327: Dr. Lakshmanrao & Dr. Shanta Chervu

The Larchment Police Department reflects this quiet character. It's housed in a modest brick building just off Main Street and is more Maybury than Manhattan. Officers often know the residents by face, if not by name. Shifts were steady, predictable, almost boring in the best possible way. It's the kind of place where the radio crackles with reports of a raccoon in someone's attic or a suspicious parked car. Rarely anything more sinister, but even the most peaceful of places

have their shadows. Before nineteen eighty nine, the village had only ever recorded to murders in its entire history. The first occurred in October nineteen thirty eight, when a whimpering dog led its owner to the body of seventeen year old martemmeld Coil. She had been beaten to death and dumped in a vacant lot of Palmer Avenue. The case was never solved. Nearly four decades later, a tragedy struck

once more. In nineteen seventy six, patrolman Arthur Demat responded to reports of a homeless man near the train tracks. During the encounter, twenty three year old Anthony Curtis Blanks wrestled the matt's gone from him and fatally shot the officer. His badge still hangs in the village hall, a solemn tribute to a rare but devastating loss. Since then, the police department had returned to its sleepy rhythm. That was

until New Year's Day of nineteen eighty nine. As the first evening of the new year settled over larchmentth festive lights still blinked in windows, and the lingering scent of pine clung to the cold there. Families returned home from holiday dinners. Children played in snowy front yards, their laughter muffled by scarves. Inside the police station, the mood was quiet, almost drowsy. A couple of officers nursed coffees, reviewing routine paperwork,

while the dispatcher occasionally glanced at the silent switchboard. At seven thirty pm, the front door opened with a jingle of bells. A man stepped inside, brushing the chill from his coat. He looked uneasy as he approached the front desk. He said that he hadn't seen or heard from his sister and her husband all weekend. In a town where nothing bad ever seemed to happen, something had. Lincoln Street wasn't the kind of place you just stumbled upon. You

arrived there on purpose. It curled through the heart of Larchment like a secret, a residential strait so pristain, so well kept it felt almost staged. It was the kind of place where children still played hopscosh on the sidewalks, and neighbors exchanged nods while raking their leaves. It was wide enough for two cars to pass without slewing, and in the summer time, the trees lining both sides formed

a canopy so dense the straight glowed grain. And about half way up that quiet stretch of Lincoln Straight sat house number thirty six. It wasn't flashy, but it didn't need to be. The two story home, with its early twentieth century bones and graceful stone steps, had presents the kind of presence that made people pause mid walk and look just a second longer. It was regal, but it wasn't chowy. Like it belonged there, rooted and unwavering in

nineteen eighty nine. This house belonged to doctor laksh Manrau and doctor Shanta's Chervou, and their story was the embodiment of everything America promised to those brave enough to chase the dream. Originally from New Delhi, they had come to the United States in the early nineteen sixties chasing a dream with little more than education and determination in their suitcases. By all accounts, they had caught that dream. Akshman Rau was a professor of nuclear medicine at the Albert Einstein

College of Medicine. Shanda worked in emergency medicine at New Rochelle Hospital. She had trained in geriatrics at Montefior Medical Center in the Bronx, and even on her rare days off, she never truly slowed. Their lives were demanding, but the Chervus never wore stress the way that others did. They had two children, both grown, both thriving. A room was out west deep into a surgical residency at UCLA. A Raree, a gifted economist, was carving out her own path in Toronto.

From the outside, the cherves were the perfect picture not just of success, but of something richer. Each evening, after grilling shifts in the emergency room, Shanta would return to her kitchen. The scent of cumen and turmeric would drift through the house as she prepared traditional Indian meals, chopping vegetables with worn, familiar knives at the counter, just as she had in her mother's kitchen in India decades before. For years, she didn't even own a proper knife block.

Then their daughter Arare got her first real paycheck and brought her mother a gift, an elegant set of German Henkles knives in a beautiful wooden block. It was a thank you for everything her parents had sacrificed. Shanda wore her mangol cut every day, a chain of black beads that never left her neck, even beneath her hospital scrubs. La Shaman Rau. He was the kind of man who collected degrees the way other people collected books or bottle caps.

Between the two of them, the Chervius spoke six languages. Their home was more than shelter, It was sanctuary. They went their doors to others as well. Over the years they helped more than a dozen realves immigrant from India, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews. They gave generously, quietly, without ever asking for recognition. One

of those nephews, Rakubamadan, once put it best. They immigrated here, they worked hard, they built themselves a home and achieved prominent positions as doctors, and then they brought ten brothers and sisters here. It was a beautiful story, the kind of story people want to believe always ends well, the kind of story that makes you believe in the promise of America, in the promise of hard work and determination.

But even the most perfect stories have their shadows, and Larchman's shadows were deeper and more twisted than anybody could have imagined. It was December thirty first, nineteen eighty eight, and New Rochelle Hospital's emergency department was chaos. It was one of those holiday nights where patients just kept coming, where the coffee grew colder and the charts piled higher and higher. Doctor Shantah Shreview should have gone home hours ago, but that wasn't who she was. She staid until every

chart was signed, every patient properly discharged. That was Shanta, meticulous caring, never leaving work half done. Just after midnight, as nineteen eighty nine officially began, she made her runs, not medical runs, but personal ones. She walked through the hospital corridors, wishing everybody a happy New Year. Then she waited, but not outside. Shanta never waited outside. She didn't feel safe there. She waited in the hallway inside the building

until she saw familiar headlights pull up. Lakshman raw As always, was there to pick her up. They drove home through the quiet streets of Westchester County, past houses where families were sleeping off their New Year celebrations. They had no idea they were driving towards their final night, thirty six Lincoln Street. About twenty four hours later, that same Queen's

Hospital was filled with celebration. More than twenty members of the Sherviu family had gathered to welcome a new life into the world, the birth of a first generation American. It was supposed to be a milestone, a joyful chapter in the family's story, and yet something felt incomplete. Lakshman, Rau and Shanta, the very people who had made this life possible for so many, were missing. They had sponsored every single relative in that waiting room, every sibling, every cousin,

every niece and nephew. Without them, the celebration simply didn't feel whole. But when call after call went unanswered, celebration gave way to concern. By sunrise, that concern had blossomed into dread. Chants brought they're volunteered to check in. Just to be safe. He drove the familiar route to Larchment, winding past quiet houses and holiday wraiths, past empty sidewalks and leafless streets. The house of thirty six Lincoln Street stood still, as if it was asleep. He knocked on

the front door and waited. Nobody came to answer it. He peered through the windows, but only saw the empty ships of furniture in the morning shadow. Then he walked around back. As he drew closer, he saw that the back door was open. Its glass pane had been shattered. Too afraid to go further. He backed away and drove straight to the Larchment Police Department. Police officers arrived swiftly,

among them with Sergeant Kenneth Khan. They circled to the back of the house and immediately saw the glass scattered on the cold cement. Can nudged the rear door open it creaked against the stillness the fire himself and called out to the Chervoos. There was only silence. They moved inside, then they climbed the stairs. Before they even reached the bedroom, the smell hit them. It wasn't the smell of blood, but the unmistakable scent of decomposition. The master bedroom door opened.

The bed was soaked, dark, heavy and glistening with blood. In the middle lay Lakshman, Rau and Shanta, still in their pajamas, still side by side, but now earily silent. It was clear even from the doorway that they were both gone. Rick Remordis had said in there was blood spattered on the walls and on the ceiling. The Chervoos

never stood a chance. Shanda had suffered eight stab wounds, one pierced her heart, another cut through to her spine, and even after death, the killer had slashed her throat. Lakshman Rau had been stabbed fourteen times in the face, the hand, the chest, the abdomen. Like his wife, his throat had also been slashed. The bodies were removed and taken to the medical Examiner's office, but the horror of that scene clung to the house like a fog. It

didn't take long for word to spread. A double homicide Enlarchment, a quiet, picturesque suburb where violence simply didn't happen. Within ours of discovering the bodies of doctor Lakshman Rau and doctor Shanta Chervu, Lincoln Street transformed the quiet, storybook neighborhood was suddenly a crime scene. Police tape fluttered from the porch railings, Markers dotted the lawns. Investigators moved in and out of the home with hushed urgency cameras flashing, gloved

hands gathering evidence, whispered exchanged beneath furrowed brows. It was the first homicide Enlarchment in more than a decade, and detectives felt the weight of that immediately. They knew the eyes of the community were now on them. The initial theory was a familiar one, a robbery gone wrong, but that theory crumbled almost as quickly as it was formed. The inside of the home didn't reflect chaos. Nothing appeared ransacked.

Valuable items including jewelry, electronics, and cash, remained untouched, sitting in plain sight like bait the killer never took. It didn't make sense if somebody had broken in to steel, they had failed miserably and instead carried out an execution. So detectives turned their focus elsewhere. They combed the neighborhood with a precision that bordered on desperate. Garbage cans were overturned, storm drains were searched with flashlights and mirrors. Metal detectors

swept beneath hedges and down driveways. They were looking for something very specific, a knife. One was missing from the elegant henkle block in the Shervood kitchen, the butcher knife. It was likely the murder weapon, but after days of searching nothing turned up. Detective Captain Michael Garcia addressed the press and said, we looked everywhere for a weapon. We haven't come up with anything yet, and so the focus shifted away from physical evidence and towards the lives of

the victims. They figured out the last time either of them were seen was when Shanda had finished her shift and waited outside for her husband to collect her. One of her colleagues, Anne Kenny, remembered, it clearly to be afraid to wait outside the emergency room and then be killed in your own house. It's so ironic. She was a very timid, gentle soul as always. Lakshman Rau was the one to pick her up. They drove home, and two days later their bodies were fond soaked in blood

in the sanctuary they'd spent a lifetime building. Now detectives were faced with a disturbing question. If it wasn't a burglary, if it wasn't random, than who wanted them dead. They began looking into their past, their social circles, their hospital colleagues. They searched for any hint of tension, a jealous coworker, a spurned friend, a disgruntled patient, but they found none. Everyone spoke of the chervous the same way, with admiration,

with warmth, and now with grief. There were no enemies, no scandals, just a quiet, perfect couple who seemed to have done everything right. Days turned into wakes, and weeks turned into months. By spring, the floors had returned to Lincoln Street. The blood had been washed away, but something lingered, not just grief, not just confusion, but silence, the kind of silence that fills a room after something terrible happens and nobody knows what to say. Detectives, meanwhile, were stuck

in place. Despite their efforts, including the interviews, the search parties, the forensic sweeps, they were no closer to finding an answer than they were on day one. They didn't believe that anybody in the Sheriview family was involved. Everybody had alibis, everyone had been accounted for. Still the leads were scarce. So police Chief William Cursey announced a twenty five thousand dollar reward, hoping it might jar something loose. But the

phone line stayed quiet. Nobody came forward. Enlarchment, life continued, Children walked to school, mail was delivered, lawns were moan, but something had changed. People were trying to resume with their routines, but they were doing so with a killer still among them, And so the town invented its own kind of comfort. The story people told themselves over coffee and across garden fences was simple. This wasn't random. The

sherifviews had been targeted. Their neighbor Joan Sassin said it plainly, we live in a very safe neighborhood. Most people feel this was targeted at one specific family. It was an isolated defense. People needed for that to be true, because if it wasn't, if it was random, then nobody was safe. And yet even with a double murder on their doorstep, most residents didn't change much. They still answered the door for strangers, still left keys and unlocked sheds, still chatted

casually with passerby. Ralph Engel echoed the sentiment and said, we may be totally wrong, but the general belief seems to be that this wasn't random, not some crazy murderer. There really has been no request for concerted community action. But behind that fragile calm, the rumors were relentless. Some believed that the killer had ties to the Indian community, that it was personal, but they had already fled the

country and would now be seen again. That theory, albeit dark, gave people comfort because it meant that they were safe. It meant this horror story had already ended. But others didn't buy it, especially not the Indian American community. In fact, Many of them believed that police weren't doing enough. They worried the case was being ignored, swept aside because the victims weren't white. Some even feared that the murders might

have been racially motivated. That possibility wasn't without president. Just a few months earlier, in New Jersey, several attacks had been carried out by self identified vigilantes calling themselves the dot busters, a cruel reference to the bindi worn by Hindu women. Detectives tonight any link, They insisted, the murders weren't hate crimes, but they offered very little else, no motive,

no suspect, no timeline, and no updates. Frustration mounted, faith in the system and eroded, and as the silence dragged on, people began to wonder if justice would ever come. Eventually, the month slipped into years, the house at thirty six Lincoln Street was sold. The neighborhood slowly stopped talking about what had happened. The Chervus, it seemed, had been buried

not just in the earth, but in memory. By nineteen ninety three, four years after the murders, Police Chief Cursey gave an interview and said, I wish I could tell you there was something new. It's a frustrating case. But what the police chief didn't know, what almost nobody knew, was that everything was about to change, and arrest was coming,

and when it arrived, it stunned everyone. On the twentieth of May nineteen ninety three, more than four years after Lakshman Rau and Chanta Shervey were brutally murdered, detectives called the press conference. There had been a development. A twenty five year old man named Paul Cox had been arrested. He was a self employed carpenter working under the name PC Construction. He lived in New Rochelle, just a short drive from Larchment. He held a job as a living

superintendent at an apartment complex. Claimed gutters or placed locks, fixed the boilers. To most people, he was just a handyman, and a quiet one at that. But to those who knew the name Cox, the arrest came as a shock because Paul Cox didn't come from obscurity. He came from legacy. His grandfather, Joseph Van der Knout, was one of the most well known local politicians in Westchester County. He'd served as the Mammarineck Town supervisor before that he was on

the town council. Paul's mother, Mary van der Knoot Cox, was a Junior League member. His father, Francis Cock the third, was a prominent attorney. This wasn't the kind of family the people whispered about. This was the kind of family sent Christmas cards to. But the connection that shook the community the most was the house Paul Cox had grown up inside thirty six Lincoln Street, the very home where Lakshmanrou and Shanter were killed. He had lived there until

he was seven years old. His parents had sold the house to the Chervous in nineteen seventy. The murders had happened almost two decades later. The overlap of place of memory of violence was almost too disturbing to process to the residence of Lincoln Street. This wasn't just an arrest. It was a collapse of the narrative that they had constructed. Somebody from the Indian community hadn't committed this crime. It

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Even Paul's tenants were stunned. Steve McNally, a fellow resident, said the place was a rat hole and he took care of cleaning it up. He did seem like a nice guy. He never gave any trouble. But now the same man who had been fixing leaking pipes and patching drywall was in handcuffs and charged with a double murder. Tom Constable, a local lawyer, tried to hold on to that old larchment logic and said it's a very sad thing, but an arrest isn't a conviction. And he was right.

But what nobody could yet imagine was the dark undercurrent beneath Paul Cox's quiet demeanor, because the real story, the why, was more terrifying than anybody had expected. The truth was coming, and it was buried not in a motive but in memory. It was about three am on the thirty first of December nineteen eighty eight when Paul Cox lost control of his nineteen seventy nine Chevrolet and crashed it on a sharp turn along Fifth Avenue in New Rochelle. A few

hours later, police found the car abandoned. They called the hospital and Paul Cox's home, but there was no sign of him. At this time, Cox was an alcoholic, but in ninety ninety something shifted. He was an alcoholics anonymous trying to turn his life around. During one of the meetings, Cox stood up to take the fourth and fifth steps of the twelve step program, the ones that ask members to take a moral inventory and admit their wrong doings to themselves, to God, and to another person. But what

Cox shared would leave the room silent. He said he believed he had killed two people while blackout drunk. He didn't know it, not for sure, but he felt it. He told the group he had been out drinking heavily the night of the car crash out at a bar on North Avenue, but after the wreck, instead of heading home, he ended up on Lincoln Street outside his childhood home, the Sherview's Home. He said he had a dream where

he smashed a window, then walked inside. He said he grabbed a n eye from the kitchen like it was instinct, muscle memory, and then he went upstairs. He wasn't sure what happened next, but he was standing in the master bedroom, the one where his parents had once slept. Lakshman, Rau and Schanda were already dead. Cox said that he panicked. He left the scene, walked to his parents' home on Prospects Street, and then fell asleep. When he woke up, there was blood on his clothing. He told the group

his mother had thrown the clothes away. Later, he said he returned to the Shervo's home, cleaned anything he thought he'd touched, and said he tossed the murder weapon into the Long Island Sound. One of the members of that AA group was his girlfriend at the time, a woman referred to only as Miss S. She recalled how Cox had broken down in tears as he recounted what he thought he'd done. She remembered, I said, no way, I know you're kind. It's not possible. Another member, Mister S,

remembered it differently. He didn't brush it off, he later said. He told me he thought he had done something really bad. He said, after a period of drinking, he had gone into these people's house where he lived and killed the people with a knife while they slept. The confession had happened four years before the arrest, because it had been made in an AA meeting under a veal of confidentiality.

Nobody went to police, not then, even as the murders remained unsolved, even as the headlines faded, even as the Chervou family pleaded for answers. For four years, those words sat like a stone at the bottom of a river until somebody finally came forward. And when they did, detectives reopened the case file and began to dig. Because this wasn't a tip, it was a road map, and Paul Cox had already drawn the route. Once someone from the

AA group finally came forward with Paul Cox's confession. Detectives reopened the file that had sat cold for over four years. They went back to the crash and sure enough checked out the abandoned nineteen seventy nine Chevrolet Sadan had in fact been discovered smashed into a guardrail on Fifth Avenue in New Rochelle, just like Cox had said, it was Detective Sergeant Robert Smith who had found it. At that part of the story was confirmed, detectives needed to know

what else was true. Paul Cox was arrested and brought in. His fingerprints were taken and run through the system. They came back as a matched unidentified fingerprints from the Shervo crime scene. Paul Cox was charged with four counts of second degree murder an order to be held on two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bill. As part of the agreement, he was he'd wear an electronic ankle monitor and remained confined to his parents' home Enlarchment. It wasn't what prosecutors

had wanted. They had asked for a two million dollar bail. They told the judge that Cox had a history of psychiatric treatment and that he had once told the nurse he might try to flee. Cox's defense attorney, Andre Rubin pushed back. He said that if Paul Cox had really intended to run, he'd had four years to do it. The judge agreed, bill was lowered, and Paul Cox went home. The Sherivo family was furious. Sarah Swaddre Lakshmann, Raus's sister,

was devastated and commented, it is very unfair. We're very frightened by this. How can they let him go? Her sister, Lakshmi, echoed the same disbelief. They had waited years for justice, and now the man accused of murdering their loved ones was walking free, living in comfort, just blocks from the crime scene. To them, it felt like the system was minimizing their pain, trivializing loss. The legal teams began preparing for trial, and it didn't take long before it became

clear what the strategy the defense planned to pursue. Insanity. Ribbon made the first hint in a press statement when he said, assuming that he did commit these acts, it's clear they weren't committed by somebody in his right mind. Jury selection began in May of nineteen ninety four, Ribbon addressed the prospective jurors with a haunting observation, it's every person's nightmare to be stabbed while you sleep. He also asked how they felt the bout a psychiatric defense. The prosecutors,

led by George Bolin, were blunt. They wouldn't have an eye witness. They didn't need one. They were building a case on forensics, confessions, and circumstantial evidence. Bolan was firm when he said, you will not hear from any only one witness who could be an eyewitness to the actual crime. But outside the courtroom, a more complex issue began to unfold.

The case raised legal and ethical questions about confidentiality and whether self help programs like Alcoholics Anonymous should be shielded in the same way as therapy with a licensed professional. Most states only protect conversations that take place under the care of a license psychotherapist or physician. AA, by contrast, was peer let. So when people finally broke their silence, was it a betrayal or was it justice? And in that gray area the future of the case would hang

in the balance. On the morning of the second of June nineteen ninety four, Paul Cox was led into the courtroom. He wore soon and his hair was neatly combed. He took a seat beside his defense team, while his parents, Stoic and Peale, sat behind him in the gallery. Across the aisle sat the Chervu family. While they said nothing, their grief was unmistakable. They had waited years for this day. They didn't believe that Paul Cox was insane, rangonanthus Shan't.

His brother in law spoke bluntly when he said, insanity is just the state of the art of getting out for the sheervous. The idea that this man who had once lived in the very same house as them could now claim madness felt like a second betrayal. They showed up to court every day they had to. They said, it felt like a responsibility. Opening statements then began. Defense attorney Andrew Reuben addressed the jury and said, nothing speaks of a person who was in his right mind when

these crimes were committed. Then came the evidence. The testimony began with officers who recalled finding the crime scene home bathed in blood. A Radish shervy, the couple's daughter, took the stand. She spoke about the knife block she had purchased for her parents a set of five. She had last seen all five knives there on December twenty seventh, after the murders. One was missing. That missing knife, the prosecution would argue, became the weapon that ended the two lives.

Then came missus S, Paul Cox's ex girlfriend. She testified that Cox had confessed to her, believing that he had killed the Sheervws in a blackout. From the defense table. Cox broke down in tears as she spoke. Miss S also revealed that in moments of drunken despair, Cox would carve crosses into his arms. One by one, four more AA members took to the stand. Each of them had heard Paul Cox confess to the murders. To them, the confessions had sounded dream like, surreal, like something pulled from

a nightmare, But then came a much clearer count. Mister S, a former roommate, told the court that Coxe had confessed to him directly, not during a meeting, but in private. He remembered every word. He said. The woman woke up and he stabbed her many times. He told me the man woke up and was pleading with him. He stabbed him many times, and before he left, he slipit their throats to make sure they were dead. It was graphic, personal and specific, and to the prosecution it was more

than a foggy recollection. It was a story told with detail. Mister R also said that contrary to what Cox had told the AA group about his mother disposing of the bloody clothes, he had actually burned them himself. Under cross examination, Reuben tried to discredit the witness. Mister R admitted to having taken LSD and other drugs, and said he had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals ten or eleven times. He was even an escapee from a New Haven institution

when he met Cox, but the story never changed. Another former roommate, missus H, echoed this account. She said Cox would wake up screaming from nightmares in which he relived the murders. She testified, it seemed like a little boy was talking. I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't his usual voice. It was miss H who eventually went to police. Without her, the case may never have been reopened. Then the trial turned to the forensic evidence,

and it was damning. Cox's palm print and two fingerprints were found around the back door to the Sheervoo's home. A bloody handprint on a pillowcase spore a fingerprint that matched Cox's left Indeck's finger. Thomas Wall, a forensic supervisor, testified about blood found on a Venetian blank cord in the bedroom. It didn't belong to either victim, it may have been Cox's blood. He told the court. The physical evidence tied the nightmare to reality. The confessions, whether vague

or not, were no longer floating in the dark. Now they were grounded in blood, finger prints, in science. And with that the prosecution rested. Next it was the defense's turn, and their strategy would be simple. Paul Cox wasn't in his right mind. He was broken, damaged, and mad, or at least they would try to convince the jury of that. The defense opened their case with a familiar figure, Mary van Dernook Cox, Paul's mother. She sat before the jury,

a woman in her sixties, composed but trembling. She was here to paint to portrait not of a killer, but of a broken boy. She told them that Paul was her fifth child, that from the beginning there were problems. He couldn't stay dry throughout the night he struggled in school.

I guess we were disappointed, she admitted. She talked about her son sus attempt in high school and how he never graduated, how he drifted through college attempts, through jobs through the Air Force, and she spoke about that night and the crash. The police had told her his car had been found wrecked and abandoned. She said she went to check his bedroom and it was empty. Mary's testimony was heartbreaking and some would later say persuasive. She cried occasionally,

but she always regained control. The defense then turned to psychiatry doctor David Weber, a psychiatrist, took to the stand and said he really snapped. He went through these actions as if he was going back in time to eliminate the people he blamed for all of his problems. When he was seven years old, Weber believed that Cox had been suffering from dysgraphia, a learning disability that went undiagnosed

until adulthood. He said, the frustration from his academic failures festered into violent fantasies of killing himself, of killing his parents, and that night, drunk on beer and Camikazi cocktail, something inside him broke. He testified, it stands to reason that he couldn't have been in possession of his reason at the time, But the prosecution pushed back. They suggested that Cox had simply lied to the psychiatrist. They pointed to his vivid dreams of his parents dead in bed. They

weren't hallucinations, they were plans. Two more defense experts testified. Daniel Mortell, a forensic psychologist, said that Cox scored just one point away from schizophrenia. He said he's well groomed, presentable, but underneath he shattered. But under cross examination, both Martell and we Were admitted that Cox showed very few classics signs of psychosis. That's when the prosecution called doctor Alan Tuckman, chief forensic psychiatrist for Rockland County, and his conclusion was clear.

He said, he has personality disorders, he has a problem with alcohol, but there is no evidence of a severe mental illness. Doctor Tuckman pointed out that after the murderers, Cox appeared completely normal to his family, his friends, himself. He said, I just can't identify any psychotic disorder that renders a person psychotic and then disappears. A few hours later, the case was drawing to a close. During closing arguments, defense attorney Andrew Rubin made a final play and set

there's an unpopular notion of the insanity defense. People see it as a cop out, but the truth, he said, was more complicated. He asked them to consider mental illness, not just blood and fingerprints. The prosecution, led by George Bowland, delivered a scathing rebuttal, said to Paul Cox, your manipulative ways have come to an end. The jury then retired to deliberate, but after nine hours they sent a note to the judge. They were stuck. One juror refused to move.

The other said this jur didn't seem to understand the instructions. Worse, she couldn't support her opinion with evidence. They wrote, this juror is basing their verdict on opinion and cannot support it with concrete evidence. The judge urged them to continue, and they did for three more days, but the lone juror refused to budge. The rest were furious. They called her refusal an insult to their intelligence. They stayed overnight at the court's request, and still nothing changed. Three more

days and still no verdict. Finally, the judge declared a mistrial. A new trial was scheduled for November. Outside court, a reporter asked one of the jurors a simple question, do you think Paul Cox was insane? Her answer was swift No, It's as simple as that. But they had wanted a conviction, but one woman wasn't convinced, and Paul Cox, for the moment, walked free. In November of nineteen ninety four, Paul Cox walked back into court, a new trial, a new jury,

but the same two lives lost. This time, he testified in his own defense. His voice trembled as he recounted a loveless childhood inside the very home where Lakshman, Rau and Chant they were brutally murdered. He said he never felt like a true part of his family, that the

house itself was soaked in bad memories. He told the jury about a birthday party where his family left him alone to watch television, about stealing food at school because his mother wouldn't pack him snacks, and the worst humiliation, he said, was the bed wedding. His mother, he claimed, hung a calendar in the kitchen every morning, warning she'd mark it a scarlet X for every accident. He said, The shame of it all drove him to alcohol, but by the time he was in his twenties, he needed

a wake up beer just to stop the shaking. Then came the dreams. He testified. There would be dreams where I would see myself swinging the knife and up and down motion, slashing side to side. I never saw the knife going into anything. It was just the motion of the knife. I still can't believe that I did it, but I look at the evidence and realized I must have to say I'm sorry. Would be a total understatement.

The jury retired to deliberate. Four days passed. Just like the first trial, the jury was divided, but this time they returned with a verdict. Paul Cox was found guilty, but not of murder. Instead, he was convicted of first degree manslaughter. They believed that he had killed the sheervous, he had admitted it much, but they also believed he had done so while suffering from what the law calls an extreme emotional disturbance. In the gallery. The Riviere family

sat stunned. Their daughter Arati said he acted with no conscience. He has acted with no remorse whatsoever throughout this trial. In March the next year, Paul Cox stood for sentencing. He addressed the family of the people he killed and said, for the rest of my life, I'm going to regret what happened that night. I'm not lying. I'm sorry. That's all I can say. The judge then handed down the maximum sentence, which was up to fifty years in prison.

In the aftermath, Paul Cox appealed his scent in several times. By two thousand and one, he had exhausted all of his appeals in the state court. But now his attorney, Joshua Siegel, had a different argument. He said the alcoholics anonymous confessions should never have been allowed in court, that AA, at its core, was religious in nature, and that the same confidentiality given to a priest should apply to AA members,

and a federal judge agreed. US District Judge Charles Bryant overturned Cox's conviction in August of two thousand and one, ruling that the AA conversations were privilege and inadmissible in court, but Paul Cox wasn't going anywhere. The following July, a federal appeals court reversed the ruling and reinstated the conviction. They wrote Cox spoke with other AA members, primarily to unburden himself, to seek empathy and emotional support, and perhaps

in some instances, to seek practical guidance. His communications at issue here would therefore not be privileged. Paul Cox remains in prison. He has served decades now behind bars for a crime committed in a house he once called a home. Well, that is it for this episode of Morbidology. As always, thank you so much for listening, and I'd like to say a big oh thank you to my newest supporters up on Pedron, Tara J. Jennifer and the Marx Brothers. Morbidology is a one woman podcast of the support up

on their Seriously Seriously goes such a long way. It helps to defray the costs of hosting subscriptions and freedom of information requests, and I am eternally grateful. Morbidology is now up on YouTube, so if you can head on over there and hit that subscribe button, I would be eternally grateful. The episodes there are done in a documentary style, with photographs and videos associated with each episode. Remember the checks out at morbidology dot com for more information about

this episode and to read some true crime articles. Until next time, take care, of yourselves, stay safe and have an amazing week.