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Offender Database John Isaac

John Isaac

Alias

.

Offences

Cut off his two year old son's head in 1987.

Victims

.

Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1960

Current Location

unknown

Parole/Release Dates

.

Background
Was found wandering the streets three weeks later after having been committed....
From NZ Herald story April 10th 1992
Kingseat escaper caught in cordon
Residents around Kingseat Hospital spent nearly five hours behind locked doors last night as police hunted for a committed psychiatric escaper.

John Isaac was recaptured shortly after 11 PM near Putaruru after a woman recognised his stolen getaway vehicle in Cambridge. She telephoned Hamilton Police and cordons were put up around Tokoroa. Isaac, who decapitated his two year old son but was aquitted of murder on the grounds of insanity, was in police custody several hours after driving off from the Auckland psychiatric hospital in a staff member's car. He was kept in Tokanui before being returned to Kingseat today.

With him was a female voluntary patient. The pair made off from the grounds at 6:30 PM putting police and Karaka residents on the alert. Although a committed patient, 31 year old Isaac had recently been transferred to an open ward following favourable psychiatric assessment. The pair were stopped at Lichfield, just South of Putaruru. The car's distinctive licence plate was spotted when the car sped through Cambridge

Jeremy Sandy Isaac's headless body was found in Isaac's Bairds Rd, Otara home on Sptember 23, 1987. At his trial, two psychiatrists agreed that Isaac suffered an advanced form of paranoid schizophrenia. they said that although he admitted chopping his son's head off, he was incapable of knowing this act was morally wrong. He told his wife the birds made him do it. To prison officers he said God told him to do it. Isaac told a psychiatrist that voices inside his head ordered him to kill.

Mrs Isaac is said to have forced her way into a bedroom and found her son's body wrapped in a quilt. The director of forensic psychiatric services for the Auckland Area Health Board, Dr David Chaplow, did not have full details of Isaac's escape late last night but said he hoped to have a full report by this morning.

Isaac had been moved from a secure unit into an open ward three weeks ago, he said, after staff who had been looking after him believed he was "mentally stable" following "pretty active treatment". "He'd been quite well for some time." Dr Chaplow said it was commonplace for "well people" to be in open wards as part of their treatment. "Because he cut his baby's head off three to four years ago does not mean to say he would do it again now."

Isaac's move to an open ward had been a calculated transfer. "We have a flow-through of 20,000 patients. If we locked them all up we'd have a resource problem." Had Isaac behaved himself, said Dr Chaplow, he might have been allowed into the community in another year or two but his escape meant that was now under review.

Isaac's escape is the third from Kingseat in the past 12 months and comes after promises of a security clampdown. In May last year a dangerous patient escaped while on unsupervised ground parole. He was later convicted of raping a 17 year old Parnell woman. Eleven days later another patient escaped but was recaptured after 20 minutes.

Wards at Kingseat and Carrington psychiatric hospitals were immediately locked as an answer to the problem but reopened three weeks later. The lock-up was criticised by the Human Rights Commission as "excessive". Since then staffing has been increased in the forensic rehabilitation ward and secure fencing improved.

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Corrections and Additional Information
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