Psychologist says voice drove Saskatoon woman to kill her son

SASKATOON – A Saskatoon woman who slit her five-year-old son’s throat still hears the voice that some experts say drove her to commit the act back in January 2014.

Kellie Johnson, 38, is charged with the first-degree murder of Jonathan Vetter. Two medical experts who have testified at her trial diagnosed Johnson with schizophrenia and say her delusions put her in a state of mind where she thought killing her son was the right thing to do.

READ MORE: Saskatoon woman’s mental health detailed in child-killing court case

The defence is trying to prove Johnson is not criminally responsible due to her mental illness.

On Wednesday, psychologist Dr. Lindsay Robertson testified that Johnson started hearing a hallucination she refers to as “the woman” in 2008. Robertson said the delusion is still with Johnson to this day, even after two years of treatment in North Battleford’s Saskatchewan Hospital.

“The woman is very real to Ms. Johnson,” said Robertson on the stand Wednesday.

Weeks before the 2014 killing, Robertson said Johnson was receiving threats from “the woman.” This compounded with an unfounded belief that her ex-boyfriend molested her elder son.

WATCH: The trial for Kellie Johnson, a mother who stabbed her five-year-old son to death, continued in a Saskatoon court room.

1:48 Psychologist testifies delusions drove Saskatoon woman to kill her son

Johnson told Robertson that the woman threatened to kill her, leaving her son to be molested by her ex-boyfriend. She believed this would cause her son to eventually become a sexual predator himself and be dammed to hell, according to testimony.

Robertson stated that Johnson felt she had to kill her son in order to “save” him and send him to heaven before the chain of events occurred. Johnson was operating “within this irrational, delusional framework,” when she killed her son, according to Robertson.

In cross-examination the crown questioned if Johnson was in fact making rational decisions before and after the killing. An agreed upon statement of facts details how she bought the murder weapon weeks before the incident, said sorry after she killed her son and later changed out of her bloody clothes.

Robertson said those decisions on their own may seem rational, but are not, given her state of mind.

“She lacked the capacity for rational decision-making,” said Robertson during her cross-examination.

The Crown is slated to call their own expert on Thursday morning, who is expected to offer an opinion in contrast with the two defence witnesses.