A 27-year-old killed his mother by strangulation during a psychotic episode triggered by a bout of paranoia, according to his family.
Austin Hillier Graham was booked into Multnomah County jail in November, nearly three weeks after cops responded to a report that his mother had died.
They would come across the body of Teresa Graham, whose husband said he laid witness to their son’s worsening illness at the family’s Portland home.
Hunter Graham recalled on Monday how the pair had sought help, first noticing Austin’s mental changes following a failed stint at college that left him back at home in 2018.
After this, his decline accelerated, Hunter recalled – a descent that culminated with the unspeakable crime on October 20. Within weeks, Austin had confessed to murdering his mother, and is now being kept at an Oregon mental hospital.
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Austin Hillier Graham, 27, killed his mother Teresa Graham on October 20 at the family’s home in Southwest Portland during a bout of psychosis spurred paranoia. He now resides at an Oregon mental hospital
Austin’s father, Hunter on Monday laid why he views his family’s tragedy as evidence of Oregon’s flawed mental health system, which waits for someone to commit a crime before mandating treatment
Hunter, on Tuesday, told KGW: ‘You shouldn’t have to commit murder to get mental health care, but that’s what our son Austin did to my beautiful wife.
Sitting down with the local news station, he added; ‘It’s been really hard to tell whether his struggles were from pre-existing mental illness or as a result of the concussion or a mix of both.’
Hunter went on to lay out why he views his family’s tragedy as evidence of Oregon’s flawed mental health system, which waits for someone to commit a crime before mandating treatment.
Providing insight into her son’s state of mind at the time, he said Austin firmly believed his mother was secretly poisoning his water, as well as the air around him.
Civil court papers filed months before the murder, by Teresa, coincided with these claims, recalling years of mental decline from her son starting in 2018.
The documents assert that Austin – seen posing with his mother in a photo in front of a poster showing off a scientific study about the effects of concussions on brain activity – suffered a traumatic brain injury.
The injury was not specified, but it saw the parents successfully secure guardianship of Austin in August, after they told a court his mental health took a sharp turn for the worse in January 2023.
She wrote how he was unable to work, and isolated in his bedroom in the family home while neglecting to eat or bathe.
Hunter, on Tuesday, told KGW : ‘You shouldn’t have to commit murder to get mental health care, but that’s what our son Austin did to my beautiful wife’
During this period, Austin also suffered hallucinations, the parents said – with Teresa even writing that at one point, he thought people were coming to get him, leading him to brandish a knife.
That incident did not lead to anything fatal, but the one a few months later did.
Teresa said the family sought professional psychiatric care for her son within that span, but were foiled when he ran away to live on the streets for an unspecified period of time.
Within three months, Teresa was dead, even after the couple told officials within the Multnomah County Circuit Court that Austin was in ‘immediate and serious danger” and his mental health was ‘decompensating rapidly.’
Speaking to KGW, an emotional Hunter said it was clear that Austin needed help at this time – even though he repeatedly refused care
‘Immediately we discovered what you’ve discovered in your (past) reporting, which is, involuntary commitment is almost impossible,’ he told the station of laws that prohibited the parents from taking more pronounced action.
‘He’s 6-foot-6 like me, and even if you have the right to say you need to go to the hospital, if he refuses, that’s a significant logistical problem,’ Hunter added, revealing that getting guardianship still left them unable to get him to a hospital.
Austin, meanwhile, is charged with murder and is now being held at the Oregon State Hospital, where he is also being treated. A local judge found him mentally unfit for trial
Before that, in July, Austin was admitted to the Kaiser Permanente Brookside Center, Hunter revealed – speaking about a voluntary inpatient mental health hospital in nearby Clackamas.
Hunter remembered how the doctors there were in over their heads when it came to Austin – categorizing him as ‘beyond their capacity’.
As they allegedly sought to transfer him somewhere else, Austin experienced a severe psychotic break, he said – describing how Austin grabbed a nurse’s badge, ran away from the locked unit, and disappeared into the woods.
Police eventually found him two days later with blackberry thorns in his feet, after which he refused medication.
Soon enough, medical professionals determined Austin didn’t meet Oregon’s standards for involuntary treatment – and despite being diagnosed with pychosis, Austin was released back to the family home with a behavioral health plan.
However, Hunter on Monday called that plan ‘unenforceable’ – as he recalled how his wife did not want him released.
‘My wife in her wisdom did not want him released because we knew he was going to fail, that the behavioral health plan was set up to fail,’ he said.
During this period, Hunter also suffered hallucinations, the parents said – with Teresa even writing that at one point, he thought people were coming to get him, leading him to brandish a knife. That incident did not lead to anything fatal, but the one a few months later did
‘We were always optimistic that we would get a handle on this and he would go back to the bright, articulate, promising son that he is and was.’
However, as the spouses had predicted, the behavioral plan eventually failed -and Austin went on to strangle his mother a few weeks later.
Hunter lamented not being home at the time, tearfully declaring ‘The failure was that he killed her.’
Cops were called, but in a bizarre oversight, officers from the Portland Police Department ruled that they saw no signs of foul play, and did not declare Austin a suspect as a result.
However, detectives would return to the 5500 block of Southwest Menefee Drive, in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Southwest Portland a few days later – presumably follwoing an autopsy.
Two weeks later, Hunter was in another hospital with his son, where he phoned 911 and confessed to police.
A probably cause affidavit claims the confessed killer told the 911 operator: ‘I think I just killed my mom’ and ‘ she died and I saw her die’.
‘Treatment would have undoubtedly, in my mind, prevented this,’ Hunter said Monday. ‘Nobody should have to feel this way. The public, the legislature, health care workers, police, everybody needs to know how bad it can get so everybody is dedicated to fixing it’
After police arrived on the scene to arrest him, he scrawled ‘I killed my mom [and] strangled her with my bare hands’ on the back of a document containing his Miranda rights.
Austin, meanwhile, is charged with murder and is now being held at the Oregon State Hospital, where he is also being treated.
A local judge found him mentally unfit for trial, and his father, a lawyer, on Monday remained adamant the state was at least somewhat responsible for his wife’s murder
‘Treatment would have undoubtedly, in my mind, prevented this,’ Hunter said Monday, before breaking down in tears.
‘Nobody should have to feel this way. The public, the legislature, health care workers, police, everybody needs to know how bad it can get so everybody is dedicated to fixing it.’
