In contrast to his claims, he started exhibiting strange behavior, ranging from wearing military fatigues and patrolling around his neighborhood for unseen forces to refusing to bathe or wash himself.
The murders would resume on March 7, 2005, when Covington shot and killed 36-year-old Odies Bosket, a clerk for the Revenue Department who was en route to pick up his daughter from a nursery in Logan.
[5] After collecting CCTV footage from the surrounding buildings, detectives observed McDermott getting off the bus, followed shortly by a man wearing a baseball cap, light jacket and green pants, who seemed to be stalking her.
[6][7] As they were able to discern neither the suspect's face nor a possible motive for the crime, detectives scoured the surrounding area for additional camera footage in an effort to gather potential clues.
Even with further analysis, they were still unable to determine who he was, and because of this, the police department turned towards the FBI and the NFL Films branch for assistance, but as this produced no viable leads, they eventually resorted to releasing the footage in the hope that somebody would recognize and potentially identify the man.
[4] The move proved to be successful, as it generated hundreds of tips, with one of them coming from an employee of a bus company who claimed the man was Juan Covington, a subcontractor at the local Pennsylvania Hospital.
[5] Upon reviewing security footage from the hospital's cameras, it was found that he had worn the exact same clothing as the man who had shot McDermott, which allowed the authorities to finally arrest him.
While he openly admitted responsibility for the attacks, Covington initially refused to plead guilty, claiming that he was "the chosen One" and he had killed the three because he believed them to be devils who were trying to harm him.
[1] At trial, his attorney, A. Charles Peruto Jr., noted his client's history of mental illness and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia in an effort to spare him the death penalty.