Philip Chism’s attorney: He killed his math teacher
A hundred and forty cameras in the high school captured almost his every move. Leaving the classroom. Drawing the hoodie onto his head. Entering the girl’s bathroom behind his math teacher, Colleen Ritzer.
Prosecutor Kate MacDougall told the 17 jurors in Salem Superior Court of Philip Chism’s actions, nearly minute-by-minute, on October 22, 2013. He went to Danvers High School that day with a mask, a box cutter, and a “terrible purpose.’’
By the end of the day, the vibrant 24-year-old Ritzer was dead. Her throat was slashed 16 times. She was raped, MacDougall said. He used his body, and then a tree branch. He dumped her in the woods, and caught a movie, bought and paid for with her credit cards.
The woman tasked with defending Chism stood up and told the jurors that yes, all of that was true. Philip Chism killed Colleen Ritzer that day, Denise Regan said.
The only question left for jurors to decide is why.
Was it premeditated, calculated, and with extreme atrocity, like MacDougall said? Or was it the first outward sign of a psychotic break in the young boy, as Regan argued?
“Why did a 14-year-old boy, a well-behaved, quiet boy one month into high school do these terrible things?’’ Regan asked. “The answer is he was severely mentally ill.’’
The quiet, soccer-playing kid who moved from Tennessee to Danvers that summer was unknowingly unraveling. And nobody knew it until Ritzer was dead and Chism was arrested, Regan said.
It makes sense that Chism was suffering from psychosis, Regan said. His grandmother and aunt on his mom’s side both have been hospitalized for psychotic disorders. He lost his support system in Tennessee and was thrust into a new school with new kids and new rules.
The stress was building. He was withdrawing. And that last conversation with Ritzer in her classroom after school, where she asked how his new school was different than Tennessee, made him tenser and tenser, Regan said. He looked out the window. He started mumbling.
Sensing his discomfort, the teacher dropped the issue. But Chism didn’t.
Convincing jurors that Chism was insane when he killed Ritzer will be an uphill battle for Regan and her team. And she seemed to acknowledge it to the jurors, asking aloud “Why didn’t Philip Chism seem more crazy after he killed Colleen Ritzer?’’
But he wasn’t acting rationally, she said. Those same cameras that captured his following Ritzer into the bathroom saw him darting in and out of the school, barefoot and bloodied and not caring who saw his face.
He spent a half hour in the woods hiding evidence, but held onto his teacher’s underwear and white wallet, keeping the murder weapon – a grey box cutter covered with blood – inside.
Chism is 16 now. He listened quietly in court Monday, the first day of his trial, hands on his knees the entire morning, staring straight ahead.
He’s medicated now, Regan said, officially diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. For the first time since he was arrested two years ago, he has agreed to visit with his mother. She sat in the front row of the courtroom, adjacent from a crowd of Ritzer’s family and friends.
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