Number 8 Jake Neate
In 2017, while in Spain, the parents of Essex man Jake Neate called local authorities, to express
concerns over their son’s mental wellbeing. It had reportedly been deteriorating for several weeks
after Neate, a paranoid schizophrenia sufferer in his mid-30s, had been taken off an anti-psychotic.
It took the police three hours and a second call from Neate’s parents to reach the man’s address
in Braintree. Upon their arrival, officers found that Neate had fatally stabbed his girlfriend,
34-year-old Suzanne Browne. During what was later determined to have been a psychotic break, he’d
knifed the woman 173 times. He was later deemed unfit to stand trial and handed an indeterminate
hospital order. The delayed police response had reportedly stemmed from the call being
wrongly categorized. A review from a domestic abuse board recommended that Essex Police have
a mental health practitioner be based in the force control room.
The authorities reportedly launched efforts to implement the recommendation the following year.
Number 7 Nigel Diakite When he was in his late teens, in 2019,
Nigel Diakite met N’Taya Elliott-Cleverley and the pair began a relationship. Their daughter was born
the following year, after they’d moved together to an apartment in Prince Alfred Road, Liverpool,
England. By all accounts, they were good parents but hardship brought on by the pandemic along with
Diakite’s waning mental health eventually resulted in arguments between them. 18-year-old Diakite was
reported to have witnessed a number of traumatic events, while fleeing war from his native Ivory
Coast and travelling to the UK, allegedly leaving him with undiagnosed PTSD. On January the 29th
of 2021, he allegedly suffered a breakdown and launched a brutal attack on Elliott-Cleverley,
inflicting dozens of injuries with his bare hands. The 20-year-old woman was subsequently heard
breathing heavily in the background of a WhatsApp audio message that Diakite had sent friend,
in which he’d asked for money. Diakite then strangled his girlfriend to death with a
skipping rope while their 4-month-old daughter slept in a cot beside them.
Diakite was arrested and, the following month, diagnosed as acutely psychotic and transferred
to the Spinney Hospital. It was later determined that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and
his defense was built on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A jury, however, rejected it and
found him guilty of murder resulting in a life sentence with a minimum of 19 years served.
Number 6 Katrina Fell
23-year-old Katrina Fell had been out partying with friends in the small town of Clitheroe,
Lancashire, England, on November the 7th of 2019. At around 2 am, Fell and her group went
to a friend’s flat where they continued to drink and listen to music but also allegedly consumed
an unspecified amount of cocaine. A few hours later, one of Fell’s friends woke up on one side
of a sofa and saw that Fell had been overtaken by intense panic on the other side. The young
woman began crying and didn’t provide a reason for her sudden state of distress. The friend managed
to temporarily calm her down and Fell left the apartment. She hailed a taxi and was last seen
getting into the vehicle, outside a Sainsbury’s, at around 9 am. She asked the driver to drop her
in the woodlands near her home, in the town of Waddington. Roughly twenty minutes later, a dog
walker found Fell’s unresponsive body hanging from a tree. She was subsequently pronounced
dead at the Royal Blackburn Hospital. An inquest found no indication of foul play and determined
that the woman had acted while in the midst of a psychotic break triggered by the cocaine.
Number 5 Murray Deakin
20-year-old Murray Deakin was living with his grandparents at their property in Bega, New South
Wales, Australia, on June the 1st of 2018. The man started exhibiting aggressive behavior, reportedly
triggered by his motorcycle being moved, and attacked both his grandparents. Deakin had been
struggling with mental illness since childhood, when he would obsessively perform certain actions,
such as washing his hands, removing and grinding tap fittings or adding weights to doors to make
them close faster. At the age of 18, Deakin told his father that he was hearing voices but it’s
unclear if the matter was ever addressed by the family. His June rampage began with him attacking
his grandfather, 71-year-old Thomas Winner, with a pen knife. Deakin then stabbed his grandmother
Gail, aged 69, while she was unloading groceries from her car. The woman suffered wounds to her
chest, back and neck, to which she succumbed later that afternoon. Thomas survived but sustained
further cuts and stabs after fighting Deakin for the blade. The latter then engaged local
authorities in two dangerous car chases before his erratic driving caught the attention of retired
police officer Michael Horne, aged 54. He followed Deakin to nearby Bournda, until the former brought
the car to a stop. Horne’s wife, Melanie, captured parts of the interaction that ensued
on her cellphone. When asked his name by the retired officer, Deakin pulled a claw hammer
from his backpack. As Melanie helplessly looked on from the car, he struck Horne multiple times
in the back of the head. The retired officer died a few days later. Following his arrest,
Deakin told the police that he believed his grandparents were vampires and that Horne
was a demon. He was ultimately found not guilty of the assault and double killing, after multiple
mental health experts stated he’d suffered a psychotic break triggered by his schizophrenia.
Number 4 Timchang Nandap Dr. Jeroen Ensink, a senior lecturer
in environmental health at the prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, became a
father for the first time in December of 2015. Ensink was outside his Islington home, in north
London, posting cards that announced the birth of his daughter. He was met by Nigerian student
Timchang Nandap, aged 23, who at the time was in the grip of psychosis. Nandap stabbed the academic
multiple times, inflicting deadly injuries. He was arrested and ultimately convicted of manslaughter
due to diminished responsibility and sentenced to an indefinite hospital order. In the aftermath,
Ensink’s widow personally funded an inquest to determine why Nandap had been let out of police
custody. He’d been arrested in May of that same year, after behaving erratically while wielding
a kitchen knife on the street where his sister lived. The latter had warned the police that
Nandap was suffering from depression, anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations. Arresting officers
had reportedly heard him shouting “They’re coming to get me. They’re trying to kill me”.
Nevertheless, Nandap was bailed and the charges for the May incident were ultimately dropped,
on December the 23rd, after the prosecution had deemed the evidence too weak. Less than a week
later, Nandap stabbed Ensink to death. Number 3 Margaret Gieszinger
Margaret Gieszinger, a chemistry teacher at the University Preparatory High School, in Visalia,
California, walked into a classroom with a pair of scissors in hand and declared that it was “haircut
day”, in December of 2018. A disturbing video then showed a male student reluctantly taking a seat
in front of the classroom. 52-year-old Gieszinger cut of a strand of his hair and tossed it over her
shoulder while loudly singing the “Star Spangled Banner”. In the footage, Gieszinger was shown then
grabbing at a female student’s hair while raising the scissors in the air and snipping the blades.
The student in question escaped unscathed as she and the others ran out of the classroom,
alerting the school’s main office. It wasn’t made immediately clear what factors had been behind
Gieszinger’s breakdown but her husband described it as uncharacteristic of her, proposing that
she’d “flipped out” due to stress. Gieszinger was arrested and charged with one count of false
imprisonment, two counts of cruelty to a child, two counts of battery and one count of assault.
She faced three-and-a-half years in jail and her employment at the school was promptly terminated.
Number 2 Zephaniah McLeod On September the 6th of 2020, a
man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia went on a stabbing spree in the city center of Birmingham,
England. In what would later be determined had been a breakdown associated with his illness,
Zephaniah McLeod carried out five separate attacks, over the course of 90 minutes.
23-year-old Jacob Billington, from Merseyside, was stabbed in the neck while returning to his
hotel after a night out with friends. He later passed away while his friend, Michael Callaghan,
was partially paralyzed after being knifed by McLeod. Half way through his stabbing spree,
the latter took a taxi home and picked up another blade before returning to the center. Several
other people were hurt in McLeod’s random attacks but none were reported as life-threatening. Days
before the spree, McLeod, then in his late 20s, had contacted a mental health nurse and told her
that he heard distressing voices in his head. The man had a criminal record, which included
convictions for robbery as well as Class A drugs and knife possession. McLeod was also known to
mental health authorities, having told doctors in the past that he heard a voice telling him
“kill them, stab them”. Leading up to the spree, he’d been consuming alcohol,
cannabis and crack cocaine, substances which were believed to have exacerbated his mental
unrest. McLeod admitted manslaughter, on the grounds of diminished responsibility,
four counts of attempted murder and three separate offences of wounding with intent to cause
grievous bodily harm. He was sentenced to be held at Ashworth hospital for "as long as necessary"
and then serve out the remainder of his mandatory 21-year sentence in prison. In the aftermath,
a multi-agency review was launched to determine the circumstances that had led to McLeod’s spree.
Its aim was to answer the same question asked by Billington’s sister during his sentencing
"how was a man so unstable and in a mental health crisis able to walk the streets unsupervised?"
Number 1 Zoe Sozo Bethel On February the 10th of 2022, at around midnight,
Miss Alabama for America Strong Zoe Sozo Bethel plummeted from a third-floor balcony, at a luxury
Miami condo. The 27-year-old suffered devastating injuries in the fall and passed away roughly a
week later. A post-mortem examination found that Bethel had had an “unknown amount of unknown
suspected narcotics” in her system. After having dinner with her half-brother, Santiago Roman,
they went to his apartment at the seven-story La Piazza Navona building. Roman would later tell the
police that, during dinner, he’d witnessed Bethel take some type of drug, which she
claimed would relax her. She subsequently started complaining about feeling unwell and, while Roman
was blowing up the air mattress on which she’d been sleeping, she exited the apartment. When
the man called her back inside, as indicated by a report from the Miami authorities, the model ran
full-speed towards a nearby balcony. It’s unclear if she hadn’t seen the railing and tripped over it
or if she’d meant to jump, impinged upon by the psychological turmoil she was experiencing.
An investigation found no evidence of foul play and deemed the death accidental. Kezia, Bethel’s
26-year-old sister, told the New York Post that the beauty queen had been trying to “remake
herself” and keep their troubled past secret. When the sisters were younger, their parents, Orlando
and Glynis, had been preachers of “God Hates” rhetoric in line with that of the Westboro Baptist
Church. The couple, who called themselves “The Apostle” and “The Prophetess”, actively involved
their children in various public manifestations. In 2010, Bethel and Kezia were pictured during
a New Orleans protest, with the former looking downcast while wearing a T-shirt that read “God
hates you sinners”. The children were in and out of foster homes, as their parents would sometimes
get arrested on charges derived from their public preaching. Kezia suspected that Bethel’s breakdown
had also been influenced by the mental and emotional toll of trying to shed her past.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather have a public meltdown that becomes a viral video OR let
one of your friends tattoo you while inebriated? Let us know in the comments section below!