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‘HACKER PLANNED MURDER’

Prosecutors are looking to hit the accused cleaver killer with a charge of premeditated murder – despite his long history of mental illness – because of his actions in the days leading up to the grisly murder of an Upper East Side therapist, authorities said yesterday.

The Manhattan DA is hoping that damning evidence – such as surveillance video showing David Tarloff scoping out an escape route and a shopping trip he made before the murder – can halt the accused killer’s anticipated insanity defense.

Tarloff was arrested Saturday after police said they matched his palm prints with those at the bloody East 79th Street office where therapist Kathryn Faughey was killed last Tuesday.

Police said he told investigators he had set out to rob a psychiatrist, Dr. Kent Shinbach, because he institutionalized him 17 years ago, but ended up in Faughey’s office.

“There are elements of premeditation,” said a law-enforcement source.

Tarloff has been charged with second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault.

Investigators said Tarloff purchased clothing for his mother prior to the attack and brought them with him to the crime as part of a bizarre plot to spring her from a Queens nursing home.

A few weeks ago, Tarloff also dropped by the Via Design Furniture store in Corona, Queens, to buy furniture for his mother’s expected arrival.

“He wanted me to give him a love seat on credit,” said manager Khalid Messa, 38. “He said he was getting his mother out of the nursing home. I told him when his mom got out, then talk to me.”

Tarloff had an ax to grind with Shinbach dating to 1991, when the psychiatrist ordered him institutionalization at Gracie Square Hospital on the Upper East Side.

It’s unclear when he was released – which would likely have been the result of his being deemed no longer a danger, experts said.

Tarloff has been mentally evaluated at least three times over the past eight months and could have easily fallen through the cracks, sources said.

A hospital can’t commit a person against his or her will unless he or she appears to be dangerous. And there is no centralized system to record a patient’s stays at different hospitals, sources said.

Kendra’s Law – established in 1999 after a schizophrenic went off his medication and hurled a young woman in front of a subway train – would allow family members to ask a judge for outpatient treatment, but it’s unclear whether that step was taken in Tarloff’s case.

“These cases slip through the cracks all the time,” said Paul Callan, a former prosecutor who represents the American Psychiatric Association. “It’s clear that this guy was a threat to himself and others.”

Cops picked up Tarloff and took him in for psychiatric evaluation in June 2007 after he allegedly threatened to kill everyone at Midway Nursing Home in Queens, where his mother had been admitted. On Aug. 3, Tarloff’s father called cops to his Staten Island home, claiming his son had gone off his medication.

Tarloff flipped out again during a Feb. 1 visit with his mother at a Far Rockaway nursing home and was arrested for allegedly punching a security guard.

murray.weiss@nypost.com