Deputies said they found a samurai sword in Damien Winslow Washam’s car when they arrested him for murdering his mother, Helen Nettles Washam. (Mug shot and image: Mobile County Sheriff’s Office)
An Alabama man charged with the murder of his mother and attacking his uncle and brother with a samurai sword has been acquitted by reason of insanity.
A judge declared Damien Winslow Washam, 25, not guilty by reason of insanity after multiple mental evaluations in the custody of the Alabama Department of Mental Health, Tara Zieman, communications director of the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office, told Law&Crime on Monday.
Mobile County deputies responded to a Mausap Road home in the community of Eight Mile on Jan. 16, 2022. Investigators found the defendant’s mother, Helen Nettles Washam, 61, dead from lacerations. Damien Washam’s uncle — bedridden with cerebral palsy — sustained severe lacerations to the face and was sent to the hospital in critical condition. The defendant’s brother — who has autism, according to Oxygen — had lacerations to his wrist and was treated at the scene.
But Damien Washam fled in a dark green 2000 Honda Accord, deputies said.
He refused to stop and kept heading toward Highway 158, according to the sheriff’s office. Cops in the city of Saraland stopped the vehicle with spike strips, and a Mobile County deputy tased Washam when he attempted to flee. His injuries were not life-threatening.
Detectives claim he showed no remorse for what he did to his mother, uncle, and brother.
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“[Damien Washam’s uncle] may need surgery and he’s breathing on his own,” Hubert Washam, Damien Washam’s father, told Oxygen in a Jan. 19, 2022, report. “[He has] a bad laceration to the face, knocked a few teeth out. He can’t really talk and communicate. We don’t know how he is yet.”
Loved ones reportedly had no idea why Damien Washam did what he did. His father said his son had no known mental health problems and the only entry on the young man’s criminal record was an arrest for minor marijuana possession. But he also noted his son’s worrying behavior.
“He had started listening to some crazy group of people, like a cult or something,” his father said. “Evidently, he had sent links to his sisters and were telling them about it, talking about the sun, and getting energy from the sun. It was just something he got into four weeks, six weeks ago. I don’t understand it.”
He also noted that his son had previously ordered and delivered to the family “disturbing” and “deranged” items including a knife, “torture-type” brass knuckles fitted with spikes, and a poster of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld. More items arrived for his son after the arrest, he said.
“When I opened it up I just was hurt because maybe it seemed like there was something disturbing going on with him that we didn’t pick up on,” Hubert Washam reportedly said. “He ordered something he definitely has absolutely no use for. I can’t understand why he would order it unless he was planning to kill us all.”
Helen Washam was a former substitute teacher and mother of four. Hubert Washam, who told the outlet that he was the person who found his wife after the attack, said, “We’re broken. I’m broken.”
“She just was a sweet, innocent person,” he said. “She was just very kind and sweet. With her kids, everything she did.”
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