Following grisly testimony Friday about the near-decapitation slaying of a Lawrence man, the attorney representing Sarah Brooke Gonzales McLinn told the judge his client would use the defense of mental disease or defect during her trial.

Defense attorney Carl Cornwell gave written notice to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office about the use of lack of mental state in McLinn’s defense.

The one-paragraph filing said McLinn intended "to rely upon evidence of mental disease or defect excluding criminal responsibility" and that she lacked the mental state required as an element of the crime charged.

When police entered the home of Harold Sasko in January, they found the bloody body of the pizza store owner with his hands and ankles bound and the word "freedom" scrawled in his blood on a nearby wall, Lawrence police testified Friday at the preliminary hearing of McLinn.

Lawrence police and a forensic pathologist testified during the preliminary hearing in Douglas County District Court.

McLinn, a Topeka native, is charged with premeditated first-degree murder of Sasko and theft of his car. District Court Judge Paula Martin ordered McLinn, 19, bound over for trial, starting Aug. 4.

According to the statute, the defendant has to follow the orders of the judge requiring her to undergo a mental examination by a physician or psychologist.The defendant also can undergo an examination by a physician or psychologist of her choosing.

Reports of mental examinations must be filed in the court, then made available to prosecution and defense attorneys.

Sasko, 52, owner of two CiCi’s pizza restaurants in Topeka and one in Lawrence, was killed Jan. 14, and police found him on Jan. 17 after McLinn’s family called police to check on her welfare.

McLinn met Sasko when she was a CiCi’s employee while in high school, and she moved in his house after she graduated because she didn’t get along with her mother.

Lawrence police Detective M.T. Brown said McLinn confessed during a police interview in Miami after she was taken into custody Jan. 25 in Sasko’s car while it was parked at the visitor's center at the Everglades National Park in Florida.

McLinn told officers she took five sleeping pills from Sasko’s medications, crushed them and slipped them into a beer he requested she get him.

Sasko eventually fell over unconscious in the family room of his southwest Lawrence home where she lived, Brown said.

McLinn retrieved cable ties to bind his wrists behind his back and ankles and a large hunting knife, Brown said. The sleeping pills and restraints were to incapacitate the much larger Sasko. When he mumbled, McLinn hesitated and cut off the wrist restraints.

But she went ahead with her plan, binding his wrists again before locating his carotid artery, then stabbing Sasko in the neck. She then proceeded to saw across his neck, nearly decapitating the victim, witnesses said.

Florida officials said McLinn had two knives, two guns, an ax and hashish when taken into custody. Brown said the blood-stained knife used to kill Sasko was in the car.

Brown also testified McLinn told police both of them were drunk once when they kissed, something she regretted.

When drunk, he would make passes at her but she turned him down, Brown said. That wasn’t why she killed him, Brown testified.

"She said she wanted to see someone die," and she wanted to do it, Brown testified. She had violent thoughts for several years, then five days before the killing, she "fixated" on Sasko, the detective said.

She also wanted "freedom" from the life she was living, and Sasko had talked of suicide, but the "ultimate answer" to why she killed him was she wanted to see how someone died, Brown said.