An hour after killing his brother, the guy was convicted guilty of killing his 81-year-old mother by shooting her.
After a protracted family argument spanning years, Paul Cohrs shot and killed his mother in Victoria and his brother in New South Wales in October 2018.
In Victoria’s Supreme Court, he was put on trial for ten days for the death of his mother, Bette Schulz Cohrs.
He claimed he was mentally ill and denied ever killing her.
The jury was informed that in 2012, Cohrs’s brother Raymond and him were at odds over the family business, which caused tension in their relationship.
With his mother’s approval, Raymond made the decision to obtain assessments for assets related to the family business, including a property on the NSW border where Cohrs and his spouse were residing.
Cohrs met Raymond and a real estate agent at the gate on October 30, 2018, when they arrived to the property for the evaluation.
After the men pulled up to the shearing shed, Cohrs pulled out his firearm and shot his brother twice.
After that, he travelled 120 km to his mother’s house in Red Cliffs, in Victoria’s northwest, and an hour later, he shot her in the chest.
Cohrs’s attorney contended that Cohrs suffered from delusional disorder and asked the jury to acquit him on the grounds of mental incapacity since he was incapable of understanding the wrongness of his actions.
Prosecutors countered that a different physician had concluded that Cohrs possessed the mental ability to understand what he had done.
Monday morning, the jury went out to deliberate and came back three hours later with a guilty decision on the murder charge.
On September 10, Cohrs will have a pre-sentence hearing.
