Days after Michael Brea was arrested for decapitating his mother with a samurai sword Tuesday, the one-time "Ugly Betty" actor has opened up about how the chilling slaying unfolded.
"I didn't kill her. I killed the demon inside her," Michael, 31, told the New York Daily News from the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital. "It was the work of God."
Before slaying his 55-year-old mother, Yannick Brea, Michael claims he had several visions that left him no other choice.
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"I was sleeping in my bedroom. God came above my bed and reached his arm to me," he remembered. "I said, 'God, is my time on earth over?' I heard a voice say, 'Yes Michael, today is your last day.'"
Keeping the dream to himself, Michael says he was given another sign when a man put a curse on him at the Prince Hall Masonic Temple in Harlem, which he'd joined a week earlier.
"[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," he said.
While riding the subway train to Brooklyn, Michael said strangers began approaching him to speak about his mother.
"I felt like Neo from 'The Matrix.' I began hearing voices and feeling powerful," Michael said. "They were asking about the difference between mom and mother. It was a sign."
When he arrived at the family's Prospect Heights apartment, Michael recalled hugging Yannick because "I knew I would never see her again."
Michael then entered his bedroom and lit candles before placing a dagger and a 3-foot ceremonial Freemason sword by his side (investigators believe he stole the sword from the Masonic lodge, which Michael denies).
Shortly after, Yannick knocked on Michael's door and asked her son for help in the kitchen.
"I looked at these chickens lying dead in the pot and a voice told me it was a sacrifice. It was black magic," Michael said. He left the uncooked chickens in the pot and retreated back to his bedroom.
When his mother asked why he wasn't doing what she asked, Michael claims she spoke with a different voice.
"She had the voice of the demon. I opened the door with the dagger at my side and the sword," he said. "I asked, 'Do you believe in God?' She said, 'No, Michael no,' and began screaming. I began slashing her like this," the actor explained while slamming his right hand down in a violent hacking motion.
He then chased his mother from room to room, leaving a trail of blood throughout the house.
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"I didn't want to kill her right away," he explained. "I wanted to give her time to get right with God."
Not too long after, police had arrived outside the family's apartment, but Michael "knew they wouldn't open the door and stop me because the spirits were protecting me. I just kept cutting her. No one could stop me. I was doing the work of God."
By the time police made it inside, they found a bloody trail of footprints and handprints on the walls and floors; Yannick was on her knees in the bathroom while Michael stood with the sword in one hand and Masonic Bible in the other.
"I heard voices telling me how powerful I was, saying 'Oh he's good,'" Michael said, adding that he feels no remorse for murdering his mother. "I was praising God. To you it might sound silly, but in my culture demons are very real."