A mentally ill Yarraville man who killed his elderly father with a claw hammer when he was hanging up the washing has been ordered to spend up to 25 years in the state’s maximum security psychiatric hospital.
Supreme Court Justice Michael Croucher on Monday said Slave “George” Pedevski believed he had to kill his father on God’s orders.
Justice Croucher said Pedevski had been refusing to take his medication for chronic paranoid schizophrenia for months because he did not believe there was anything wrong with him.
The judge placed Pedevski on a custodial supervision order to be served at the Thomas Embling psychiatric hospital for a nominal 25 years after he had been found not guilty of murder due to mental impairment.
Pedevski, 51, who appeared via videolink from Thomas Embling because appearing in court caused him distress, attacked his father, Risto, 79, with a claw hammer at the family’s Yarraville home on November 23, 2014.
When later interviewed by police, Pedevski claimed his real parents were living in Macedonia and he believed the people living with him at the family’s Yarraville home were imposters.
Psychiatrist Grant Lester said Pedevski was driven to kill his father by paranoid delusions that he believed God was directing him to do things.
Mark Russell, The Age
