.'
The prosecution ended its case against Banks with the reading of the script of an earlier hearing in which he admitted shooting at 12 of his alleged 13 victims.
