Actor Michael Brea Interviewed About Killing His Mother

Actor Michael Brea is under psychological observation in the prison ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital after killing his mother with what has been described in the press as a Masonic sword Tuesday morning. Reporter Matthew Lysiak from the New York Daily News was able to interview him today.

From Michael Brea, bit-part 'Ugly Betty' actor, says, 'I didn't kill her. I killed the demon insider her':

"I was sleeping in my bedroom. God came above my bed and reached his arm to me," said Brea, wearing a light-blue prison jumpsuit and slippers. He told his tale while sitting unhandcuffed on a blue chair behind a wood table.

"I said, 'God, is my time on earth over?' I heard a voice say, 'Yes Michael, today is your last day.' I asked if I could say goodbye to my family."

The 31-year-old Brea said he told no one about the dream, but the following afternoon, he said he received another sign while at the Prince Hall Masonic Temple in Harlem, which he'd joined a week earlier.

There, he said, a man approached and tried to put a curse on him.

"[He] kept trying to put something in my hand but wouldn't show it to me. I kept opening my hand. It was a Freemason pin. I wouldn't touch it," Brea said.

Felt like Neo from 'The Matrix'

He began feeling ill and left, and while riding the train back to Brooklyn, he said, strangers began speaking to him about his mother.

"I felt like Neo from 'The Matrix.' I began hearing voices and feeling powerful," Brea said. "They were asking about the difference between mom and mother. It was a sign."

When he returned to the family's Prospect Heights apartment, the bit-part actor who once appeared on "Ugly Betty," hugged his mother, a God-fearing Haitian immigrant with whom relatives say he had long been very close.

"I knew I would never see my mother again," he said. "I gave her lots of love."

He went to his room and lit candles, placed a dagger and a 3-foot ceremonial Freemason sword by his side.

Investigators said he had stolen the sword from the Masonic lodge, but Brea insisted his father had given it to him when he was a child.

"It's a powerful sword," he said.

Brea also arranged three saint cards around him - including one of Saint Jude holding a sword.

His mother was cooking three chickens in a pot in the kitchen, and Brea was convinced they were a black magic sacrifice. With that, he attacked her with the sword. After describing in detail hacking his mother to death as she screamed for mercy, Brea said he heard cops beating on the door, but knew God would protect him until he had finished his grisly work.

When they finally broke the door down, cops found a trail of bloody footprints and handprints on the walls and floors, and Yannick Brea crumpled on her knees in the bathroom.

Her son stood amid the carnage with the sword in one hand and a Masonic Bible in the other.

"I heard voices telling me how powerful I was, saying 'Oh he's good,'" Brea said.

While recounting the gruesome murder, Brea showed no remorse, and his eyes stayed locked on a reporter.

His intensity only broke for a moment when he said he was thirsty and his mouth was dry. Guards gave him a wet towelette to dab at his lips.

Brea said he is convinced he did the right thing.

"Grand Architect of the Universe means God," he said, referring to an expression neighbors said he shouted as he was being removed from the bloody scene. "I was praising God. To you it might sound silly, but in my culture demons are very real."

Photos in the New York Post showed the murder weapon to be a sword with a wavy "flambard" blade, and not a specifically "Masonic" sword (nor is it a samurai sword, as was reported in early versions of the story). Reports are that he had been initiated in St. John's Lodge No. 29, PHA in Harlem last week, and that he had recently suffered major financial disasters.

Not that any of that matters in the grand scheme of things. A woman is dead at the hands of her own son, who gives every outward appearance of a man who has lost his sanity.