Florida woman claims alternate personality killed 2-year-old daughter

Lucas and Jamason, the children's biological mother, had been together for more than 20 years and joined together in a 2001 civil union, but were estranged at the time of the killing. Jamason has said that Lucas suffered from complications from gastric bypass surgery and had subsequently developed a prescription drug problem that contributed to their split.

But according to a notice from Lucas’ attorneys, Heidi Perlet and Marc Shiner, the 41-year-old was also being treated for dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

“The defendant was receiving mental healthcare treatment long before, as well as the time of, the events which resulted in her arrest,” Perlet wrote in a pleading filed late Thursday.

Although not specifically outlined in the filing, using the illness as part of their defense means Shiner and Perlet will argue that one of Lucas’ other personality states, or “alters” had manifested at the time of the killing.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a guidebook that forensic psychologists use when testifying in court cases, the disorder is marked by “recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.”

In Lucas’ case, court records show after she woke up in the hospital from a failed attempt to overdose on the anti-anxiety drug Alprazolam, she told police she didn’t know what she’d done.

Lucas had tried to drug both Ethan and Elliana with the drug, telling her son the pill “would help make him grow.” Ethan took the pill, but when Elliana was unable to swallow it, Lucas drowned her in a bathtub. She blamed the killings on Jamason and said she’d heard a sermon on the biblical story of Abraham’s halted sacrifice of his son Issac.

In the Bible story, God told Abraham to stop before Issac was harmed.

“But God didn’t tell me to stop,” Lucas wrote.

When detectives questioned her at the hospital, they noted that she asked for her children and wondered who was watching them. When they told her she had the right to remain silent and told her that her mother had gotten her a lawyer, she responded: “What the hell did I do?”

Lucas' defense team in their insanity defense pleading listed Cleveland psychiatrist Phillip Resnick as a defense witness. Resnick testified in the 2002 trial of Andrea Yates, whose initial conviction for drowning her five children in a bathtub in Texas was later overturned. Another jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

In Lucas’ case, Jamason, a therapist, declined public comment on the case before she left a hearing earlier this week. But in the past she has said she will do whatever she can to pursue justice for the lost daughter she calls her “angel baby” as well as her surviving son.

Jamason has since married, but still grieves the loss of her family. In a recent interview with The Post, she described the loss this way:

“I not only lost my daughter, but the other parent to my two children. I lost my second family,” she said. “It’s the ultimate betrayal.”