Mental evaluation requested for father charged in son's death

VIRGINIA BEACH

On his MySpace page, Joseph H. Hagerman III said that his Christian faith helped him deal with his mental illness.

"Schizophrenia can't hold me down," he wrote. "Thank God for Jesus."

But in the hours after Hagerman's arrest Tuesday, friends said the Joseph H. Hagerman III who confessed in television interviews that he decapitated his 5-year-old son to save him from the "anti-Christ" must have been overcome by mental illness.

"The Joe Hagerman I know from high school is not the monster that would decapitate his own child," said Rob Wilkie, a Green Run High School classmate and wrestling teammate who kept in touch with Hagerman through the Internet. They graduated in 1993.

"I am certain that if he ever regains his sanity, he will be even more horrified than we are at what he has done."

Hagerman, 33, appeared coherent at his arraignment Wednesday on murder and felonious assault charges, and he responded politely to questions via closed-circuit TV from the jail. During the four-minute hearing, Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Judge Ramona D. Taylor appointed an attorney to represent Hagerman and scheduled a bond hearing for this morning.

The public defender's office requested a competency evaluation for Hagerman, and by Wednesday afternoon, Hagerman's family retained attorney Brandon Zeigler to represent him.

The lawyer said the bond hearing would be delayed at least until after the competency evaluation.

Zeigler planned to meet with Hagerman on Wednesday evening and said he saw the TV interview in which his client confessed. But he pointed to Hagerman's issues with mental illness.

"There's no way you can ... think that that is the ramblings of a sane individual," the lawyer said.

According to a search warrant affidavit, authorities took a 911 call at 11:22 Tuesday morning from Shirley Hagerman. She told dispatchers that her husband had murdered their son and assaulted her, the affidavit showed.

When officers arrived, they discovered the body of Joshua Hagerman.

A medical examiner determined he died of decapitation.

Shirley Hagerman, who sustained severe lacerations to her hands, remained in the hospital Wednesday.

Police spokeswoman Margie Long declined to describe the weapon used in the slaying or what led to the attack inside the one-story house in the 3200 block of Sugar Creek Drive, off Lynnhaven Parkway and Riverbend Road.

Relatives and Hagerman's father, who lives next door, would not comment. Neighbors on the dead-end street described Hagerman as friendly and quiet. The family kept to itself, the neighbors said, but Joshua Hagerman was seen riding his bicycle and walking with his grandfather.

On Wednesday, a yellow rose lay at the front door. Blood was smeared on the doorframe.

Hagerman, a night security guard with Virginia Beach Public Schools since 2001, has been suspended with pay. He was known as dependable, polite and soft-spoken, said Dick Ponti, director of safe schools and risk management.

Christopher Bellamy, a Hagerman family friend, said the killing baffled him. He said he knew Hagerman as an "overly nice" father and husband.

"Basically, the complete opposite of what happened," Bellamy said. "It's like a different person overcame him."

Bellamy said Hagerman developed schizophrenia overseas while serving for three years in the Marine Corps.

Hagerman was an administrative clerk and a corporal by the time he left the service in 1997, according to the corps.

The mental illness seemed to be kept in check through medication, Bellamy said. The two last saw each other about a year ago, when the Hagermans left International Christian Church, where Bellamy is music director. They kept in touch through the Internet.

"The only thing I can think of is that he had mentioned he changed his medication and it had made him think differently," Bellamy said.

Duane Bourne, (757) 222-5150, duane.bourne@pilotonline.com