Bug-eyed and rambling, the alleged “butcher” charged with brutally slashing two Upper East Side shrinks, killing one of them, today was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after he accused his court-appointed lawyer of being a phony.
In a bizarre performance in Manhattan Criminal Court, suspect David Tarloff, accused his Legal Aid lawyer, Reginald Sharp, of claiming to be the Rev. Al Sharpton. Tarloff also said he had proof that Sharp wasn’t a lawyer.
“He isn’t an attorney. I saw his license. Look at him! He’s white! He is not Rev. Sharpton! I don’t know who he is. I’m sorry, this man is lying. There is no proof that he is an attorney,” Tarloff blurted out to Judge Ruth Pickholz, who promptly ordered a psychiatric evaluation.
After the hearing, Sharp said it was clear Tarloff was mentally unstable.
“He is having trouble understanding where he is,” Sharp said. “In my opinion, he needs to be examined.”
Appearing extremely disheveled and still sporting the dirty, white sweatshirt he wore when he was arrested, Tarloff spent most of the five-minute hearing staring wildly around the room and pursing his lips.
As he was brought into the courtroom, Tarloff kept muttering to the court officers, “I want to eat. I want to eat.”
“The last meal I had was six o’clock last night, and it was Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” he said.
When Pickholz ordered him held without bail, and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, Tarloff’s eyes darted to the “In God We Trust” sign above the judge’s head, which he then read aloud to the courtroom.
Tarloff is charged with the savage meat-cleaver slaying of psychologist Kathryn Faughey in her Upper East Side office last week.
Authorities say Tarloff had intended to rob Faughey’s office-mate, Kent Shinebock – who had had him committed 17 years ago – and use the money to flee to Hawaii with his elderly mother, who lives in a Queens nursing home.