A 27-year-old man killed his mother by strangling her during a psychotic episode triggered by a paranoid attack, according to his family.
Austin Hillier Graham was booked into the Multnomah County Jail in November, nearly three weeks after police responded to a report that his mother had died.
They would encounter the body of Teresa Graham, whose husband said he witnessed their son’s illness worsen at the family’s Portland home.
Hunter Graham recalled Monday how the couple had sought help, first noticing Austin’s mental changes following a failed college season that left him back home in 2018.
After this, his decline accelerated, Hunter recalled, a decline that culminated in the heinous crime of October 20. Within weeks, Austin had confessed to murdering his mother and is now committed to a psychiatric hospital in Oregon.
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Austin Hillier Graham, 27, killed his mother Teresa Graham on Oct. 20 at the family’s home in Southwest Portland during a psychotic attack brought on by paranoia. He now resides in a psychiatric hospital in Oregon.
Austin’s father, Hunter, explained Monday why he sees his family’s tragedy as evidence of Oregon’s broken mental health system, which waits for someone to commit a crime before demanding treatment.
Hunter, on Tuesday, said KGW: ‘You shouldn’t have to commit murder to receive 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 very difficult to tell whether his struggles were due to a pre-existing mental illness or as a result of the concussion or a combination of both.”
Hunter went on to explain why he sees his family’s tragedy as evidence of Oregon’s broken mental health system, which waits for someone to commit a crime before demanding treatment.
Providing insight into her son’s mental state at the time, she said Austin strongly believed his mother was secretly poisoning his water, as well as the air around him.
Civil court documents filed months before Teresa’s murder agreed with these claims, recalling years of her son’s mental deterioration beginning in 2018.
The documents claim that Austin, seen posing with his mother in a photo in front of a billboard displaying a scientific study on the effects of concussions on brain activity, suffered a traumatic brain injury.
The injury was not specified, but the parents managed to recover. Austin’s conservatorship in August, after a court was told his mental health worsened dramatically in January 2023.
She wrote that he was unable to work and was isolated in his bedroom in the family home without eating or bathing.
Hunter told KGW on Tuesday: “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; Teresa even wrote that at one point she thought people would come looking for him, which led him to brandish a knife.
That incident didn’t result in anything fatal, but the one a few months later did.
Teresa said the family sought professional psychiatric care for their son during that time, but was thwarted 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 Multnomah County Circuit Court officials that Austin was in “serious and immediate danger” and that his mental health was “rapidly decompensating.”
speaking to KGWAn emotional Hunter said it was clear Austin needed help right now, even though he repeatedly refused care.
“We immediately discovered what you discovered in your (past) reports, which is that involuntary commitment is almost impossible,” he told the station of laws prohibiting 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, it’s a major logistical problem,” Hunter added, revealing that obtaining guardianship still prevented them from being able to take him to a hospital. .
Meanwhile, Austin is charged with murder and is now being held at the Oregon State Hospital, where he is also receiving treatment. A local judge declared him mentally unfit to stand trial.
Before that, in July, Austin was admitted to the Kaiser Permanente Brookside Center, Hunter revealed, speaking of a voluntary inpatient mental health hospital in nearby Clackamas.
Hunter recalled that doctors were overwhelmed when it came to Austin, categorizing him as “beyond their capacity.”
While they allegedly attempted to move him to another location, Austin experienced a severe psychotic break, he said, describing how Austin grabbed a nurse’s badge, escaped from the locked unit and disappeared into the woods.
The police finally found him two days later with blackberry thorns in his feet, after which he refused medication.
Soon, medical professionals determined that Austin did not meet Oregon standards for involuntary treatment, and despite being diagnosed with psychosis, Austin was discharged back to the family home with a behavioral health plan.
However, Hunter on Monday called that plan “unenforceable,” recalling that his wife did not want him to be released.
“My wife, in her wisdom, didn’t want him released because we knew he was going to fail, that the behavioral health plan was designed to fail,” he said.
During this period, Hunter also suffered hallucinations, the parents said; Teresa even wrote that at one point she thought people would come looking for him, which led him to brandish a knife. That incident did not result in anything fatal, but the one a few months later did.
“We were always optimistic that we would get through this and that he would return to being the bright, articulate, promising son that he is and was.”
However, as the spouses had predicted, the behavioral plan ultimately failed and Austin strangled his mother a few weeks later.
Hunter regretted not being home at the time and tearfully declared, “The failure was that he killed her.”
The police were called, but in a strange oversight, Portland Police Department officers ruled that they saw no signs of foul play and, as a result, did not declare Austin a suspect.
However, detectives returned to the 5500 block of Southwest Menefee Drive, in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Southwest Portland, a few days later, presumably after an autopsy.
Two weeks later, Hunter was at another hospital with his son, where he called 911 and confessed to police.
A probable cause affidavit states that the confessed killer told the 911 operator, “I think I just killed my mother” and “she died and I watched her die.”
“In my opinion, treatment certainly would have prevented this,” Hunter said Monday. ‘No one should have to feel this way. The public, the legislature, health care workers, police, everyone needs to know how bad it can get so everyone can work on it.
After police arrived at the scene to arrest him, he scrawled “I killed my mom.” [and] I strangled her with my bare hands’ on the back of a document containing your Miranda rights.
Meanwhile, Austin is charged with murder and is now being held at the Oregon State Hospital, where he is also receiving treatment.
A local judge declared him mentally unfit to stand trial, and his father, a lawyer, stood firm Monday that the state was at least partly responsible for his wife’s murder.
“In my opinion, treatment certainly would have prevented this,” Hunter said Monday, before breaking down in tears.
‘No one should have to feel this way. The public, the legislature, health care workers, police, everyone needs to know how bad it can get so everyone can work on it.’