Multiple personalities drove teen to kill mom, brother in New Stanton, expert says

A New Stanton teenager was under the influence of a split personality he called “Wrath” when he shot and killed his mother and brother in November 2016, a psychologist testified Thursday.

Jacob Remaley was 14 when police said he killed his mother, Dana, 46, and his brother, Caleb, 8. Police charged him as an adult .

On Thursday, attorneys presented arguments before Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge Christopher Feliciani over whether the case should be moved to juvenile court , where punishment could focus more on psychological treatment but jurisdiction would end when Jacob turns 21.

Feliciani gave both sides 20 days to submit additional materials and arguments before he rules.

For the defense, forensic psychologist Alice Applegate described a home that looked normal from the outside but was rife with arguments and abuse toward Jacob, who was depressed and antisocial as a result.

“By the time he was about 12 years old, his personality began to split apart,” Applegate said. “Jacob, as the host, psychologically was not there.”

Jacob, now 16, appeared to have suffered from a disassociative disorder — what used to be called “multiple personality disorder,” Applegate said — and that manifested in blackouts, memory loss and the appearance of different “alters” Applegate characterized as a witch, an old man, a little girl and the “dominant alter,” Wrath.

Separate personalities

Jacob was the “host,” or under the influence of, Wrath when, after his father, David Remaley Jr., had left for work the morning of Nov. 30, 2016, he retrieved his father's unloaded Ruger pistol from atop the fridge, loaded it and shot his mother and brother while they slept, Applegate said.

When state police questioned Jacob about the killing, he hit his head off the wall “so Wrath would come out” before he started talking in a deeper voice about what happened, she said.

The splits in Jacob's personality appeared to be the result of his home life, Applegate said, describing parents who were demanding of him in his schoolwork and chores. He was responsible for much of the housework, she said, to the point that they gave him a vacuum for Christmas the year before the murders and would make him do all the laundry, cooking and cleaning while the rest of them vacationed at Disney World, Applegate said.

He suffered multiple falls and two concussions as a child, and he'd nicknamed his mother “Mrs. Meanie Bad Witch” and “Hitler” because of her criticism and high expectations of him, Applegate said.

She described his father, David Remaley Jr., as a heavy drinker who became physically abusive toward Jacob — something he admitted when he took the stand Thursday. Police said Jacob told them he also might have killed his father had he not left for work.

Diagnosis questioned

District Attorney John Peck questioned Applegate's assessment, wondering why Jacob hadn't disclosed anything about the multiple personalities to the psychiatrist he saw for about a year after a 2015 suicide attempt.

“There are many times when individuals may be hearing voices, seeing visions and experiencing disassociations,” Applegate said. “These are confusing, frightening experiences, and people don't talk about them.”

Jacob appeared to have been acting carefully and logically when he loaded the weapon and killed his mother first so she wouldn't stop him from killing his brother, Peck said.

“Someone was thinking through this,” he said.

Ron Barron, a supervisor at the Westmoreland County Juvenile Detention Center, said Jacob had been re-admitted to hospitals for treatment several times since the shooting after he reported again having suicidal thoughts or hearing voices, though after more than a year of treatment he said he no longer heard Wrath. He reported those suicidal thoughts — and once, homicidal thoughts toward another resident whose outbursts at the center angered Jacob — on his own, Barron said.

“He had no intention of hurting that individual, he wanted us to take precautions so it wouldn't happen,” he said.

The defense tried to make the case that even though Jacob had suffered from mental health issues, he would be receptive to treatment and eventual release through the juvenile system.

“Despite what happened, he is a very moral person,” Applegate said. “This is not a defiant, rebellious, incorrigible teenager.”

Dr. Bruce Wright, a prosecution witness, said he couldn't reach the same diagnosis as Applegate. He said there were too many inconsistencies in various interviews and hospital reports about when Wrath first manifested, how often he took control, how many other voices Remaley had heard and whether he'd known anything about disassociative identity disorder before the shooting.

Though Wright said there had been reports from classmates and a teacher of Remaley appearing to change personality at school before the shooting, he also pointed to the teen's “very dark” writing found at the house where he mused on how pleased he was into fooling his peers that he could be “a school shooter.”

“It suggests a degree of illusion or deception,” said Wright, who concluded it was unlikely Remaley could be fully rehabilitated by the time he was 21. “Until Jacob is honest and forthright, effective treatment can't begin.”

The shooting itself was an unsophisticated crime, but if Remaley's mental health issues and Wrath were all a ruse to avoid culpability, then it was highly sophisticated, Wright said.

Father weighs in

David Remaley Jr. testified that he now understood that he'd been hard on his son and didn't comprehend the full effect he had on Jacob's mental health. He said he was willing to help Jacob through treatment even after he'd turn 21 and would be outside the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts, though he had some trepidation about missing any more problems.

“I'm scared, but I'm going to provide all the support that I can, sir,” he told Feliciani. “I missed that something was wrong; I'd be terribly frightened I'd miss something again.”

Matthew Santoni is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724 836 6660, msantoni@tribweb.com or on Twitter @msantoni.