FARMINGTON — A Davis County judge has decided that it is too risky for the Utah State Hospital to conditionally release a man who in 2006 fatally shot and slashed his mother after an “alien intelligence” told him she was a “replicant” who had to die.

During a September hearing for the consideration of a conditional release, Jeremy Hauck, 34, testified that the supposed intelligence, called “the source,” said he had to kill the woman and stuff her body into a chest freezer so the replicant would not “regenerate.”

Without emotion and while twitching noticeably, according to the judge, Hauck testified that he began having auditory hallucinations during high school. He said the “data stream” in his head told him that his mother’s replicant’s task was to kill him and that he had to kill her first.

Hauck has been at the hospital since the court on March 4, 2013, found him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. The court committed Hauck to the hospital after finding the man had a mental illness and was “a substantial danger to himself and others.”

Hauck was 18 when he killed Laura Hauck, 51, on Aug. 5, 2006, in their Bountiful apartment. He shot her twice in the head and slit her throat, severing both jugular veins.

State Hospital staff members testified that a treatment plan would allow Hauck to move off campus and that his paranoid schizophrenia would remain well-controlled if he stayed on his medication, to be enforced by random blood tests and searches and visits with hospital personnel.

But 2nd District Judge Ronald Russell, in a ruling and order filed on Nov. 18, said he was not persuaded that Hauck’s “dangerousness has been adequately controlled.” Even while undergoing treatment in the secure environment of the State Hospital, Hauck “has continued to be attracted to violent media, has had episodes described as ‘rage,’ and has acted violently toward staff,” the judge said.

Russell ordered Hauck to remain at the Provo institution. He said he would revisit Hauck’s status in six months. The commitment order in 2013 was for 16 years to life, mirroring the prison sentence he would have received if found guilty of the murder.

The judge said he remained concerned after State Hospital personnel testified that while Hauck’s mental illness has been brought under control, it could worsen without medication. The judge said the release plan did not sufficiently outline monitoring steps to ensure compliance.

He also said evidence of Hauck’s supposed improvement was largely anecdotal and not backed by data.

The judge quoted a letter that Hauck wrote as part of a school assignment a few months before the homicide.

“I have no friends, nor do I desire any,” Hauck wrote. “I would rather be fed into a wood chipper than socialize with any of the pathetic inhabitants of this planet.” He also said he spent time researching various interests: “Weapons, torture, psychology, pathology, serial killers.”

A State Hospital doctor testified that Hauck’s mental illness will never go away but that it is controlled by medications. The “data stream” is still there, but the symptoms have been reduced, he said.

Under the release plan, Hauck would be allowed to rent an apartment somewhere in Utah County. The doctor said Hauck had gone on unsupervised day trips and had earned certificates at Mountainland Technical College.

But Russell noted that Hauck receives his medication each day and is watched by staff to make sure he takes it. If allowed to live off campus, “that structure would be gone” and Hauck would be left to independently manage his medication.

Based on the State Hospital’s past practices and lack of sufficient resources, the judge said he is “not convinced that regular blood testing can be performed or will be performed in the future to verify medication levels.” The judge concluded there is a “reasonable probability” that Hauck may not take his medication.

Further, the judge said the release plan does not address how prohibitions on alcohol, illicit drugs and weapons may be enforced adequately. In addition to the .22 caliber rifle used to kill his mother, Hauck had acquired an AR-15-type rifle, a shotgun and ammunition, the judge said the court record showed.

Efforts to contact Todd Utzinger, Hauck’s public defender, and Gage Arnold, the Davis County Attorney’s Office’s prosecutor on the case, were not immediately successful.

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