Son beheads mother then takes selfie with head, Lawyer claims insanity

A Bronx maniac who dismembered his own mother, then snapped a selfie with her severed head was mentally ill and didn’t know right from wrong, his lawyer argued Thursday.

“Does this look like someone who knows what he is doing is wrong?” said attorney Lynn Calvacca — holding up a photo of a smirking Bahsid McLean posing with his mother’s disembodied head — in her opening statement at McLean’s trial in Bronx Supreme Court.

McLean, 26, is charged with murdering his mother, 52-year-old home health aide Tanya Byrd, inside their Morrisania apartment on Feb. 26, 2013.

Calvacca argued in her opening statement that jurors should acquit McLean by reason of mental defect or disease.

McLean had been hearing voices since he was 10 years old, and had bounced around mental hospitals ever since, she said, calling her client “broken.”

Prosecutors called the killing “cold-blooded,” arguing McLean knew exactly what he was doing when he thrust the knife into Byrd’s neck.

Relatives of the home health aide packed the gallery.

A stone-faced McLean, wearing a gray sweater, stared down at the defense table in front of him.

At one point, he whipped out a plastic comb to brush his goatee.

The accused killer fatally stabbed his mom in the neck after she told him he made a lousy father, Assistant District Attorney Aaron Kaplan said.

McLean then went to a hardware store and bought a two-foot jigsaw, which he used to carve up the corpse, police said.

Before stuffing her chopped-up remains into bags, the accused killer — sporting a smile — paused to take a selfie, displaying his mom’s detached head like a trophy.

Cops later discovered the disturbing photo on his cell phone.

Byrd’s remains were later found in four separate duffel and garbage bags dumped around the neighborhood.

Cassandra McLean, 53, Byrd’s sister, said her nephew was a danger to society who should be put away for life.

“If he could do that to his own mother, imagine what he could do to a stranger,” she told the Daily News.

“I don’t hate him,” she added. “I pity him.”

Source: Nydailynews