Schizophrenic Andrew Goldstein shoved a beautiful stranger in front of a speeding subway train because she “turned him on” sexually, the star prosecution expert testified yesterday.
“To use the colloquial, I think he was turned on,” forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty told Manhattan jurors deciding whether the decade-long mental patient should be jailed or institutionalized for the gruesome January slaying.
When Goldstein – an admitted virgin at age 30 – saw Kendra Webdale, a blond aspiring screenwriter, on the N-train platform at 23rd and Broadway, “It was a reminder of how he couldn’t, to use the colloquial, ‘make it,'” Hegarty said.
The psychiatrist’s remarks cap a prosecution strategy of portraying Goldstein as a calculated killer – filled with resentment and hostility toward women.
To find Goldstein guilty of murder, as prosecutors hope, jurors must find that Goldstein knew it was wrong to push Webdale – and did it anyway.
If found not responsible for his actions, he must instead go to a secure mental institution for as long as he remains a danger to society – as hoped for by his defense lawyers, who are portraying him as a deeply psychotic, violent man who’s been failed by the mental-health system.
Toward that end, defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein grilled Hegarty on the occasions where Goldstein showed doctors no hostility or rage toward women – even when asked about a drunken exotic dancer who sometimes teased Goldstein when she visited his roommate in Howard Beach.
When Hegarty recounted how Goldstein’s face flushed when she mentioned the stripper’s name, Fishbein shot back, “Are schizophrenics prohibited from having that kind of response?”
“No,” Hegarty answered.
“He didn’t experience any rage?” Fishbein asked.
“No,” the doctor said again.