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The deranged Brooklyn man busted for a blood-soaked terror spree that left four dead and five wounded declared in his first interview yesterday that he has mental issues — and then proved it by blaming the rampage on a government conspiracy.
“Sometimes, my mind isn’t right,” psycho slasher Maksim Gelman told reporters from the visiting room at the Bellevue psych ward, where he was transferred after failing the intake physical and mental exam at Rikers Island.
Asked specifically about the 28-hour rampage that ended with a subway slashing below Times Square Saturday, he replied: “The proof is in the pudding. I’m trying to make my peace with God!”
The handcuffed Gelman, 23, would not make eye contact with reporters, and furiously rubbed his face with his hands as he spoke in fragmented, disjointed sentences about how he is being framed.
“The DEA set me up. They were there the whole time. They let this happen, they’re going to kill me,” he said, growing more agitated. “It’s a conspiracy.”
Gelman’s paranoia grew as more questions followed.
“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” he barked. “If you are who you say you are, you have to look into this.”
Gelman — who is being held without bail — had cut and bruised hands and claimed he was the victim of a police assault.
“I’m in a lot of pain. I’ve been hurting. I’ve been beaten,” he said. “They choked me. They tied me at the precinct. I was in the dark. They didn’t let me see a lawyer.”
After one outburst, the wild-eyed, drug-addled psycho demanded that guards take him away, prompting a female guard to warn: “You got to be careful, you don’t want to get him agitated, he might hit you.”
Gelman first whined of being the victim of a “set-up” in the lockup at Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Victim Yelena Bulchenko’s boyfriend, Gerard Honig, and her brother, Andre Bulchenko, blasted the psycho for whining about made-up conspiracy theories.
“Neighbors were trying to save my sister. There were many other eyewitnesses who saw what he did. What kind of a ‘set-up’ is that?” spat Andre Bulchenko.
“It’s obviously not a set-up. He did this of his own free will,” Honig told The Post.
Gelman’s spree began at about 5 a.m. Friday when he argued with his mother, Svetlana, about using her car and fatally stabbed her boyfriend, Alexsandr Kuznetsov, police said.
He then fled in his mother’s Lexus to the Bulchenkos’ nearby home, where he allegedly stabbed Anna Bulchenko at about 10:20 a.m., and then lay in wait for Yelena, whom he attacked at about 4:20 p.m.
After a fatal hit-and-run and a pair of knifepoint carjackings, Gelman hid out in Queens overnight before making his way by train into Manhattan. He was finally captured after his final attack on passenger Joseph Lozito on an uptown No. 3 train at about 9:15 a.m. Saturday.
A source said Gelman told fellow prisoners in the lockup at the Brooklyn courthouse that he had to kill the Bulchenkos.
“They would have done it to me,” he claimed, the source said. “I’m the sacrificial lamb.”
“He can say whatever he wants, but that is outrageous,” Andre Bulchenko said. “My mother and sister would never hurt anyone.”