A New Jersey man charged with stabbing his wife to death claims he was sleepwalking when the incident occurred.
Dieter Zimmermann, 76, faces murder charges in the 2021 killing of his wife, Jacqueline Zimmermann, The Daily News reported. Zimmerman has waived a jury trial and his fate will be solely determined by a judge.
According to the outlet, the judge will hear a defense based on the idea that Zimmerman was sleepwalking when he repeatedly stabbed his wife with a "butcher-style knife."
"We've raised a psychiatric defense that he had a mental disease, a defect, at the time of the homicide with a parasomnia twist," defense attorney Brian Neary said Wednesday according to NJ.com.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, "Parasomnia disorders involve some type of abnormal behavior during sleep, such as walking or talking."
The symptoms can include "complex motor behaviors like walking, running, talking or eating." The most common parasomnias, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, can involve nightmares and night terrors. People can seem awake, but in actuality are only partially awake.
"It's a very unusual defense," Neary said. He also told the website that Zimmermann had other psychological issues, but did not go into details.
The New York Daily News reported that Zimmermann told police the kitchen knives were in his wife's nightstand drawer.
"He doesn't walk out the back door," Neary said about his fate should the defense be successful. "He would go to a psychiatric hospital in the state of New Jersey and be held there until such a time as he was neither a danger to himself or to the community."
On the night of her death, Jacqueline Zimmermann called a third party and told them her husband was trying to kill her. The call ended abruptly and the person called the police. Neary said that Dieter also called the police.
"Oh good, I was just on the phone with you. My wife attacked me," Zimmermann told arriving officers according court documents.
