US man decapitates wife and pet dogs ’to get the evil out’

An Arizona man who admitted decapitating his wife and her two dogs in a bloody incident last month, in Phoenix, told authorities he was attempting “to get the evil out” of her, according to court documents.

Kenneth Dale Wakefield, 43, also told police that he had smoked marijuana and the designer drug Spice about an hour before the gruesome killings in an apartment on the morning of July 25.

Wakefield, a transient with a history of mental illness who also maimed himself, was booked into a Maricopa County jail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of animal cruelty, after being released from a local hospital.

Wakefield stabbed his 49-year-old wife, Trina Heisch, multiple times, before decapitating her and the dogs. “He said he was trying to get the evil out of Trina,” police said in a probable cause statement filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Police said the Phoenix man then cut off his left arm at the elbow and gouged out one of his eyes, before being discovered.

The blood-splattered scene was found by a neighbour who told police he was checking on the couple, whom he knew had mental illness issues.