Mahwah man accused of stabbing his wife to death could attempt insanity defense

The lawyers for a Mahwah man accused of stabbing his wife to death in 2021 will weigh an insanity defense in their client's case.

Dieter Zimmermann's attorney, Brian Neary, appeared before state Superior Court Judge Margaret Foti along with Assistant Prosecutor Gary Donatello. During the hearing, which lasted less than five minutes, Neary said the defense is waiting for a report from a team of psychiatrists to determine what Zimmermann's mental status was at the time of the killing.

In court, Neary said the report is expected in 45 days, and Foti scheduled another hearing for Oct. 17. The next step for the case is getting the report and giving it to the prosecution.

Neary said Donatello has the right to have Zimmermann be tested by prosecutors' own doctors. Experts will then create a report that contradicts the initial report or agrees with it. How the case proceeds after that is based on the findings in both reports.

Neary said there is a distinction between mental states. The first is a person's competency to stand trial, which he classified as dynamic.

"So today you could be competent," Neary said. "Tomorrow, you might not be competent."

The second is the person's mental state at the time of the incident, which Neary said is static.

He said Zimmermann is competent to stand trial, which is why he appears in court but is using psychiatrists to determine his mental state at the time of his wife's killing.

Neary said he couldn't comment on whether Zimmermann or his family had a history of mental illness.

Zimmermann, 74, is accused of stabbing his wife, Jacqueline, with a kitchen knife in January 2021. Authorities said that when Zimmermann opened the door for the police, he told them his wife was upstairs and that he had killed her.

For subscribers:Mahwah woman stabbed to death was loving mother and entrepreneur, son says

New Jersey:Two-plus years into COVID, Phil Murphy still not ready to investigate NJ's response

Jacqueline Zimmermann, 69, was found in the master bathroom with her head in a pool of blood and wounds on her hands. A bloodstained, black-handled kitchen knife was found on the bathroom vanity, and Zimmermann had a scratch on the left side of his neck and a bleeding cut on the middle finger of his right hand, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

"My wife attacked me,” the Mahwah man initially told police. But later, while under questioning by Bergen County detectives, he allegedly confessed to stabbing his wife "after he located two kitchen knives in her nightstand drawer."

He allegedly told police several times after his arrest that “he wished he was dead and that he no longer wanted to live."

Blaine Benson, an attorney who works with Neary, said they are in contact with the Zimmermanns' children and that they support their father.

Their son Derrick Zimmermann said his mother came to the United States from the Dominican Republic and "did what most people can only dream of achieving."

"She was truly the hardest-working and most loving person on this planet," Zimmermann said in a January 2021 interview. "This is not only a loss for our family, but a whole community."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Mahwah NJ homicide suspect could try insanity defense