Fort Worth man accused in his mother’s ‘exorcism’ bludgeoning found incompetent
A psychologist concluded last month in a report that a man who Tarrant County prosecutors allege beat his mother to death, likely with a wooden jewelry box, is incompetent, and a judge on Tuesday ordered his transfer from a jail to a state mental health facility.
“It was an exorcism,” Alexander Valdez told police officers as he walked out of a far west Fort Worth house and sat on a chair on the front porch on April 18, according to a detective’s affidavit supporting Valdez’s arrest warrant for murder in the death of Teresita Sayson, 58.
Valdez had a Bible in his hand and was covered in what police suggest was his mother’s blood.
Valdez’s competency will be reevaluated in an exam in the coming months.
It is not clear from what specific mental health problems the psychologist found Valdez, who is 23, suffers. Competency reports are often filed under seal.
Beyond Valdez’s current competency, “it’s obvious something was wrong at the time of the alleged crime,” Mamie Johnson, Valdez’s appointed defense attorney, told a reporter on Tuesday.
“I was doing witchcraft to kill my mom,” Valdez explained to the officers, according to the affidavit. The document was written by homicide unit Detective Christopher Martin.
An officer asked if anyone else was in the house in the 9900 block of Farmers Branch Street, west of Loop 820.
“There is a dead body in there. It’s my mom,” Valdez said.
Police allege that Valdez killed Sayson by striking her multiple times in the face and upper body with an object that they suggest in the affidavit is a wooden jewelry box.
Inside the master bedroom where Sayson’s body was found, police said they also located a broken jewelry box in which hair was wedged.
Blunt force head injuries caused Sayson’s death, a Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office pathologist concluded.
This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 12:48 PM.
