Clinical Lycanthropy
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The crime at the center of today's story is considered to be one of the most disturbing and heinous of all time.

But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please ask the follow button to come to the zoo with you and then when you're there, accidentally spill honey all over them and then push them into the bear enclosure. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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Austin Harroff was born on December 21st, 1996 to a dentist and a pharmacist. They lived in a beautiful home in Palm Beach County, Florida, which is not only one of the nicest and wealthiest places to live in Florida, but it is one of the nicest and wealthiest places to live in all of America. And that's why as of 2021, there are 44 billionaires that call this paradise their home.

In 2010, when Austin was 13 years old, his parents suddenly got divorced, and within the same calendar year, both of his parents had new girlfriends and boyfriends. Now, of course, this was a shock to Austin and to his one-year younger sister, Haley, but they both relatively quickly adjusted to their new normal. And that was in large part because the kids didn't move out. They stayed in the family home with their mom, and their father, he did move out, but he moved into a home that was very close by.

About a year after the divorce, Austin began high school and immediately he excelled. He was placed into all advanced classes and within these advanced classes, Austin was consistently at the top of his class. Austin was also a big athletic guy. He was about six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds. And so naturally, he played football for all four years he was in high school. And for one year, his sophomore year, he also wrestled.

But despite his size and willingness to play these very rough physical sports, Austin was not an aggressive guy. In fact, his football coaches actually used to criticize him for not being aggressive enough. And on game days, they would try to make him mad in hopes that would inspire him to go out there and smash some people. But it really didn't work because Austin was Austin. He was just kind of a laid-back guy who was actually much more interested in helping people than smashing them.

In fact, towards the end of high school, Austin became obsessed with trying to identify a career that would allow him to help the most people. And he was so passionate about this that when he spoke about it, a huge smile would kind of involuntarily appear on his face. And so because of this, and because of Austin's generally happy disposition, his father very lovingly began referring to him as "The Happy Boy."

Shortly before Austin's graduation in 2015, he received a letter in the mail from Florida State University, and it was informing him he had been accepted into their four-year pre-med program. Austin had settled on medicine as being his intended career path to help the most people, and so being accepted into this very prestigious program was like a best-case scenario. And so Austin and his family were elated, and that summer that followed his high school graduation was totally charmed.

Austin was on cloud nine, he spent a lot of time with his family and his friends, and then finally at the end of the summer, his family packed all of his stuff into the car and they drove six hours north to Tallahassee where the Florida State campus was. They helped move him into his dorm and then afterwards they gave him a big hug, said good luck, and they left. And I'm sure on their ride back, the family members thought to themselves, "Austin is doing so great. He is not only ready for college, he is ready to be an adult. He's ready to live on his own and be responsible."

And at the end of Austin's first year in college, that supposition about him ready to be an adult seemed to be accurate. Austin got excellent grades, he met a nice girlfriend, and even though he wasn't playing organized sports like football, he had found another athletic outlet in bodybuilding. And he'd actually built a decent-sized social media presence around bodybuilding and fitness.

But underneath all of this public success Austin was having that year, he was actually struggling a lot of the time. He just wasn't telling anyone. In a journal he kept, he documented a deep sense of inadequacy caused primarily from his sense that his peers didn't accept him. And so he would write endlessly about how if he could just stop being so shy and be more assertive and outgoing, that more people would embrace him and would like him and would accept him.

Over the course of that year, Austin also started abusing different substances. Those included things like alcohol, marijuana, and Vyvanse. Vyvanse is a drug that is a stimulant and it's used to treat people with attention deficit disorder. He also experimented with hallucinogenic drugs like acid and mushrooms. And he also tried MDMA, which is kind of like a cross between a stimulant and a hallucinogenic. And those are just the drugs that we are aware he was taking. It's entirely possible he was taking other drugs too.

Regardless, Austin began oscillating between the high of whatever drug or combination of drugs he was on to the low of his sober mind, which was totally saturated with anxious and depressive thoughts. Before the end of the school year, Austin was secretly poised for a full-blown mental breakdown, and it seemed like he knew it was coming too.

In the last month before the end of school, his internet search history is filled with questions like "I think I'm crazy, what do I do?" and "How do you know if you're crazy?" and "How to deal with obsessive thoughts?" and "Do I need to sleep?" and "What happens if you don't sleep?" It was clear he was starting to question his own sanity. When Austin finally returned back home from Florida State that summer, his family immediately noticed there was something wrong with Austin.

Within a few days of being home, Austin had moved his bed from his bedroom down into the garage, claiming that the reason he did this was because the house was full of demons.

At night, instead of sleeping, Austin would patrol the house. He would literally just walk all around the house all night, never stopping, and every two hours he would knock on the bedroom doors of his family members and loudly announce that he was guarding them from the demons in the house. Now you can imagine how his family felt at the time. This was so unbelievably weird and totally out of character that they just didn't really know what to do. Even though it was obvious there was something wrong, they

they didn't jump into action. Instead, the only thing they did at first was to just start locking their bedroom doors at night to prevent Austin from coming inside during his nighttime patrols. But as the summer progressed and Austin continued to act totally weird with no explanation, his family began to become convinced that he must be on drugs, that that is what would explain all of this totally strange behavior.

And so when they confronted him about his drug use, he would admit that he was taking drugs, lots of different drugs, psychedelics, stimulants, you name it. He's taking all these drugs. And so naturally, his family latched on to his drug use as being the root cause of his very strange behavior. And so they focused their efforts almost exclusively on getting Austin clean again.

But towards the end of the summer, Austin said he wasn't taking any drugs, but Austin was still acting totally crazy and unhinged. And so around mid-August, the family decided they had to utilize something called the Baker Act.

Under the Baker Act, individuals in Florida who are suspected of severe mental illness can be detained for up to 72 hours at the behest of their loved ones. And during these 72 hours, this individual is thoroughly assessed to see what's going on with them. And then at the end of those 72 hours, they are given a treatment plan that their family is supposed to help them enact. But before the family could utilize the Baker Act, something horrific happened.

On the morning of August 15th, one of Austin's very close friends, who he had known since second grade, said Austin just showed up at his house without calling ahead of time or letting him know, which was very uncharacteristic. And when this friend opened the door to see what Austin wanted, Austin just asked him, "What year was I born?" And so the friend says, "Uh, 1996?" And as soon as Austin heard this, he didn't give a reaction to it, he just turned around and he left.

And so this longtime friend is looking at Austin walking away, wondering, you know, like, what's going on with this guy? Is he high on drugs? Is he drunk? Like, what was that? So the friend goes back inside his house and he's thinking to himself, you know, like, what should I do? And so after a couple of minutes, he decides, you know what, I got to call Austin and make sure he's OK.

So he calls Austin, Austin picks up, and it's unclear what they talked about on the phone, but the friend convinced Austin to come back to his house and to just spend the day with him. But really the friend just wanted to make sure Austin was okay.

And so Austin comes back to the friend's house and then the two of them actually would leave the house and meet up with some of their other friends that were in town that summer as well as meet up with Austin's sister. And so the group, they decide they're going to go to the beach for the day. And on their walk to the beach, Austin tells the group that he just needs to get something at his house and that he will meet them down at the water. And so at this point, the group believes Austin is just fine. So they say, "Okay, yep, we'll meet you down there."

So Austin breaks off, he goes to his house, and when he goes back to the beach and meets up with his group of friends again, he's changed his outfit. He was now wearing this very thick, large football jersey. He was wearing long sweatpants that were also very thick. He had on two wristwatches and he had on sunglasses.

And so as he walks down onto the beach, his friends look up at him and it's super hot out and they're at the beach. So this is a totally weird outfit to have on. And immediately they start kind of giving him crap about his strange outfit choice. But Austin did not think it was funny at all. And at first he was quiet, but then he kind of lashed out and said, if you tell me I'm crazy, I will kill you. And at this, his friends did not give him any more crap. Everyone just said, okay, man, hey.

Didn't mean anything by it. Just giving you a hard time. No big deal. But Austin's like clearly worked up. And so his sister comes over to him and she's like, hey, you know, calm down. It's okay. It's not a big deal. And during this conversation, Austin suddenly goes back to being normal again. And he turns to his sister and he says, I'm actually half horse and I'm immortal. And his sister's like, what?

You really need to get professional help. You need to see a therapist or a psychologist or something. Something is wrong with you and it's been wrong all summer. You need to get help.

Now, apparently, Austin actually responded to this very positively. And he said, you know, I agree. There is something going on and I do need to get help. You're right. And so after that, Austin and the rest of the group, they stayed at the beach for several hours. And then in the evening time, Austin, his sister, and Austin's very close friend, who was the guy that saw Austin in the morning when he asked, you know, what year was I born? They all said they had to leave. And so the trio, they leave the beach and they head to Duffy's, which was a restaurant in town. And they

And they were going there to meet up with Austin's father and his father's girlfriend. And so as they're getting to this restaurant, they're walking along the sidewalk, they're nearing this restaurant, when suddenly Austin turns to his sister and says, "Hey, I need to test out my immortality." And he just turns away from her, away from the sidewalk, towards traffic, and just starts walking into traffic, like he's gonna let a car hit him to test his immortality. And so his sister immediately was able to grab him and pulled him back onto the sidewalk,

and then basically stood on the left side of him preventing him from running out into traffic and kind of pushed him along up the sidewalk right up to the front door of this restaurant. And when they got there, Austin had stopped trying to walk out into traffic. He was acting normal again. And it was there that the trio met up with Austin's father and his father's girlfriend and the five of them went into Duffy's restaurant.

It was about 7:45 p.m. when they got inside and they were very quickly sat in the very back of the restaurant in this booth. And so there was a CCTV camera that watched them while they were inside this building. And so they're sitting at this booth and about three minutes after having sat down, Austin gets up and walks away from the booth and walks as if he's going towards the bathroom, but then stops, doesn't go to the bathroom, turns around and walks back towards the front of the building and then walks out the front doors, just leaves the restaurant altogether.

Now, it's unclear if the rest of his family saw him do this, it doesn't seem like they did, but just a minute later, Austin comes back inside the restaurant and just walks right back to his table and sits down like nothing had ever happened. Less than 10 minutes later, Austin would get up again from his table, except this time, instead of feigning going to the bathroom, he just walks straight from his table, right out the front doors of the restaurant, and disappears.

A couple minutes later, Austin's mother, who was not at dinner with them, she was at her home, which happened to be nearby this restaurant. She was home when she heard the sound of someone coming into her house. And so she went around to see who it was, and she found her son, Austin, in her kitchen, drinking vegetable oil, and there was Parmesan cheese all over the counter that apparently he had been eating as well.

And so she runs up to him and she grabs the vegetable oil and she puts it down and she tells him to stop, at which point Austin does stop. And then I guess Austin just went up to his room and he changed out of his clothes because perhaps he got oil all over his shirt. And then his mom just drove him back to the restaurant. And so she watched him get out of the car and she watched him go through the front door and then she drove off.

And so about 30 minutes after he left that second time, Austin walks through the front doors of the restaurant. He's got a different shirt on, different hat on, and he just walks to the back of the restaurant where his sister, his friend, his father, and his father's girlfriend are. And he sits down like nothing had ever happened. At first, it looks like everyone at the table is just silent.

But then, Austin's father very clearly said something to Austin and it seems kind of hostile. And it would turn out Austin's father, who loved his son, was just totally at a loss for what to do with him. And he said to Austin when he sat back down, "What is wrong with you?" And at this, Austin just stands up and presses his father's face back up against his seat, kind of pinning him there. And then at some point, he just lets go, he leaves the booth, and he walks right out of the restaurant for a third time.

Austin's friend who was eating with them, he got up and kind of chased after Austin, but he was about 30 seconds behind him. And so by the time he got outside, he didn't know where Austin went. And so he quickly came back in the restaurant. He told the rest of the group he didn't know where Austin was. And so at this point, Austin's father's girlfriend would actually call the police and report Austin missing. They knew he was totally unhinged and they didn't know where he was going to go, if he was a threat to himself or someone else. And so they figured they should just tell the police and have the police go find him.

About four miles away from this restaurant, 53-year-old Michelle Mishkon was sitting in her garage watching TV. Normally, she would be joined by her husband, 59-year-old John Stevens, but he was out walking their dog. So for the time being, Michelle was alone.

The couple had been married for roughly 20 years, they had three kids together from previous marriages, and they were just totally in love with each other. That garage was like their happy place, that was basically like their living room. They loved having the door wide open so they could wave to neighbors and flag people down to have a drink with them or just chat with them. They were just known to be a very happy, loving couple that were fun to be around.

And according to their kids, they had both recently retired. John retired from his landscaping company that he owned, and Michelle retired from her financial advisory job. And the two of them were apparently both just really excited about retirement life. They were excited to spend more time together and go out with their friends and go out fishing on their boat with their dog, and then also spend as much time as they could just lounging back in their garage.

John and Michelle's neighbor across the street was a middle-aged man named Jeff Fisher. Jeff was fairly close with the couple. He would usually watch their dogs anytime they went away, and he would often go in their garage and have a drink and just kind of hang out with them. And so this particular night, he was over in his house, and he was going to bed early. So he laid down in his bed. He's getting ready to go to sleep.

when he hears some strange sounds coming from outside his window across the street over near John and Michelle's property. And so Jeff sits up in his bed and kind of strains his ears to see what it was that he heard. And as he's trying to listen for some faint sound, he suddenly hears a blood curdling scream, a woman's scream coming from across the street. And so Jeff instantly leapt into action. He jumped out of his bed. He ran downstairs and he ran out his front door and he looked across the street and he

And he saw this unknown man, some young man that was slamming the car door of Michelle's car that was parked in her driveway. And he begins walking up the driveway. And at the top of the driveway, Jeff sees Michelle is standing in the garage and she looks totally terrified. And she's facing this unknown young man. And of course, this unknown young man was Austin Harroff.

Now Jeff had no idea what was actually going on. All he knew was he heard this scream, which was probably Michelle, and he's looking out there and he's seeing a situation that just doesn't look good. And so instinctively, he decided he would just run across the street and make sure Michelle was okay. And if he had to, he would confront this unknown man, Austin.

So Jeff begins running across his property, trying to get across the street to Michelle. But before he could even get across the street, he's looking up and he can see this guy, Austin, has grabbed Michelle and thrown her on the ground. And now he's on top of her and he's beating her.

And so Jeff runs onto the driveway and as he's going right up the driveway between the two cars that were parked there, Austin leaps off of Michelle. He turns around and he looks at Jeff and he says, you don't want a part of this. And now Jeff, he's a pretty big guy. And so he's looking at Austin and he knows that if he doesn't do anything, this guy is just going to continue pummeling poor Michelle. And he had no idea where John was.

And so he ran up and kind of lunged at Austin. And as he did that, Austin swung and he hit Jeff right across the side of the head.

But Jeff took the hit, he didn't fall down, he grabbed Austin by the collar and threw him as hard as he could to the ground. And Austin, he hit the pavement hard, face first. And so Jeff is looking at this guy, kind of thinking he's not going to get up. But as he's assessing the situation, watching Austin stand back up again, Jeff suddenly feels a blinding pain in his face, in the side of his head, in his neck, on his back. And he looks down and he sees blood all over his arms. It's everywhere. He's covered in blood.

it would turn out Austin was carrying a knife. And so when he punched Jeff, that knife went into his face, it cut the side of his head, it cut his neck, and it cut his back. He had five different puncture points from that one swing. And so Jeff believed at the time this was a potentially fatal wound. He was worried perhaps his jugular had been struck and he was bleeding to death. And he's seeing Austin stand back up coming right after him with this knife. And so Jeff decides their only chance is for him to run and call the police.

And so he runs into Michelle's property. He's thinking that he's kind of drawing this guy towards him away from Michelle. He runs into their property, kind of slams into all their doors. He goes out a back door and then he loops around the property and then he makes a run for it straight across the street to his house. Never once did he turn around to see if this guy was after him. He figured he was right behind him. He gets to his house. He runs inside. He locks the door and then he calls 911.

After the call is placed and Jeff is certain that help is on the way, he's barely conscious, but all he can remember thinking was, "I hope this maniac, Austin, has abandoned his attack and just run off." Or, "I hope John has come outside and he's helping his wife."

But unfortunately, all Jeff could hear was the sound of Austin across the street making these loud, animalistic grunting sounds. And at the same time, he hears the sound of someone screaming at the top of their lungs. He doesn't even know if it's one person, if it's two people, if it's male, if it's female. All he hears is screams and grunting sounds. And then seconds later, the police show up.

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The following narrative is the account of the second responding officer, who we'll just call Dan, and the first responding officer we'll just call Kristen.

And so Dan, he comes flying down the street, he's got his sirens on, and he pulls in right behind Kristen's cop car, which is parked right out in front of John and Michelle's property. Kristen is already running up the driveway, her gun is out, she's getting ready to engage somebody at the top of the driveway. And so Dan, he hops out of his car, he's got his hand on his gun, and as he turns to run up the driveway, his view is obscured. There are two cars parked in the driveway.

And so he can't see what's at the top of the driveway that Kristen is apparently getting ready to draw her gun on. But as he begins running up the driveway, he sees there is this massive six foot wide stream of blood just coming down the driveway. And so he goes around the left side of the left car. He goes up and he sees Kristen right at the top of the driveway. She's got her gun aimed at the ground right in front of the car. So he can't see what's in front of the car yet. He

He comes bombing around the left side right behind Kristen and he looks down at what she's aiming her gun at and he sees there's this man lying on the ground. His eyes are open. He's just laying there kind of stiff and he's looking up at Kristen and he's looking up at Dan and he's just quietly saying, please help me.

The man on the ground was John Stevens, and on top of John Stevens was Austin. He was kind of laying sideways on John's chest. He had his left arm wrapped around John's neck to kind of hold him in place, and then he had his right arm and he was doing something to John's face. But Dan couldn't really tell what he was doing. All he could take in was there was clearly an aggressor, and they needed to get him off of the victim. But Kristen could not take the shot because

Because if she did, she ran the risk of firing the bullet through Austin into John, killing John. And so Dan tells Kristen, hold on, I'm going to tase him. And so he moves around Kristen to her left side. So he's positioned looking down at the back of Austin. He pulls out his taser and right before he shoots his taser into Austin's back, he sees what Austin is doing to John's face.

With his free right hand, he was reaching into John's mouth and pulling his cheek out, kind of like a fish hook. He was pulling it out as far as he could, and then he was biting into John's cheek, and he was ripping out pieces of flesh and chewing and swallowing them.

And from his position, Dan only saw this for a second, but he suddenly noticed and Kristen, the other officer, would later confirm there were all these chunks already missing from John's face. And so Dan kind of snapped out of what he was seeing and fired his taser into the back of Austin, but it did nothing. It had absolutely no effect.

Austin was entirely focused on biting John's face. That was all he was doing. He wasn't even registering that there were cops with their guns drawn on him. It was like they weren't even there.

And so Dan runs back around Kristen to the other side of her. He's now on her right side. So he's standing right next to the car, looking down at Austin's front. And he tells Kristen to kind of back up for a second. And then Dan winds up and kicks Austin square in the face, knocking his head off of John's face. But as soon as Austin comes off of John, he doesn't get up and try to fight with Dan. Instead, he just jumps back down, gets a deeper grip on John and plunges his mouth back onto John's face.

And so again, Dan winds up and boots Austin square in the face, knocking his head back. But again, he's totally unfazed. He doesn't want to attack the officers. He just wants to eat John's face. And so he goes right back down, gets a tighter grip. He goes back and he starts chewing on John's face again.

And so Dan was just repeatedly kicking him in the face over and over and over again, right as another set of officers showed up and they had a canine, they had a dog. And so they come flying up, they kind of see the situation and Dan tells them, release the dog. And so sure enough, they released the canine. The canine clamps down on Austin's right arm, the arm that was fish hooking and kind of pulling John's face out.

And the dog really got a good bite on his arm and yanked it away from John's face. But Austin just instantly ripped his arm back, doing severe damage to his arm from the dog's teeth, and just repositioned himself and went back to biting John's face.

And so the dog, just as it was trained, did another bite. It grabbed back onto Austin's arm and Austin again, unfazed, just yanked his arm out of the dog's teeth, again shredding the muscles of his arm and gets back in position and continues to eat John's face.

And then finally, the dog gets another bite into Austin's arm. And this time when the dog managed to yank Austin's arm away from John, Dan timed it so he booted Austin square in the face right as his arm was being pulled back. And he hit him hard enough that Austin actually flew off of John and landed on his back. And as soon as he was on the ground, Dan actually leapt over John and landed on Austin's face, smashing his head into the cement, which kind of stunned him for a second.

And as soon as he was stunned, Dan whipped out his handcuffs, threw it over one of Austin's wrists, and began pulling him by the handcuff up the driveway away from John.

But as soon as he had some separation and Dan went to put the other handcuff on Austin, Austin began fighting back and he looked up at Dan and he screamed, kill me! I'm eating humans! Kill me! Dan didn't even know what to do and so he's trying to put the other handcuff on him the whole time. Austin is screaming, kill me! Kill me! And so other officers had to run in and then finally after three other officers came over, they were able to hold Austin down long enough to get both handcuffs on him.

After Austin was finally restrained, the officers checked on the victims. They checked on Michelle, who was in the garage, and unfortunately, she was deceased. She had died from blunt force trauma. And John, even though he had been alive when the police first showed up, he had succumbed to the multitude of injuries he had sustained, from stabbings to beatings to having a portion of his face ripped off.

It's believed after John came back from his walk, which would have been right after Jeff had been attacked and ran back to his house, John saw Austin in his garage attacking his wife and John ran in to try to save her. So ultimately John would die trying to save the woman that he loved. Their dog would survive the attack. It was unharmed and it was given to one of their children to take care of. And Jeff Fisher, the neighbor who tried to save John and Michelle, he would survive the attack and make a full recovery.

After Austin was finally handcuffed and was laying restrained on the driveway, he suddenly became unresponsive. He was rushed to the hospital where it was determined he had drank some poisonous chemicals, most likely from inside of John and Michelle's garage, and that was what was causing his organs to fail. Ultimately, Austin would go into a coma for 11 days from whatever he ingested, but the doctors were able to save his life and so he would come out of that coma and he would make a full physical recovery.

It was initially assumed that because of Austin's drug abuse history, that he must have been on some drug when he perpetrated this heinous crime. It was speculated that he could have been on bath salts or flaca, which are these synthetic hallucinogenic drugs which are very powerful, and at the time they were quite popular in Florida, and they'd caused some other users to go on these kind of wild violent rampages. And so it seemed to make a lot of sense that he must have been on one of those.

But when Austin's toxicology report finally came back, it showed he only had a very small amount of THC in his system, which is the drug found in marijuana, and then the other drugs that were in his system were all induced by the doctors and nurses at the hospital. Which meant at the time of this attack, Austin was effectively sober.

When the police asked Austin, "Why did you do this?" He initially said, "I don't remember, I don't know." But eventually he would open up and he would tell this story that no sane person could possibly understand.

He said after he left that restaurant where his family was that third time after he fought with his father and he stormed out, after that he saw this dark figure outside with a white face. And he knew immediately that this figure was evil. And so instinctively, Austin began running away from this evil figure. And so he ran about four miles into John and Michelle's neighborhood.

And when he got to this neighborhood, a neighborhood he was not familiar with, that he didn't intend to go to on purpose, he just kind of wound up there.

He said he saw this brightly lit up garage and he ran up into it believing he could enlist the help of the people inside of this house and that they would help him defeat this evil figure that was lurking somewhere nearby. And so he runs up into this garage, which happens to be John and Michelle's garage, and Michelle is in there, John is not. He's out for the walk with his dog and Austin approaches her and tries to get her to help him, but he

but he probably came off looking completely insane and Michelle screamed. At which point, Austin said he believed Michelle was a witch. And so he pulled out his knife and he attacked her.

And then after she fell to the ground, Austin said he drank a bottle of alcohol or something, which we now know was most likely very poisonous lawn chemicals that was just in the garage. After he drinks that bottle, he turns around and now he's looking out of the garage towards the street. And he said he saw this other figure in the doorway with a dog next to him. And then Austin said his mind just went blank.

It's believed the figure he saw in the doorway was John Stevens returning from his walk, but we don't know for sure and frankly this story is pretty incoherent to begin with because it doesn't account for the fact that before John came back, Austin had been grappling with Jeff Fisher and stabbing Jeff Fisher, the neighbor. But Austin would say he has no recollection of encountering Jeff Fisher, he has no recollection of John or what he looked like, and he certainly doesn't remember biting John's face, and he had no memory of any interactions with police.

He said that basically he turned around, he sees this figure, this dog, and then his mind went blank. And then he woke up about two weeks later in the hospital.

Now, when his story went public, a lot of people just were not willing to accept that story. They said he was making it up so he could plead insanity at his trial and get a lesser sentence. But a world-renowned forensic psychologist named Philip Resnick, who had worked on many high-profile cases before, he did a lengthy assessment of Austin and he came to a very different conclusion than the public.

In his 38-page report, Resnick points out the fact that Austin continued to bite John's face even when he was being openly threatened with being shot by the police officer standing right over him. He continued to bite John's face after he was tased. He continued to bite John's face after he was kicked in the head repeatedly. He continued to bite John's face after a dog repeatedly bit him. This all suggests that Austin was truly in a psychotic state when this attack occurred.

A sane person, even under the influence of drugs, will retain a basic survival instinct. They will try to protect themselves. So when there are guns pointed at them, or they're being physically harmed, or there's threats of violence, they'll do things to protect themselves. But Austin didn't. It was like he had no idea about anything else except John's face.

Resnick specified that the type of psychotic episode that Austin was suffering from on the night of the attack is something called clinical lycanthropy delusions.

Clinical lycanthropy is a very rare occurrence where an individual believes they are no longer human. And almost always what they believe they are is something akin to a werewolf. And in Austin's case, it's not that hard to figure out why you might reach that type of conclusion. He had told his sister that he believed he was half horse, and then on a couple other occasions he had told his other friends that he believed he was half dog. And then of course on the night of the attack, after he killed Michelle,

He pounced literally on John and began eating his face while making those loud animalistic grunting sounds. This is behavior that is certainly on par with what you would expect a werewolf to do in a movie. But this was not a movie, this was real life.

After Austin came out of his coma, but before he had been transferred to jail, he agreed to do an interview with the clinical psychologist, TV personality Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil. And during their 10-minute Zoom interview, Austin would break down and cry and say he was incredibly sorry to the family of the victims, that he didn't really know why it happened, and that clearly there was something wrong with him and he needed help, and he just hoped they could find it in their hearts to eventually forgive him.

But it's unlikely the family of the victims are going to forgive him anytime soon, especially when you consider they came out in an interview and said, "I hope Austin makes a full recovery from his coma, that he has no brain damage, that he is totally A-OK, so he can be fully aware and lucid when they read him his sentence." A sentence they hoped would be the death penalty. As of 2022, a judge has found Austin Harroff not guilty by reason of insanity.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. Not just this one, but also Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Run Fool, and Wartime Stories. To find them, all you have to do is look up Ballin Studios on any podcast platform, and boom, you'll find them all. If you want to watch hundreds more stories just like the one you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.

So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

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