A lawyer says that the Plum woman who was formally declared insane after her father was stabbed to death may never be put on trial.
Seven years have passed since police say an All-American soccer player killed her father with a knife. Now Christina Nicassio’s lawyer says he doesn’t think she’ll ever go to court.
In his career, Patrick Thomassey has done more than 100 murders. “This is one of the saddest ones I’ve ever had,” he said.
In the 48 years that Thomassey has been a lawyer, this is still one of the saddest cases he has seen. Nick meets with a judge at the Allegheny County Courthouse about once a month.
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Nicosia is now 34 years old. But on May 6, 2017, Nicassio was charged with killing her father with a knife in her parents’ Plum home. She was 27 years old at the time. Anthony, her father, was a general care doctor at UPMC.
“She was an All-American soccer player at Pitt,” Thomassey said. “She was doing so well. To this day, mental health, it’s a huge problem. Huge problem in this country. Go watch mental health court sometime. It’ll rip your heart out. It really will.”
Nicassio told cops she thought her father had to die and used the movie The Mummy Returns to explain her feelings. She said she felt “played by Hollywood.” The defense and prosecution both had psychologists look at her and decide that she wasn’t mentally fit to stand trial. This meant that she was legally crazy. Most likely, she will never go to court.
“She had a great relationship with her family, especially her father,” Thomassey said. “And when somebody can’t even remember one small aspect of what he or she did as a result of mental illness, it’s very sad. And of course, she lives with that, and there’s no going back on that. That’s the hardest part of these kinds of cases.”
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Thomassey says that Nicassio got help from the mental health system, but he thinks that the government should work on opening more centers.
Nicosia lived at Torrance State Hospital for three years. It is one of six in the state. She is now in a long-term inpatient treatment center because the county paid for it. Meghan Thomassey says she’s fine.
“I don’t think the system has failed,” Thomassey said. “I think the system has helped Christina tremendously. The problem is that we don’t have enough resources and in other counties, they have no resources.”
Nicassio will return for a status meeting on May 15. There are no signs that the monthly check-ins will end any time soon.
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