Years before a mental breakdown provoked him to allegedly kill his wife, Blazej Kot believed hidden cameras were monitoring his every move, the former Cornell graduate student said in a videotaped interview with a psychiatrist shown in court on Friday. The video, which the defense used as evidence that Kot was mentally disturbed when he killed his wife, Caroline Coffey, gave the jury the opportunity to hear the defendant speak for the first time after a week of testimony by his colleagues and friends.

 “I don’t know how it really started,” Kot said, his voice a hoarse whisper — his attempt to slit his own throat had damaged his trachea and paralyzed one of his vocal chords. “It was something that was always with me … it made me sort of suspicious and more defensive.”

In high school, Kot said, “weird” things kept happening, convincing him that someone was secretly monitoring him.

“My mom got a phone call,” Kot said, “saying someone using her IP address was trying to hack a government website. I didn’t do it. It put into my mind the idea that someone somewhere was watching.”

When Kot visited his then-girlfriend Jacqueline’s family home for the first time, he expressed fears that someone had hidden cameras inside the family’s electrical appliances. According to Rory Houghtalen, M.D., who interviewed Jacqueline’s brother Scott along with others who had known the defendant, Kot warned family members that electrical outlets and other devices could hold hidden cameras.

Dr. Houghtalen argued in his testimony on Friday that Kot’s “notion that he was chosen at an early age” and monitored by hidden cameras shows that he suffers from schizotypal personality disorder. Such conspiracy theories are hallmarks of the disorder, Houghtalen said. 

People with the disorder also lack close friends. They often suffer from excessive social anxiety, making interacting with others difficult. Previous witnesses have indeed characterized Kot as an introvert. Peter Brodsky, Kot’s former teaching assistant, said in court on Tuesday that the defendant often distanced himself from people he did not admire. Houghtalen said that many of the people he interviewed described Kot as a “man of few confidants.”

While schizotypal personality disorder can be an early sign of schizophrenia –– a mental illness characterized by delusions, hallucinations and disordered thinking –– not everyone who has the disorder develops schizophrenia. Houghtalen did not say whether he thought Kot’s symptoms indicated a more severe condition.

Before settling on a diagnosis, Houghtalen also considered other disorders such as psychotic depression, psychotic mood disorder and substance-induced disorder. He wrote in his report that Kot’s mental state may have been affected by the anti-malarial drug, chloroquine, which he took when he and his wife traveled to Costa Rica for their wedding ceremony. But he did not find an infectious disease expert to confirm this hypothesis, according to The Ithaca Journal. 

The prosecution has claimed Kot did not suffer from mental illness, but Houghtalen said the defendant’s reluctance to “latch onto” symptoms proves that he is not malingering.

“I don’t remember that,” Kot said in the video when confronted with evidence of his paranoid behavior.

Although Kot did not appear mentally unstable –– a co-worker, Hyun Yong Song, said on Wednesday that Kot was “pleasant” to work with –– the defense claims of that academic stress took a toll on him, pushing the suspicions he had always kept hidden to the forefront of his mind.

“Kot has significant vulnerabilities that, coupled with the stress he was under, pushed him from having some relatively minor signs of mental illness to dramatic and major signs of mental illness,” Houghtalen said.