Lake County courts: Jason Wheeler's mom testifies during his retrial in death of deputy

TAVARES — Jason Wheeler was under the influence of an extreme mental or emotional disturbance and he did not have the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct, a defense psychologist opined Monday.

Wheeler and a parade of defense witnesses are hoping the 12-member murder resentencing jury agrees, so he can get his death sentence reduced to life without parole.

Witnesses testified that layers of stressors triggered his attack on three Lake County sheriff’s deputies in 2005, which left Wayne Koester dead and two others seriously wounded.

Earlier coverage: Lake deputy recalls terror of ambush in Jason Wheeler murder resentencing trial

Retrial continues: Lake County jury hears deputy's dramatic testimony in 2005 murder case

Seeking life sentence: Condemned man convicted of murdering Lake sheriff's deputy seeks life sentence in new trial

One of those stressors was his live-in girlfriend of six years and mother of his children, Sarah Heckerman.

“She knew how to manipulate police. She would punch herself. She threatened to do that many times,” said Wheeler’s mother, Janice.

She admitted she had never seen her do it, but when she would talk to Jason on the phone, “I could hear her screaming outside.”

The tragedy unfolded on Feb. 9, 2005

It was Heckerman who set things in motion on Feb. 9, 2005, when she called sheriff’s deputies to lodge a domestic violence complaint, saying she had been hogtied and assaulted. She had bruises and a gash on her face, said Bill Crotty, who survived the attack.

Janice Wheeler testified that she once saw Heckerman hit her son in the face for no reason.

What sent Jason Wheeler over the edge?

Hurricanes that destroyed their mobile home in Lake Kathryn area in 2004 pushed him closer to the edge.

He was trying to fix it, but building supplies were in short supply. He was also working for a tree service, and Heckerman would sometimes sabotage work that had been done, she testified.

But it was the drugs, methamphetamine at this time, that would bring the hammer down.

His mother knew something was up. She would drive up from Fort Lauderdale on the weekends.

“His eyes were dilated, and he was very talkative. I knew he was on something but not sure what it was,” she said. One of the problems was that he was getting very little sleep.

He had been abusing a wide variety of drugs since he was a teen, and the cumulative effect starting at that age can alter your brain forever, Daniel Buffington, who has a doctorate in pharmacy, told the Daily Commercial outside the courtroom.

Drugs included hallucinogens like Angel Trumpet and LSD, said psychologist Scott Machlus. It was Machlus who determined that Wheeler met the statutory death penalty mitigating factors of extreme mental state and inability to conform to the law.

Wheeler has a history of abusing drugs, witnesses said

A friend from his youth testified they regularly abused cocaine, crack, marijuana and alcohol.

The trouble began in middle school when he began skipping school. He learned from his cousin that the man he always thought was his birth father had in fact adopted him. A lifetime of closeness, including hunting and fishing together, became volatile.

Janice and Raymond Wheeler began whipping him with a belt.

“We blew it out of proportion,” Janice Wheeler said of the back-talk and other issues.

One time it turned into a fist fight, with the furious battle going from room to room.

Jason left to be with his friends. Raymond went to the master bedroom.

She had discovered a small handgun in his dresser drawer and moved it to a safety deposit box.

“You think he was looking for the gun?” defense attorney Wilma Ramos asked.

“I do.”

Once, she stuck her service revolver in her mouth but changed her mind when she thought about Jason and his sister, Rhonda.

The couple would soon part ways.

She would later share an apartment with Jason. She had a night job with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office detention section, and would come home to find pictures tilted on the wall from booming speakers and partygoers still hanging around at 7:30 a.m.

She said he had to stop, that she didn’t approve of drugs, and she might lose her job.

He stayed with his birth father for a year in West Virginia, then came back.

Wheeler would meet Heckerman in Ohio, and the couple would move to Florida.

“He was a good father. He would do anything for them,” she said of her son.

'I thought he was dead'

When she learned of the shooting, she drove to the Paisley area community to find out what happened. She was questioned and her phone examined.

When she left to go to her daughter’s house nearby she was stopped at a final checkpoint and overheard on an officer’s radio that her son had been shot.

“I thought he was dead.”

He was, in fact, paralyzed after fleeing the scene.

The next day, the Florida Department of Children and Families brought her the couple’s three children.

“They’ve been with me ever since. I adopted them a year later.”

This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Defendant's mom testifies in murder retrial; victim was a Lake deputy