FOR over two years, his family and acquaintances had noticed his strange and erratic behaviour but they were unconcerned as it was infrequent.
However, past noon on Jan 5, 2010, his mental flare-up drew immense attention nationwide.
Rasidi Ismail, then aged 34, went on a killing spree, murdering his father Ismail Awang, 76, sister Siti Khadijah and his grandparents, Atan Daud, 90, and Sofiah Katas, 80.
The victims were slashed, stabbed and their bodies were found mutilated at their house in Kampung Batang Rokan, Gemencheh, Negeri Sembilan.
The university dropout, who had worked in a bank before switching jobs as a restaurant worker, had earlier returned to his hometown from Kuala Lumpur. After the killings, Rasidi, the fourth of eight siblings, beheaded his father Ismail and fled the house with the older man’s head.
He then left in an interstate bus to Kuala Lumpur. Rasidi’s younger sister, then aged 18, alerted neighbours after she made the gruesome find on returning home from school, about two hours later.
Police launched a hunt for Rasidi and he was arrested the following day in Kuala Lumpur after he attacked a policeman who recognised him as the man wanted for the killings.
Following an interrogation, Rasidi led police to his father’s severed head, which he had buried at a Muslim cemetery in Shah Alam.
Rasidi was later handed over to the Negeri Sembilan police for a full-scale probe into the killings, before he was charged in court for multiple murders.
During the trial, the mentally-disturbed man described the hallucinations he underwent prior to committing the killings.
He said he had sleepless nights days earlier and “saw writings on the wall of his room” with messages asking him to kill the victims. The next day he fulfilled the “orders”.
Rasidi claimed he had many other “visuals” such as watching his mother and sister die, his father rising to the skies and his brother turning to stone.
On grounds of being mentally-ill, Rasidi was acquitted in Sept 2010 and held at the pleasure of the Yang Di-Pertuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan.
