The government’s final witness in the eligibility phase of Robert Bowers’ trial testified Monday that the man who killed 11 people at a Squirrel Hill synagogue had the capacity to plan and the intent to kill, making him a candidate for execution.

Dr. Park Dietz, a nationally renowned psychiatrist, cited the cold and calculated responses he received from Bowers during three days of interviews in May as evidence supporting his findings.

Dietz pointed to Bowers’ description of his planning of the attack, his ability to keep those plans secret and his analysis of how he performed, including recognizing mistakes he made and how he could have caused more carnage.

“They can kill me if they want, but the score will still be 11 to 1,” Dietz testified that Bowers told him. “That’s not winning the war, but I won the battle.”

Dietz began his testimony on Thursday and returned to the witness stand Monday morning. He will continue being cross-examined on Tuesday.

He is expected to be the final witness for the government in this eligibility phase of Bowers’ trial.

The jury found Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, guilty of killing members of the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations who were worshiping at the synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018.

Killed were Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Irving Younger, 69; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; and Richard Gottfried, 65.

The government is seeking the death penalty. To obtain capital punishment, they must first convince the jury that Bowers had the requisite intent to kill, making him eligible for consideration.

After the shooting, Dietz asked Bowers if he had any regrets, and Bowers told him he regretted “That there weren't dozens and dozens more in there. ... They can kill me if they want but the score will still be 11 to 1. That’s not winning the war, but I won that battle."

— Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) July 10, 2023

The defense has argued that the defendant could not form that intent because they say he has schizophrenia and epilepsy.

Over the past week, the defense called five expert witnesses to support their claims. The prosecution is calling two experts in rebuttal. Dr. Ryan Darby, a behavioral neurologist who contracts under Dietz’s company, testified last week.

He and Dietz reached the same conclusion — that Bowers has neither schizophrenia nor epilepsy.

“I’m clear in my diagnosis, the defendant does not have psychosis or delusions,” Dietz said Monday.

Delusions are a hallmark of schizophrenia, he told the jury.

Instead of schizophrenia, Dietz testified that he believes the defendant has schizoid personality disorder, which is on the same spectrum.

He characterized it as a mental disorder but not a mental disease, because it is circumstantial in nature and not biological.

Schizoid personality disorder is characterized by several symptoms that Dietz said Bowers exhibits. He almost always chooses solitary activities, lacks close friends or confidantes, appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others and shows emotional coldness, detachment or flattened affect.

That disorder, Dietz said, never has evidence of delusions and Bowers has not had any. Instead, the psychiatrist added, Bowers’ extreme beliefs came from an online subculture and were not generated in his own mind. Therefore, Dietz said, they are not delusions.

“Most of us have people in our lives who will call us on it when we go off the rails into these fringe ideas,” Dietz said. “The defendant did not. No one said, ‘That’s stupid. Why do you believe that?’ There was no one he interacted with that he trusted that could tell him that he was wrong.”

Dietz told the jury that it’s possible for schizoid personality disorder to evolve over time into schizophrenia.

In Bowers’ case, that diagnosis does not fit, he said.

Dietz said he believes the differing diagnoses by the defense experts and himself resulted from the other experts failing to understand or do research into the online subculture of white extremism that Bowers was immersed in.

Dietz, who said he has researched white supremacist groups throughout his career, said Bowers subscribed to “very ordinary, widespread separatist beliefs” that are shared by thousands.

“I see how the first time you hear it, it sounds pretty crazy,” Dietz said.

In his interviews with the defendant, Bowers bragged about his accomplishments in the shooting, including his ability to have no weapons malfunctions because he said he practiced and chose his weapons carefully.

Bowers also spoke proudly of his ability to be “the gray man,” or someone who blends in so no one would recognize his plan.

“I was really going for that,” Dietz testified that Bowers told him. “Don’t stick out, don’t bring notice to yourself. He was proud he succeeded staying a gray man.”

During his testimony Monday, Dietz also told the jury that Bowers became animated in talking about his mother, and said during his childhood, she didn’t think logically.

Bowers said she was unable to adequately support him, that he was frequently cold, hungry, wore clothes that didn’t fit, didn’t get his hair cut often enough and didn’t have other kids around to play with.

He also told Dietz that when he was 13, his mother asked his stepfather to hold Bowers down so she could hit him. Though she did not hit him, that incident prompted Bowers to spray her with lighter fluid and try to set his mother on fire. He was hospitalized following that episode.

Dietz told the jury he found no evidence of violence against the defendant by his mother. While there was neglect, Bowers denied physical or sexual abuse.

During his testimony, Dietz described a phone call Bowers had with his mother during his incarceration.

Although Bowers was always careful to warn her not to talk about his case, during one call played for the jury he offered some political views, including one that most republics don’t last more than 250 years.

“Huh, that’s interesting,” his mother responded.

At the end of the call, she said, “Thank you, Rob. I’m so glad you called. I love you.”

“OK,” he responded. “Love you.”

On cross-examination, defense attorney Michael Burt spent a great deal of time questioning Dietz about the definition and symptoms of schizophrenia.

“I’m sure he has several of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia,” Dietz said of Bowers.

But he emphasized that he does not believe Bowers has delusions.

“That’s the entire issue of disagreement in this case,” he said.

Occasionally during cross-examination, Dietz appeared to take shots at psychologists for using testing instruments to complete their assessments, which defense experts did extensively in this case. He said that psychiatrists tend not to use them.

“It sounds scientific whether it is or not,” he said of those formal assessments.

Burt countered by questioning Dietz on his feelings about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM, which is commonly used to diagnose mental illness.

“For diagnosis, it is the standard reference work,” Dietz said. “It doesn’t mean people can’t disagree with it.”

Dietz said he prefers to use a psychiatry book first written in 1983 and last updated in 1998 called “The Perspectives of Psychiatry,” written by two professors at Johns Hopkins University, where he attended medical school.

“We’re just more thoughtful and precise than the committees that wrote this,” Dietz said referring to the DSM, which was updated in 2022.

Dietz said he used one testing instrument to measure adverse childhood events in Bowers’ life. He recorded four that could impact him in adulthood. They included not having enough to eat, wearing dirty clothes and having no one to care for him; losing his father to suicide; living with someone who was mentally ill (his mother); and living at times with someone with an alcohol or substance abuse problem (his grandmother).

Dietz said that, broadly, children raised in homes without love and nurturing find it hard to form healthy attachments, but it doesn’t mean they can’t hold down a job.

“It certainly doesn’t make it inevitable someone will be a criminal,” he said.

Burt led the defense on a line of question that appeared to attempt to undermine Dietz’s personal credibility.

At the end of Monday’s session, Dietz said he blames the media for what he calls an “epidemic” of mass shootings because extensive coverage leads to copycat acts.

Burt asked whether Dietz making that statement was hypocritical given his vast media presence, including consulting on Law & Order, appearing repeatedly on CNN to talk about mass shootings, as well as in an HBO special called “The Ice Man and the Psychiatrist,” in which Dietz interviewed a contract killer who said he had killed hundreds of people.

Burt started to play for the jury a montage of video clips from a prior trial in which Dietz testified, but the government objected.

The issue will be resolved when cross-examination continues Tuesday morning.

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