“Demand to keep a killer in a mental hospital,” the petition read. Six of Balbaugh’s relatives testified against his release last May.

“They are fearful the court may release him and didn’t want to be here if that occurred,” Childrey told the court about the family’s absence Tuesday.

According to evidence presented at his trial, Glanton, then a forklift driver from Atlanta, was convinced he had to get to Washington to warn the government that aliens were taking over the world by converting people to chickens, so he took a taxicab from Atlanta to Augusta, Ga., where he caught a bus.

The bus driver kicked him off the bus in Rocky Mount, N.C., because he was awakening passengers and talking gibberish. Glanton hitchhiked and walked to Petersburg, where police put him in a cab to the Richmond bus station on North Boulevard.

He called a sister in Atlanta about 2 a.m. on April 23, 2003, and told her that he felt as if everyone was in a conspiracy against him and that he was afraid to get on the bus.

She told him to come home, but Glanton saw someone who looked like him get off a bus, and he believed the aliens had already replaced him with a duplicate, Nelson, the psychologist, testified.