Michigan man’s attorney issues insanity plea in cannibalism case.
Mark David Latunski, 50, of Michigan, accused of killing 25-year-old Kevin Bacon and eating his testicles, is seeking an insanity defense, his attorney, Doug Corwin, said. He is charged with “open murder and mutilation of a body,” according to court documents. Bacon was reported missing on Christmas Day.
Bacon met up with Latunski after connecting with him on Grindr. When he was discovered in Latunski’s home on December 28, his naked body was hanging from the rafters by the ankles. Latunski told authorities he’d slit his throat with a knife then cut off Bacon’s testicles and ate them.
“Latunski believes he’s named someone else, he believes he’s from a royal family out of Wales, from the Thomas clan, and just the nature of the crime itself…what he did and how he did it has come out, just by that nature as an attorney, I have to send him for an evaluation,” Corwin said.
His client will be sent to the Center for Forensic Psychiatry to determine if he is competent to stand trial. If he is, he will then undergo a criminal responsibility test, which will determine if he was competent at the time of the crime. Latunski will likely be sent for his evaluation after 60 to 90 days.
“We are alleging that maybe at the time of the offense, he was criminally insane,” Corwin stated. “The forensics center is pretty backed up right now so there’s a delay in getting people down there to get evaluated…So, for about at least the next 60 days, this case is going to be put on hold until we get all of the testing done…In my experience, especially a case like this, it’s going to take a little longer.”
“If Latunski is found not competent, he will be hospitalized in a lockdown facility and be treated until he is deemed competent,” according to Corwin, who added, “He’s been very cooperative with our department, very polite.” He feels Latunski really believes the grandiose stories he’s been recounting.
At his arraignment hearing, Latunski said his name is Edgar Thomas Hill and Mark Latusnki is his nephew. Public records show Latunski has been committed to mental health hospitals four times in the past.
Back in 2010, Latunski was admitted for depression with a diagnosis of “paranoid schizophrenia and borderline personality traits.” Latunski’s ex-wife had tried to prevent him from having any contact with their children. She said her husband thought at one point “she tried to poison his well and she wrote that Latunski claimed his boss wanted him to tamper with the products he was designing.”
Since 2015, Latunksi has been married to Jamie Arnold, who says she know something was off about her now estranged husband. “I knew there was something not right, that his thinking something was wrong, that there was some kind of delusional paranoid delusional,” Arnold said. “He would say that the neighbor was contaminating our water, that his children were not his children, his family was not his biological family, that I was some leader of some grey green-eyed people, that the world was going to turn upside down.”
Sources:
Michigan man to plead insanity in gruesome case of murder, cannibalism
Judge will allow insanity plea for Mark David Latunski in Bacon murder case
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