Woman Who Cut Mother's Head Off and Carried It Around in a Bag Not Found Guilty of Murder

A woman who cut off her mother's head and carried it around in a bag has not been found guilty of murder.

Odessa Carey, 36, bludgeoned her 73-year-old mother - also Odessa Carey - to death with a mallet, before decapitating her with knives and scissors and removing her brain.

On Thursday she was sentenced to a hospital order, after the judge at her trial directed the jury not to return a verdict of guilty or not guilty, but whether or not they found her responsible for her mother's death -- which they did.

Odessa, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, was deemed too unwell to enter a plea to the original charge of murder, so a trial of facts was held instead.

The trial heard gruesome details of the killing in Northumberland in the UK; in April, police found the headless body of Odessa Sr at her home, while her head was found inside a pillowcase inside a reusable shopping bag under the kitchen sink of a friend's house.

They found Odessa Jr in the loft of that house.

Police only became aware of what happened when Odessa visited an allotment belonging to a friend of her late father, with her hands and arms covered in blood, carrying a shopping bag.

In front of the allotment owner, she removed a human head from the bag and kissed it on the forehead.

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The trial heard that because he didn't have a phone, the allotment owner didn't call police. Instead he went to the pub and told someone about it, who in turn informed the authorities.

Addressing Odessa, Judge Paul Sloan described what happened when she killed her mother on April 6.

"While on her bed in her bedroom, at a time when you were probably in a delusional state, you attacked her with a mallet. She tried to protect herself against the blows by holding her hands up to shield her face," he said, per ChronicleLive.

"You continued striking her with the mallet, at least eight blows were struck to her head and face, causing catastrophic injuries - multiple facial and skull fractures, bleeding around the brain and damage to the brain itself. The severe blunt force head injuries resulted, after a short survival period, in Odessa Carey's death."

He said the daughter then went about her business, with drawing money from a bank and buying pear cider twice, before returning to the home to cut off her mother's head with a knife and scissors, and then taking the head to the bathroom to remove the brain.

Addressing the jurors, the judge said the defendant didn't even believe the victim was her mother.

"The evidence which I heard before you were empanelled confirms that the defendant is acutely psychotic," he told them, per Metro.

"It is likely that a diagnosis is one of schizophrenia. She suffers from paranoid delusional beliefs. She doesn't believe the body to be that of her mother. She is acutely unwell, so far all attempts to treat her have not been successful."

He said that when the murder charge was put to her, she replied "Not my mam, someone else."

After her hearing, she also asked: "Could it be investigated that my mam disappeared four years ago?"

During the trial it emerged Odessa had been suffering from mental health problems since the age of six, and that she had stopped taking her medication in the weeks before the killing.

After the jury found her responsible for the killing, Jude Sloan told them: "The finding that you have returned does not lead to punishment, that would not be appropriate. What is appropriate is measures are put in place to continue efforts to treat her and also have measures in place to ensure public protection."

He sentenced Carey to a hospital order, with restrictions, stressing that she had not been convicted of a criminal offense and had not been found guilty.

"You pose a very considerable risk if set at large," he told her. "It's necessary for the protection of the public from serious harm that you be subject to a restriction order, ie subject to special restrictions before you could ever be discharged from hospital."

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