HOUMA - Amy Hebert was "obviously psychotic" during an examination three days after she killed her two children and severely injured herself, a Mathews physician said during testimony at her trial Friday, which included recollections of a woman she attended church with.
Dr. Jack Heidenreich was among the first physicians to treat Hebert at Ochsner St. Anne General Hospital, where she was brought after police and relatives discovered her badly wounded in her bed with her children's multiply stabbed bodies on Aug. 20, 2007. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The defense maintains Hebert was insane when she killed 7-year-old Braxton and 9-year-old Camille in her home on St. Anthony Street in Mathews.
Heidenreich said Hebert told a psychiatrist Satan spoke to her and she could hear him laugh as she lay recovering from her wounds.
He was trying to determine, he said, whether Hebert's withdrawn and unresponsive state was psychological or the result of brain damage from a weakened blood pressure.
Heidenreich read from notes kept by a psychiatrist who examined Hebert Aug. 23 but who is no longer with the hospital.
As Hebert became more responsive, she told the psychiatrist she hadn't planned to kill her kids and that "Satan took over," according to the notes.
"She hears the words of Satan in her head all the time and tries to push him out with words of Christ," Heidenreich read from the report in which the psychiatrist said Hebert said Satan "is in the room laughing at her ... The patient is obviously psychotic."
Hebert was put on a strong anti-psychotic drug and kept on close watch.
Other doctors testified to Hebert's history of treatment for depression and anxiety, and a variety of drugs used.
Dr. Claudio Guillermo, a Thibodaux general practice doctor, said he started prescribing Hebert medication to treat seizures she began having after a car wreck in 1988.
In January 2004, he prescribed her Paxil, an anti-depressant.
"She was down on herself," he said. "She was shaking and didn't feel like doing anything when she woke up."
He eventually referred her to psychiatrist Maria Cruse in Thibodaux.
Kyle Guidry, another doctor who treated Hebert, testified that she took Zoloft daily to curb anxiety, he said.
He switched her to another medication for anxiety and depression when she complained the Zoloft tired her. He eventually prescribed her a medicine to help with her fatigue, and when that also failed, Guidry tried lowering the size of her dosage.
Hebert faces a possible death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder for the stabbing deaths of her children. A neighbor, Stacey Stegmann, took the stand and spoke of time she and Hebert spent together, and their shared activities as members of Victory Life Church.
In June 2006 and again in July 2007, Hebert and Stegmann took their children to a religious summer camp in Texas. Each night, Stegmann could hear Hebert pray with Camille, she said.
"When she wasn't with Braxton, she was with Camille," she said, describing her as a loving and devoted mother who was "protective" of her children.
Stegmann crossed paths with Hebert twice Aug. 19, the day before the slayings, she said. Hebert, who was running late to a Sunday school class she taught, gave her a warm greeting.
"She stopped me in my tracks and said 'Hey Stacey,' " she said.
A second time later that day, she saw Hebert watching her son Braxton jump on a trampoline at the church. Instead of a greeting, Stegmann received an empty glance, she said.
"She just gave me this blank look," she said. "She just stayed staring. It was strange to me because I talked to her that morning."< /p>
Hebert turned her gaze back to Braxton. The moment made Stegmann pause.
"I just knew it wasn't Amy," she said. "I thought a lot about it and then left."
