"Suspect in Cambridge dismemberment case was schizophrenic" by Jan Ransom Globe Staff June 08, 2016
A week before Carlos Colina Jr. allegedly dismembered his best friend, he confided that without his medication he “goes crazy.”
It wasn’t the first revelation that Colina made to Jonathan Camilien about his mental illness, according to court documents. An affidavit and application for search warrant filed in Middlesex Superior Court revealed that Colina reportedly told Camilien and his brother about his diagnosis of schizophrenia, that he sometimes heard voices, had killed a dog, and that he thought the devil was after him.
The court records were filed in the first-degree murder case against Colina, 33, who is accused of killing and cutting up the body of Camilien in Cambridge last year.
On April 4, 2015, Cambridge police found a duffel bag containing Camilien’s torso and some of his limbs on a walkway near the biotech company Biogen. Additional remains were found at Kendall Crossing, an apartment building on Sixth Street near Binney Street in a third-floor recycling bin just feet away from Colina’s apartment. Surveillance video showed Camilien entering Colina’s apartment the day before.
A trial date has not been set; the next hearing is scheduled for August. His attorney, John Cunha, declined to comment on the case Tuesday.
Colina’s father, Carlos Colina Sr., 58, confirmed on Tuesday that his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 16, but did not want to talk about the murder case.
“His mom and me spent a lifetime getting different answers from different doctors,” he said in a phone interview. “He has had a very hard life.”
Colina’s father said his son lived with him until he was 19, but moved out on his own to Brunswick, Maine, where he lived for three years before getting an apartment in Cambridge. “He wanted to be responsible for himself,” Colina Sr. said. “We always worried about Carlos.”
According to the court documents, when police broke the news to Christopher Camilien that his brother had been killed, he immediately suspected Colina was responsible.
Christopher Camilien said his brother and Colina were both gamers and played online with friends, court records show. They made rap music together, discussed “ancient knowledge,” and saw each other one to three times a week.
But Colina had also told Jonathan Camilien they could no longer be friends because he was hearing voices that told him “Johnny was bad,” according to court documents.
Then, in 2014, during a week in which Colina had not taken his medication, he said he “thought the devil was after him” according to Camilien’s brother’s account to investigators. During a search of Colina’s apartment, police found handwritten lyrics and CDs with rap songs in which Colina talked about murder, dismemberment, and schizophrenia.
Investigators also learned that Colina bought a 12-inch carpentry saw online roughly three years before the killing. Police allege it is the same saw used on Camilien’s body.
The court file also contained details about the time Colina spent at the Redline Fight Sports gym in Boston, which he joined in 2014.
The gym’s manager, Danielle Rieck, told police that Colina asked employees how they cleaned blood from floors.
And about three weeks before Camilien’s death, another gym member told Rieck that Colina said he had killed people before, chopped them into pieces, and buried them in the backyard, Rieck told police.
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Related: Grisly Find in Cambridge
