Shane Sloan's diminished mental capacity defense to charges he killed his mother appeared to fall apart Thursday as the Pine Township man took the stand in his own defense.

Sloan, accused of strangling his mother Susan LaRue Fleeger on Feb. 5, 2001, in the mobile home they shared, testified there was a method behind his madness.

"I just decided to choke her," Sloan said.

"I held the towel around her neck until she specifically stopped moving altogether. I was waiting until she was dead," said Sloan, who is charged with first- and third-degree murder.

Sloan's admission that he "decided" his mother's fate seemed to counter the defense his attorneys had been trying to build on his behalf.

In fact, the expert witness who took the stand before Sloan -- Dr. Mendel Felcher, a forensic psychiatrist from Los Angeles -- testified that 29-year-old Sloan "was not capable of forming the specific intent to kill his mother."

Specific intent "requires an ability to premeditate and deliberate, which is the ability to think of alternatives and consequences," Felcher said.

"Mr. Sloan was not able to think of alternatives and consequences," said Felcher, who interviewed Sloan for three hours 51 days after the killing.

Felcher said Sloan was "extremely focused and set on his single goal of ending his own life that day (Feb. 5, 2001)," when he was scheduled to begin serving a 12-day jail sentence for failing to pay fines for shoplifting.

According to testimony this week, Sloan apparently attacked his mother after she interrupted his second suicide at tempt of the day; there would be four attempts in all that day. "The sole reason" he attacked his mother, Felcher said, "was to stop her from preventing his suicide."

When Sloan took the stand, he immediately said he accepted responsibility for his mother's death and then apologized to his family.

The testimony that followed was rambling and bizarre at times and emotional and painful at others. Throughout most of Sloan's testimony, which continued until about 6 p.m., there was a pin-drop silence in Judge Michael J. Wherry's courtroom.

"I had the most indescribable depression. I had a depression that was always on my back, constantly hounding me," Sloan said.

After detailing hardships he said he dealt with growing up -- his parents' divorce, allegedly being sexually abused by his father, his debilitating Crohn's disease and an inability to fit in as a Grove City teen or hold down a steady job after high school -- Sloan testified at length about a downward spiral that he said began after he was committed to the psychiatric ward at Sharon Regional Health System in October 2000.

It was during that stay that Sloan was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder -- a manic depressive disorder marked by emotional highs and lows.

After the stay, Sloan said, "I started a project, keeping notes on what I thought on a microcassette recorder. I had many observations and insights."

Among his insights, Sloan said China is "getting ready for war" to take over the world and enslave it for a 1,000-year reign that will end with the Apocalypse and that Dracula is a story about child sexual abuse.

By Feb. 5, 2001, Sloan said he was running on emotional fumes. "By this time I was beat. The incarceration (at the psychiatric ward), the insights, the observations … they were too much to handle. I was tired," Sloan said.

Defense attorney Chris St. John asked Sloan what his focus was when he killed his mother. "To not be committed again and to finish my suicide."

"There was a very great panic when she knocked on the bathroom door (during his second suicide attempt of the morning). There is nothing like the fear of being committed. There is a history of mental illness in my family -- my uncle was sent to Warren State Hospital for schizophrenia and my grandfather also was sent there. There was no way I was going to be committed," Sloan said.

"I thought I'd just knock her out so I could finish committing suicide," he said.

When three or four punches to the face didn't work, Sloan said he put his left hand around his mother's neck, first to restrain her struggle and then to cut her air so she would go unconscious. The struggle continued and they fell to the ground, he said. Sloan said he then grabbed a towel that was on his shoulder and wrapped it around her neck three times, pulling it tight until his mother stopped moving.

After Sloan's testimony, the prosecution opted not to call an expert witness to rebut the opinions of Felcher. The prosecution and defense were expected to make their closing arguments this morning, after which the jury should begin deliberating the case.