Warrant: Teenage beheading suspect said he killed mom ‘because I felt like it’
ZEBULON, N.C. (WNCN) – A North Carolina 18-year-old who is accused of beheading his mother told dispatchers he killed her “because I felt like it,” according to an investigator’s sworn statement.
The investigator made the statement as he sought a search warrant to go through the Morgan Drive home where the 35-year-old woman was killed on Monday.
Oliver Mauricio Funes-Machado also told a dispatcher that “he stabbed her ‘like 8 times’ and left the knife in her mouth,” according to the sworn statement by Det. A.R. Roberts of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.
Funes-Machado’s 4-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother were in the house, the statement says Machado told dispatchers.
The first deputy on scene “observed a male exit the house carrying a knife in one hand and a severed human head in the other,” the affidavit states.
During a protective sweep, deputies found “a decapitated body on the floor between the kitchen and the living room and two small children inside,” according to the affidavit.
Deputies waited for the warrant to be issued before further searching the home. When they did, they found bloody shoe prints, a “large kitchen knife with apparent blood,” and bloody clothing in a laundry hamper, including sweatpants, a t-shirt and a onesie, according to a search warrant return filed at the county courthouse.
They also seized medication labeled as being for Funes-Machado. In court, officials said that medication was used to treat psychosis and schizophrenia.
In a statement released Wednesday, the district attorney’s office said the following:
The circumstances of this crime are very unusual and horrific. While it is too early to know for sure what the Defendant’s mental state was at the time of the murder, it will be reviewed at the appropriate time and place.
In the meantime, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office will continue to prepare the case for trial.”