Also ... wonder if he's setting up an insanity defense?
WACO, Texas — The man accused of killing Baylor University (search) basketball player Patrick Dennehy (search) suggested in a jailhouse interview that he acted in self-defense and also said he has been hearing voices, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"I thought he was my friend but he betrayed me," Carlton Dotson (search) told The Dallas Morning News in a copyright story in Thursday editions. "If someone points a gun at you and shoots and it doesn't go off, what would you do? If someone is pointing a gun at you and they start putting more bullets into the gun, what would you do?"
Asked what he did, Dotson, Dennehy's former teammate and roommate, only laughed and did not answer, the newspaper reported.
Dennehy had been missing about six weeks when his decomposed body was found Friday night in a grassy field four miles from the Baylor campus. Investigators had been searching for the 21-year-old at nearby gravel pits, a site police say Dotson provided to them after his July 21 arrest.
Dotson told FBI agents that he shot Dennehy after the player tried to shoot him, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. A preliminary autopsy report released Wednesday said Dennehy was killed by gunshot wounds to the head, and listed homicide as the cause of death.
After his arrest, Dotson told The Associated Press that he "didn't confess to anything." Since then, Dotson has not responded to a request from the AP for an interview. Dotson, 21, remains jailed without bond in his home state of Maryland and awaits extradition to Texas, which could take as long as three months.
Dotson told the Morning News that after he moved out of Dennehy's apartment, his friend often gave him rides.
"I wish I wouldn't gotten into the truck that day," he said, declining to elaborate.
Dotson said his life has been threatened and that he has been hearing voices that say, "We are many. We are strong. We are behind you. We support you. We are ready for war ... a spiritual war." He also confirmed that Baylor paid for him to see a Waco therapist because of his increasingly erratic behavior.
The newspaper said Dotson also related a confusing story about meeting someone named Roman in Texas who told him he would be able to do miraculous things. At the end of the 10-minute session, Dotson asked for prayers.
"I'm really not a bad person," he told the newspaper. "Some things happen that aren't in your control."
Baltimore television station WZJ-TV reported late Wednesday that Dotson was placed on suicide watch in jail Tuesday.
A .32-caliber revolver that belonged to Dennehy was found near his body, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported Wednesday, citing an unidentified source close to the investigation.
Near the gun, authorities found .32-caliber bullets that had spilled from an ammunition box, the newspaper reported. There was no evidence the .32 had been fired, but officials recovered nearby shell casings from a 9mm pistol, the paper reported.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms traced the ownership of a gun found near Dennehy's body, said Mark Curtin, a spokesman in the Austin office. He declined Wednesday to reveal those results.
McLennan County sheriff's Capt. Paul Wash would not say whether any weapons were found near Dennehy's remains.
Dotson's attorney, Grady Irvin Jr., told The Associated Press late Wednesday that he had no knowledge of his client being around Dennehy when guns were present.
Irvin criticized the media, saying, "Until they get some hard facts, I think it's journalistically irresponsible to report inferences. The media is supposed to report the news, not make the news, and that's what the media is doing in an effort to be first."
Dennehy was killed in the field where his body was found, according to the preliminary autopsy report by the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas. It does not specify how many times he was shot, whether he suffered any other wounds or the day he died. The complete autopsy was expected to take several more weeks.
Jessica De La Rosa, who dated Dennehy for two years, said she believes he never would have pretended or tried to shoot Dotson.
"I was not there, but I know Patrick extremely well. ... Patrick would not do that even if the gun was completely empty," De La Rosa told The Associated Press from her Albuquerque, N.M., home. "But God does know. God saw it. I hope Dotty knows that because it will sit in his heart."
A funeral service is set for Aug. 7 at the Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose, Calif., near where Dennehy grew up. A campus memorial service is being planned Aug. 28 at Baylor, the world's largest Baptist university with 14,000 students.
