An accused cop killer currently on trial in St. Louis endured years of childhood abuse at the hands of both parents, an upbringing that a forensic psychologist says ultimately led to the August 2020 psychotic episode in which Thomas Kinworthy killed St. Louis police officer Tamarris Bohannon.
The prosecution and defense agree on the basic facts of the case. On August 29, 2020, Kinworthy was armed when he ran into a house on Hartford Street in Tower Grove South. The home’s two residents fled out the back door and called the police. Bohannon, a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officer, responded to the scene, where Kinworthy opened fire on him and killed him as he approached the front door. After a 12-hour standoff, Kinworthy was taken into custody and charged with murder.
Kinworthy’s attorneys are pursuing a not guilty by reason of insanity defense, arguing that Kinworthy couldn’t understand what he was doing was wrong when he killed the 29-year-old father of three.
That strategy depends in large part on the testimony of forensic psychologist Patricia Zapf, who first took the stand yesterday and said that Kinworthy meets the standard for being not guilty by reason of insanity.
She testified today that she’d reached this conclusion because Kinworthy was in an “acute psychotic episode” and “disconnected from reality” on August 29, 2020.
Zapf testified she has extensively interviewed Kinworthy, his father, ex-wife and others. The picture those interviews painted of Kinworthy’s life leading up to the killing of Bohannon is grim, including a history of extensive mental, physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by both parents.
Kinworthy was directly molested by his mother, Zapf said, and as a child was made by both parents to perform sexual acts on other adults at various times in his adolescence. She added that Kinworthy’s parents were both very involved in drug culture, with both mom and dad using crack cocaine.
At one point, his parents split, with his mother moving to Florida and Kinworthy staying in St. Louis with his father.
His father beat him and “verbally degraded him,” Zapf said, saying that even when she interviewed Kinworthy’s dad, he told Zapf his son never did anything right.
POOL PHOTO / ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Forensic psychologist Patricia Zapf testified in court today that Thomas Kinworthy suffered years of sexual abuse from both parents and has heard voices since he was a pre-teen.
Zapf also said that at one point, as the pre-teen Kinworthy was living with his father here, his mother kidnapped him and took him to Florida.
In Florida, Kinworthy’s life was even worse than in St. Louis. Life with his mother was “unstable and impoverished,” and she trained him to steal things from stores. There was significant sexual abuse in Florida, Zapf said, with his mother forcing him to have sex with various adults.
It was around this time, in Kinworthy’s pre-teen years, that he began hearing voices and lighting fires, said Zapf.
Around the age of 14, Kinworthy came back to live with his father in St. Louis, where he stayed in a flop house, smoked crack with his dad and was again subject sexual abuse by people passing through to buy and sell drugs.
Zapf testified that there was a history of mental ailments on both sides of Kinworthy’s family and that the severe stressors added throughout years of abuse would have exacerbated his underlying disposition to mental illness. In her opening statement on Monday, Kinworthy’s attorney said that he has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and has heard voices much of his adult life.
As an adult, Zapf said, Kinworthy would slip into manic states, not sleeping for days and having indiscriminate sexual encounters with numerous partners.
In 2006, Kinworthy’s dad was charged federally as part of a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. He was initially sentenced to almost 20 years, but was released early, according to court records.
Five days before he would kill Officer Bohannon, in August 2020, Kinworthy, then 43, came to St. Louis to reconnect with his father. Over the next several days, Kinworthy met with dad for about an hour a day. His dad later told Zapf he “recognized something was off” about his son but didn’t confront his son about his unusual behavior.
On the day of the shooting, Zapf said Kinworthy was in a “sexual frenzy state,” had a sexual encounter with a man near Tower Grove Park, and then Facetimed his ex-wife from the park. During that call, he was hiding behind a tree, “white as a ghost” and professing that he believed people were out to get him.
Kinworthy would soon call his ex-wife back after he was barricaded in the Hartford house after killing Bohannon. Zapf testified that the ex-wife found the conversation largely incoherent, but understood Kinworthy to be saying goodbye.
Prosecutor Mary Pat Carl only had about half an hour to question Zapf today before proceedings were called to a halt for the weekend break. However, even in that relatively brief period, the jury got a sense of what the prosecution’s strategy is likely to be regarding Zapf’s expertise.
Carl called to the jury’s attention that Zapf had billed $27,000 to Kinworthy’s defense for her time working for them.
Carl also argued that the process by which Zapf wrote her report about Kinworthy was in contradiction to the process Zapf laid out as a best practice in her own book, specifically that an expert compiling a report on a defendant’s state of mind should have “all the information” before telling the defense what conclusions that report will contain. Carl implied that Zapf had already decided on the basic conclusions of the report before she conducted several “collateral” interviews of Kinworthy’s family members.
Right before the end of today’s proceedings, Carl alluded to jailhouse phone calls during which Kinworthy’s ex-wife and Kinworthy encouraged their child to Facetime Kinworthy’s father.
“Wouldn’t it be good to know whether or not the man they are claiming did horrible abuse and traumatized the defendant is someone they’re also encouraging their daughter to have a relationship with?” Carl asked Zapf. “That wouldn’t weigh in on their credibility at all?”
Zapf said she wasn’t aware of the jailhouse calls.
Kinworthy’s trial is set to resume Monday morning with Carl’s continued questioning of Zapf.
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