SANTA ROSA (BCN) -- Honorio Pantaleon killed his common-law wife and tried to kill her  mother but he was delusional and believed both of them had implanted demons  and snakes inside him, his defense attorney told a Sonoma County jury Thursday  morning.

"This is not first-degree murder and torture," Deputy Public  Defender Jeff Mitchell told the jury during his opening statement in the  trial in Sonoma County Superior Court.

But Deputy District Attorney Tashawn Sanders told the jury  Pantaleon "knew exactly what he was doing" when he stabbed 25-year-old  Patricia Barrales in the couple's Santa Rosa apartment on May 10, 2008.

Pantaleon, 31, blamed Barrales for all of his problems and he  hated the fact that Barrales favored her mother over him and he believed she  intended to leave him, Sanders said.

"His actions over 36 hours were willful, intentional, deliberate  and premeditated," Sanders told the jury in Judge Kenneth Gnoss' courtroom.

On Mother's Day, May 11, Santa Rosa police found Barrales' body  wrapped in a comforter inside a plastic storage container that had been used  as a toy box in a closet in the Montecito Avenue apartment.

She had been stabbed or cut 68 times. Her throat had been cut open  and a knife was embedded deep into her left eye socket after she was already  dead, according to a forensic pathologist.

Gnoss has prohibited Sanders from showing some of the gruesome  photos to the jury, ruling they were extremely prejudicial.

After Pantaleon killed Barrales, he took the couple's two  children, ages 2 and 4, to his parents' house in Lake County, Sanders said.

He then went to Barrales' mother Isabel's home in Ukiah on May 12,  pointed a shotgun at her chest and pulled the trigger. The gun did not fire  and Pantaleon struck her in the head with the weapon, Sanders said.

By this time the couple's elder son told police Pantaleon had  stabbed his mother, Sanders said. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Department  arrested Pantaleon in Ukiah.

Patricia Barrales' blood was found on Pantaleon's socks when he  was arrested and his fingerprints were on the knife that was removed from her  eye, Sanders said.

"He did cause the death of his wife on that day," Mitchell  conceded in his statement to the jury.

But Pantaleon was "like a powder keg ready to go off" and he was  "paranoid and completely delusional," Mitchell said.

He had been consuming methamphetamine and alcohol since late 2007  and his family was concerned about his bizarre behavior, Mitchell said.

At a family party, Pantaleon said he saw his mother-in-law's face  in a pigeon's eye, Mitchell said. Pantaleon feared his in-laws wanted to  poison him and take his two children from him and kill them, Mitchell said.

On May 10 when Pantaleon saw his wife's suitcase by the door of  their apartment, indicating she was leaving him, "he went off", Mitchell  said.

Psychologists will testify Pantaleon did not have the mental  ability required to prove first-degree murder and torture, Mitchell said.

Pantaleon has pleaded not guilty to eight felony charges and is  being held in the Sonoma County jail. The trial is expected to last until  mid-December.
     
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