'Kill Tammy first': Trial testimony takes court inside the mind of an accused murderer

Blake Schreiner says it was kill or be killed.

He spent the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 29, 2019, with a ceremonial silver dagger tucked in his waistband, chain-smoking and bracing his Saskatoon home for an attack by hit men from the Illuminati secret society.

Schreiner testified at his first-degree murder trial Thursday that he believed his common-law partner Tammy Brown, who was asleep in the couple's master bedroom, had arranged for assassins to slip into their River Heights bungalow and kill him. He said he also believed it was part of a larger plan to frame him as a pedophile.

He has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge.

"My mind was racing with all these thoughts," he testified at his judge-alone trial at Court of Queen's Bench.

"Tammy was going to make me out to be a pedophile, and they were going to kill me in the morning. I could hear whispering in my head ... to kill Tammy first."

Schreiner admitted to police that he killed Brown, stabbing her 80 times, but he testified that he did not know what he was doing at the time.

The 39-year-old spent almost six hours testifying about the two years leading up to the night of Brown's death. Defence lawyer Brad Mitchell used journals kept by Schreiner to anchor the testimony.

The journal entries offer a glimpse into Schreiner's mind as his mental health deteriorated. He was self-medicating with so-called magic mushrooms, "to re-wire my brain,"drinking and smoking marijuana.

By the fall of 2018, Schreiner believed he was getting coded messages through social media, children's books and everyday interactions.

For instance, he testified that he saw rabbit tracks in the snow and believed that was a message for him to run away because rabbits run.

Then, he was at an A&W restaurant and ordered a teen burger. He saw a teenager outside and believed that was a message to have sex with a teenager.

He heard a man speaking French and believed that to be a message that he must travel to Quebec.

At various points, he also believed that he was Jesus Christ, a werewolf, a demon and a member of the Royal family.

He testified that both he and Brown knew he needed help, but said that she did not know the full extent of his decline. He said he revealed little to her beyond his anxiety and panic attacks, because he thought she was an Illuminati agent.

He testified that on the night of her death, they discussed that he needed to get professional help. He had arranged earlier to meet with mental health professionals at City Hospital in Saskatoon.

He said that he went into their bedroom around 4:30 a.m. CST.

"I don't know what it was I just, yeah I just, just my mind was going a mile a minute and then it got onto the track, a bad track and I grabbed the knife and I went into the, the room and that happened," he said in his interview with police.

Schreiner said he did not know what he was doing.

As Tammy was dying, her three-year-old son came into the room.

"He got his feet full of blood and we put socks on his feet cause he said they were wet," he said.

"I shut the door to the room and I made them breakfast and I thought inside my head 'I might not ever see my kids again.'

"So, we had breakfast and we hung out and did our thing and I waited until the last minute to call the cops."

• 'Mommy loves you': Accused killer recounts Tammy Brown's dying words to her children

• Hallucinatory journal entries offer glimpse into mind of man accused of murdering common-law wife

At the police station after his arrest, he described how he had a feeling of relief that it was over. He stood erect in his cell for hours, "like I was a soldier who had just done his job."

Schreiner said that he never mentioned the Illuminati, drug use, journaling or hallucinations after his arrest because the voices in his head instructed him to stay quiet.

Prosecutor MelodiKujawa began her cross-examination late Thursday afternoon. She focused on what Schriener told police and doctors.

Schreiner is back on the stand Friday.