Disturbing new details continue to emerge about the man arrested last week and accused of raping a 73-year-old woman while she was birdwatching in Central Park.
David Mitchell, 42, allegedly preys on elderly women. He is also possessed by a demonic alter ego that instructs him to kill, his brother claims.
Mitchell has been arrested twice before on charges that he raped and killed other elderly women in his native West Virginia town, according to the AP.
He was also suspected, but never charged, of murdering yet a third woman, this one in her 50s.
Mitchell was only 18 when, in 1990, he was charged with the rape and murder of an 83-year-old woman who lived next door to him in his poverty-stricken hometown of Jenkinjones, W.V. Mitchell allegedly beat her to death after the sex assault.
He reportedly confessed to the horrific crime, according to the AP, but after a psychiatrist testified at trial that his IQ was so low he couldn’t have understood the confession, he was acquitted.
Mitchell was later arrested again and charged with raping and robbing another woman, this time in her 70s. Prosecutors dropped that rape case under a plea deal, according to the New York Daily News, and Mitchell did time in prison for the robbery conviction.
About a year after he was let out of jail, in 2002, a 54-year-old woman went missing from Jenkinjones. Mitchell allegedly bragged to an ex-girlfriend that he killed her, saying he hit her in the head. There was reportedly never enough evidence to charge Mitchell.
One resident of Jenkinjones said that locals in the town were terrified of Mitchell.
David Mitchell’s half-brother, Joe Mitchell, told the Daily News that his sibling suffers from split personality disorder, and that he has a sadistic alter-ego, “Johnny,” who is responsible for the murders.
“Johnny” is “like Satan himself,” Mitchell told the Daily News. His wife added that Mitchell would go into violent rages in West Virginia, and would only stop when she yelled the name “Johnny.”
