MARK WENDLER, 6 feet, 4 inches in handcuffs, walks from the Brown County Jail to the courthouse Tuesday while Deputy Harry Thorau holds door. Sheriff Ervin Weinkauf has back to camera. (Photo by Ron Grieser)

Mark Wendler shot his sister, Marcia, on sudden impulse, according to his own words in a taped interview introduced into evidence Tuesday at his trial for second-degree murder.

A Mankato psychiatrist testified for the defense that Mark also believed he was in alliance with the devil and wanted to claim Marcia for the devil at the same time he joined the devil by taking his own life.

Marcia, 14, was found shot dead and Mark, 19, was found injured about 7 p.m.May 4 in a grove on the family farm 5miles north of Comfrey. Mark had been target shooting.

Wendler pleaded innocent to the murder charge and the defense claimed Tuesday that his mental illness at the time of the shooting excused him from criminal liability.

Judge Noah Rosenbloom heard the trial here himself-Wendler had waived his right to a jury trial. Thirteen spectators and witnesses were present in court. By 3:45 p.m. the trial was over and the judge took the case under advisement with a decision promised sometime today.

If Mark is found innocent by reason of insanity he will then be committed to the state security hospital at St. Peter.

++

WENDLER’S father, Andrew, had found the two young people shot and had called authorities that May evening. When deputy sheriff Harry Thorau arrived he found Marcia dead, lying on her back ,legs doubled up under her, bent at the knees. Mark had already been taken to the hospital.

Near where Mark had been lying Thorau found the target pistol, he testified Tuesday. The gun was introduced in evidence, as were a ballistics report and autopsy report which proved a bullet from that gun caused the death of Marcia Wendler.

Authorities questioned Mark May 13 at the hospital after advising him of his right to remain silent or to have a lawyer present. Mark had asked for the interview and agreed to have it tape recorded, Thorau testified.

Mark himself didn’t testify Tuesday but the entire tape was played in court and a transcript of the tape was entered into evidence.

Mark said on the tape, “I was out target practicing and my sister wanted to shoot my pistol, so we went back down to the target block and my mom didn’t want me to let her shoot it so we went behind the block so that my ma wouldn’t see.

“She was right in front of me and while we were walking back there something just came over me and I just raised the gun and shot her,” he said on the tape.

His sister was 10 to 15 feet in front of him when he shot her in the back of the neck. They were alone. He had not been drinking or taking any medication that day.He had not argued with Marcia that day, he said on the tape.

He held the gun in his left hand when he shot his sister, then transferred the gun to his right and shot himself in the bead immediately because,”When I seen what I dome to my sister I just couldn’t face it,” he said on the tape.

When asked again in the interview why he shot Marcia he said, “I don’t know,just -something just snapped.”

And again,”It’s kind of hard to describe.She just, she just turned around and was just standing there and all of a sudden I just pulled the trigger for no reason.”

Mark said in answer to a question that Marcia had never asked him to shoot her.

He said he had had similar impulses in his mind a couple times before with both his sisters and once with his mother. He said he had had this in mind with his other sister Mona once three or four years ago during some target shooting, that he had pointed a pellet gun at Mona then.

Mark said in his taped interview that he had discussed this all with his parents and they told him they understood and forgave him and would back him up and give him whatever help he needed.

He said in the interview there was nothing that had made him dissatisfied, no reason for his impulses to shoot members of his family. “I was always close to my parents and my sister,” he said.

DEFENSE attorney Howard Haugh,public defender from Mankato, said in his opening statement, “No question exists as to the facts of the incident itself. The only question which will be presented will be as to Mr. Wendler’s mental condition at the time of the incident.”

The main defense witness, Dr. Delmer Eggert, Mankato psychiatrist, based his diagnosis on a two-hour interview with Mark plus correspondence from a psychologist and psychiatrist who had already examined Mark. The psychologist’s report indicated visual and motor slowness, an I.Q. of 102, and emotional instability.

Dr. Eggert testified Mark had told him that when he was 14 or 15 he began to feel inferior, picked on by kids his own age,the butt of jokes and name calling. Mark has a hip disability and walks with a shuffle.

Mark began to look for some area of impact and found an area he called “occult”,Dr. Eggert continued, magic, witchcraft, devil worship, hot acid rock music.

Mark talked to Dr. Eggert about music by Janis Joplin and Alice Cooper, saying Cooper sang about death, that one song said dead babies can’t do any wrong but remain innocent.

“He felt the occult was working for him. He felt somehow the occult had taken over,that he could stand by and watch things happen, it would bring things to him. He felt it was a strong and desirable power,”the doctor testified.

“He felt that for the first time in his life he’d found something that gave him all kinds of power.

“He felt he had some years previously made an alliance with the devil, that he left his Christian background, that he had developed a loyalty to this group, this persuasion.

“A few months before the incident in May he had an upheaval, a conflict of where his loyalties lay. His sister was Christian, she was influencing him to return to the Christian fold.”

Dr. Eggert said his opinion was that Mark felt the shooting was an impulse, not a planned action, “to keep himself in the ranks of the devil by killing his sister.”

Dr. Eggert said later that Mark felt he would prove his loyalty to the devil by killing himself and joining the ranks, a step down to hell, and bringing his sister along.

He told the court his medical diagnosis was schizophrenia, which he described as a condition where a person’s perception of reality is disturbed, affecting many areas of his life.

Mark heard voices which were delusions, not real, the doctor said.

Dr. Eggert said later that Mark said he heard the devil tell him to kill himself from time to time and he argued with the voices he heard. The doctor said details of such voices heard are something only someone trained in mental illness treatment or someone who actually thought he had heard them would be able to supply.

Dr. Eggert said Mark was mentally ill at he time of the shooting, that he did not really understand and appreciate the whole quality of his act as a wrong thing to do. Mark knew what the act was and the consequences but saw the whole act not in he context of a killing or suicide but in the context of some part of a “colossal struggle between the various forces of the universe,” Dr. Eggert testified.

++

WHEN CROSS-EXAMINED by William O’Connor,assistant Brown County attorney, Dr. Eggert agreed it was “conceivable” that what Mark told him in the two-hour interview had been made up by Mark after the shooting. He said the mental illness he described could not have been caused by Mark’s self-inflicted head round.

He acknowledged that another Mankato psychiatrist who had examined Mark at state’s request after the shooting had agreed with his diagnosis and had felt Mark could differentiate between right and wrong.

Dr. Eggert said Mark would be dangerous to himself and others if freed, based on his diagnosis. He agreed it was possible” Mark would commit another homicide if freed but said it was more likely that any future violent action would against Mark himself.

He said Mark needs a major rehabilitation program at the state security hospital in St. Peter, with a “guarded or fair” possibility of recovery.

Judge Rosenbloom asked Dr. Eggert how Mark’s statement to authorities )that he shot himself because he couldn’t face what he had done) could be consistent with having shot his sister because he was in league with the devil.

Dr. Eggert said it was consistent, that Mark felt as if he was “winning her and losing her at the same time.”

Wendler has been staying at the Blue Earth County jail since he was released from the hospital because they have better facilities for keeping watch on him than are available at Brown County jail, an official said after the trial.

New Ulm Daily Journal

Sept. 25, 1974