SEATTLE – A Seattle man who police said killed his brother with a four-foot sword Sunday may be mentally ill, according to prosecutors.
Buckey Wolfe, 26, was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder and his bail was set at $1 million. Prosecutors requested he be held without bail given the extreme danger he poses to the community, according to records obtained by the Seattle Times.
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It was about 6:40 p.m. Sunday when Buckey Wolfe called 911 and told dispatchers that he killed his brother, James Wolfe, because he thought his brother was a lizard, police said. Buckey reportedly rambled to dispatchers, saying things like "kill me," "I can't live in this reality," and "God told me he was a lizard."
Seattle police said they arrived at Wolfe's home and found his brother dead. Wolfe was located and arrested less than a mile north of the home.
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Scott O’Toole wrote in charging papers that Wolfe killed his brother by "jamming the tang end of a four-foot long sharpened metal-bladed sword-like instrument completely through the victim’s head." He added that Wolfe "appears to be severely mentally ill."
When detectives responded, Wolfe was hallucinating and believed that they, like his brother, were turning into lizards. O'Toole wrote that Wolfe told detectives "that their eyes and mouths were changing and asked if they could see lizards in the room.”
A neighbor told news station KIRO 7 that Wolfe's parents had lived at the home for years and that Wolfe had continued to live with them while his brother had moved away.
On a Facebook page confirmed by KIRO to belong to Wolfe, he posted a January 1 message stating, "I will dash you lizards to pieces like pottery and scatter your bones to the winds!!!!!”
According to a report from The Daily Beast, Wolfe used the same Facebook page to post about the QAnon conspiracy theory and proclaim himself a member of the far-right Proud Boys group.
QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that claims, without practical evidence, that politicians, Hollywood celebrities and high-ranking officials are engaged in an international child sex-trafficking ring that President Donald Trump is working to expose.
The Proud Boys are a group of self-described "Western chauvinist" men that made headlines in October 2017 after three members were arrested in New York for engaging in a violent fight with supporters of the far-left group Antifa. The Proud Boys are classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.