The cleaver-wielding schizophrenic who butchered an Upper East Side psychologist apologized to the doctor’s family before being sentenced Friday to life behind bars without parole and ranted that voices in his head convinced him to carry out the murder.
“I am deeply sorry to you and everybody else for what happened,” said David Tarloff, 46, convicted in March of murdering Dr. Kathryn Faughey inside her office 6 years ago and then turning the knife on his intended target, Dr. Kent Shinbach.
“I don’t believe in crime, but that night I had a thought came into my head that I interpreted coming from god … ‘You’re mother is going to die unless you kill Dr. Shinback,'” said Tarloff. “I felt that I was getting a command to do what I did. I didn’t want to do this, I swear to god … but I thought all these bad things were going to happen.”
The disturbed man hatched the plan to rob Shinbach, who worked in the same office as Faughey, so he could use the money to rescue his mother from a nursing home and take her to Hawaii. But instead, Tarloff encountered Faughey and slashed her to death.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin said Tarloff will receive treatment for schizophrenia while behind bars.
“He’s never getting out. But he almost certainly is going to one of the prisons with a satellite mental health (program),” the judge said.
Faughey’s brother, Owen, called Tarloff’s apology a last-ditch effort for a lighter sentence.
“I felt he would do that, but it’s his last chance to try to change the judge’s mind. Why wouldn’t he take the opportunity?” Owen said.
He and brothers Michael and Kevin all read statements in court Friday, recalling their slain sister as a hardworking, compassionate woman who lit up the room.
“It saddens me that David Tarloff was the last person my sister saw when she was still alive. No one should have to die looking at the face of the person who was murdering them,” said Kevin Faughey.
The trio begged the judge to impose the strictest sentence.
“I will be comforted in knowing that he will never walk the streets again and that we will all be a little safer because of that,” Kevin Faughey told the judge.
It took three trials to convict Tarloff — last year, a jury deadlocked and in 2012, he was deemed mentally unfit during jury selection. In the most recent trial, the jury reached a verdict in about five hours.