THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050219
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: DEDHAM, MASS. LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
A psychiatrist who said John C. Salvi III is insane acknowledged Monday that some of the delusions on which he based his diagnosis came out only after Salvi learned his lawyers would pursue an insanity defense.
Under aggressive questioning by prosecutor John Kivlan, Dr. Phillip J. Resnick said Salvi did not bring up certain topics in two interviews after the attacks on two abortion clinics on Dec. 30, 1994.
Salvi was arrested Dec. 31, 1994, in Norfolk, Va., after he allegedly fired a rifle into the Hillcrest Clinic.
On the day before his double-murder trial, Salvi told the psychiatrist about a conspiracy to force birth control on Roman Catholics and said it was justifiable to kill people who wanted to interfere with a currency system just for Catholics, Resnick told the Norfolk County (Mass.) Superior Court jury.
``So now . . . he tells you it's justifiable,'' Kivlan said, ``. . . and he had never made that statement to you before, until the day before the trial?''
``Yes,'' Resnick replied.
Defense lawyers are seeking to prove Salvi, 24, was insane when he killed Shannon Lowney, 25, and Lee Ann Nichols, 38, and wounded five people in the back-to-back rifle attacks at the Planned Parenthood and Preterm Health Services clinics. Prosecutors claim the carefully plotted shootings were the work of a sane man.
Resnick also acknowledged Monday that some of Salvi's beliefs - including that of a Freemason conspiracy against Roman Catholics - are shared by others and were outlined in a ``Fatima Crusader'' newsletter found among Salvi's possessions.
Also Monday, a friend testified that Salvi told her he heard voices sometimes when he read the Bible, and wondered whether others heard them, too.
``He said, `Did you ever feel one minute you're normal and then the next some thing starts talking to you?' '' testified Christine Lockshire, who said she went out with Salvi three times between September 1993 and August 1994 after her mother introduced them.
``I asked him what he meant,'' Lockshire said. ``All he said was that he heard voices. . . . He said they just popped out of nowhere.''
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL ABORTION CLINIC SHOOTINGS by CNB