By Ashley McLeod, Staff Writer
Oct 2, 2015, 14:32
CHESTERFIELD — A Dinwiddie man was found not guilty by reason of insanity on Monday to charges of killing his former girlfriend and her mother in their Chesterfield home.
Herbert C. Bland Jr., 26, was on trial Monday for two counts of felony premeditated murder and also two counts of felony display of a firearm. Bland was found not guilty due to insanity, and has now been placed under the custody of the commissioner of mental health for evaluation and to decide what will happen to Bland next.
The killings occurred on Jan. 7, 2013. Bland and his father had stopped by the residence of his former girlfriend, Elizabeth Fassett, and her mother Barbara Fassett, on River Road in southern Chesterfield.
Prior to the visit, the father and son had traveled from their home in Dinwiddie to pawn a guitar at a shop in Colonial Heights. Bland Jr. had told his father he wanted to stop by to wish Fassett a happy new year.
Bland Sr. remained in the car while his son approached the home. When Elizabeth Fassett’s mother refused to let Bland in, he shot through the glass door with a pistol from his fathers’ car, hitting Barbara and killing her. He then proceeded to a back room of the house, where Elizabeth was on the bed using a laptop. He then shot her in the head as well, killing her.
Bland and his father then returned to their residence in Dinwiddie, where a dispute broke out between the two. Bland Sr. had called the police because he believed his son had stolen his firearm and also may have used it in the shootings at the Fassett residence.
Later in the afternoon, a UPS driver delivering in the area found the door smashed in and the body of Barbara Fassett at the residence. Police responded, and while canvassing the neighborhood were able to identify that a gray Nissan Armada had been seen at the house around the time of the shootings. Police then received word of the shooting at Bland’s home, including that the same car had been identified in the incident.
When police arrived at the house, Bland shot his father, who crawled to the bedroom in search of a firearm to protect himself. After an exchange of gunfire between the two, Bland Sr. was shot two more times, and Bland Jr. was wounded. Later tests on the gun and bullets from each incident showed that Bland used the same gun in all three killings.
Police interviewed Bland in the hospital the day after the incidents occurred, where he denied doing anything between his visit to the pawnshop and returning home. Eventually Bland told the police everything that had happened at the Fassett house as well as his own home.
Following the incidents and Bland’s arrest, a trial was set in Chesterfield. In February of 2013, Bland was found incompetent to stand trial following a psychological evaluation from forensic psychologist Dr. Evan Nelson.
“It was very clear to me that the gentleman was psychotic,” said Nelson.
Bland was sent to Central State Hospital in Petersburg for treatment.
According to testimony on Monday by Nelson, at the time of the evaluation, Bland did not believe that Fassett or his father were dead, and he also believed that the two had also faked their deaths. Nelson had diagnosed Bland with paranoid schizophrenia, which according to him was made apparent by delusions, hallucinations, and bizarre behavior that Bland was experiencing.
In testimony given by Nelson and Bland’s mother at the trial, several incidents had occurred over the years leading to this diagnosis.
Bland’s mother, Sarah Williams Bland, testified at the trial explaining Bland’s past incidents in which he exhibited strange mental behavior. Following his graduation from high school in 2007, Bland fell into a depressive state after his best friend moved away, and also following the death of his grandfather. This is when his mother began to notice that her son became depressed and withdrawn from everyone around him.
“He started getting paranoid,” said Bland’s mother. “He was complaining that everybody … that people were doing things to hurt him … everybody was after him.”
In 2010 and the incident occurred between Bland and his father. Following an argument, Bland was shot in the leg by his father in self-defense and was charged with assault and battery. The charge was dropped when he agreed to go to Southside Regional Medical Center for psychiatric treatment.
After leaving the hospital, Bland was on a regime of antipsychotics, which his mother said seemed to help him. But Bland eventually began skipping his medications, lying to his mother that he had taken them and eventually stopped taking them altogether.
In late 2010, Bland met Fassett at a Food Lion and the two began a relationship, which ended around early 2012. Bland began to say that he believed that Fassett was a witch, and had cursed him. Bland believed that she was doing things to his body, and believed that he had bones coming out of his face, head, and body. In one incident, he was convinced that his collarbone was actually a snake, and was because of Fassett casting a spell on him.
Bland also became paranoid about his own family. He began to think that there were people in the television communicating with his father, who he believed was out to get him as well. He thought that his father was cooking the family’s food with urine, and refused to eat.
In the days prior to the killings, Bland had become even more withdrawn and paranoid, going days without eating or sleeping.
After being incarcerated, Bland continued to believe that his father and Fassett were plotting against him. In jail phone conversations introduced in court between him and his mother, Bland was convinced that his father and Elizabeth were not actually dead but had faked their own deaths, were bionic and that both would be reincarnated.
In one conversation from Jan. 21, 2013, Bland asks his mother where his father was. After telling him that he was dead, Bland responded “I don’t believe you. I believe they faked it.”
In another conversation the next day, he asks his mother again about his father, asking “He ain’t falled from the sky yet?”
According to Nelson, the recorded conversations between Bland and his mother substantiate his delusional antics. Bland couldn’t remember that he shot his father three times, and didn’t believe he was dead or that he had done anything wrong. Bland believed that the two would be reincarnated, and that in killing Fassett, he was saving the world as well as himself, that the spell put on him by Fassett would be lifted, and that she would no longer be a witch after the reincarnation.
“He has a perception that there is some kind of conspiracy and everyone else knows about it,” said Nelson. “In his psychosis, somehow it all made sense that what he was doing was right.”
In March of 2015, forensic psychologist Dr. Craig King evaluated Bland, in order to determine whether he was mentally fit to stand trial. At this time, Bland had been on a regime of antipsychotic medications.
In Dr. King’s testimony in court, he also stated that Bland suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, but stated that Bland knew his actions were wrong when he was committing the murders.
“He knew that what he was doing and he understood he was going to be arrested. He knew he was going to be in trouble,” said King.
King also stated that Bland seemed remorseful for killing his father, even though Bland Sr. was one of the focuses of his delusions. In his evaluation, Bland told him that he hadn’t meant to kill Barbara Fassett, but that she was in the way of what he wanted – her daughter, stating that he could not resist the impulse to kill her even though he didn’t want to.
Following the competing testimonies from both sides, Chesterfield Circuit Court Judge Lynn S. Brice determined that at the time of the murders, Bland lacked the mental ability to understand what he was doing, along with the consequences, due to his psychosis, and that he was therefore not guilty of the murders due to insanity.
Bland will return to court on Dec. 9 to determine his mental health treatment, which will be determined by physicians at the Central State Hospital. Bland will appear in court again in Dinwiddie for the murder of his father during a grand jury hearing on Oct. 20.
