Criminally Insane : Television: HBO documentary focuses on recovery of man who killed his fiancee in San Diego during a psychotic rage and spent six years in Patton State Hospital before being released.

The camera focuses on Chris Clarke, sitting on his bed in Patton State Hospital, talking about killing his fiancee.

“Something snapped,” he says almost inaudibly. “I began thinking things that were not real. I began having paranoid thoughts and believing people were trying to get me.”

The interviewer doesn’t say a word. Clarke begins to cry softly.

“It was as if somebody else came into my body,” Clarke says. “I can’t use that excuse. I can’t tell people I didn’t do that crime, but I didn’t. Someone else did it, someone I’ve never known.

“And I don’t want to ever meet that person again.”

Six months after that interview, filmed for “Asylum,” the HBO documentary about Patton State Hospital which premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. (review on F5), Clarke sits in the downtown San Diego office of Doug Smith, a program manager for the county’s conditional release program. Clarke entered the program last September when he was discharged from Patton after five years and four months.

Clarke’s release from Patton is chronicled in “Asylum,” which follows the daily activities of five inmates inside the institution for the criminally insane.

“They don’t get any worse than they get here,” one staffer says in the film. “We’re the bottom line for the treatment of psychosis.”

Clarke’s mustache is gone, but otherwise the 34-year-old looks physically unchanged from his interview in Patton. He sits casually, slumped down in his chair, relaxed. He is a big man, 6-foot-7, with the broad shoulders and body of an athlete.

Dressed in a blue sports jacket, gray slacks and striped tie, he looks like a banker, which is appropriate, since the former broadcast operations manager now works as an analyst for the investment reporting division of a San Diego bank.

It is a job he expects to lose after the HBO documentary airs and this interview is published. Some of his employers know about his background, but it is not common knowledge at the bank.

By law, he is not required to disclose details about his history to prospective employers. But Clarke, who says he doesn’t want to be accused later of misrepresenting himself, has “a tendency to reveal the full, rich nature of what he has done, and that is a handicap,” Smith said.

Smith sits nearby throughout the interview, required for Clarke to be able to talk to the press. Smith and Clarke’s friends advised him not to do this interview. In addition to the stress and the damage it could do to his employment, there is the question of the victim’s family, who have threatened him in the past.

But Clarke is on a mission. His message is simple: Anyone can fall victim to mental illness, and it is possible to recover. He is offering himself as living example.

“There are a lot of people out there marching to the same step I did,” he says. “They’re just as driven as I was. They may not have dangerous results, but they could.”

When Clarke discusses his life before “the crime,” it is almost as if he is talking about a third party, a completely different person. A $75,000-a year, BMW-driving Republican who worked on three campaigns for Ronald Reagan, he was in favor of capital punishment and far from open-minded about mental illness.

“I was a borderline fascist for years, just a little to the left of the John Birch Society,” he says with a smile. “This was a rude awakening.”

The scene is a combination going-away-birthday party for Clarke at Patton. Inmates are wrapping crepe paper around poles. There is applause and hugging when he enters the room.

“It’s sad to see you go,” says one man. “I’ve seen a lot of people come and a lot of people go, and I’ve seen a lot of people come back, and I hope you’re not one of them.”

Clearly choked with emotion, Clarke addresses the room.

“Well, this is the sixth birthday since I’ve been locked up, and it’s certainly been my best. I think all of you made it possible by being here and showing love, and I appreciate it, I really do.

“And I hope for those of you who I leave behind, I hope you can celebrate a birthday in freedom soon, as I hope to. Because this place is all about getting out and starting your life again, and I realize that now.”

In 1985, Clarke was laid off from his job of seven years with Oak Industries in Rancho Bernardo. He found a new job as the general manager of a post-production video facility in Los Angeles, but the pressures began to build. He was ordered to fire some employees. He was attempting to conduct a long-distance relationship with his fiancee in San Diego. His well-structured life began to unravel. Delusions and paranoia began to take over.

Still, no one saw the tragedy ahead, says Jenny Cullinan-James, a San Francisco Bay Area resident who worked with Clarke for three years at Oak.

“If I was to go through my Christmas card list and ask who could kill someone, he’d be at the bottom of the list,” Cullinan-James said. “He’s a very warm, intelligent person, and that description applied before this happened, as well as afterward.”

On Sept. 21, 1985, convinced that his fiancee, Jill Hunter, was “trying to recruit him into the devil’s brigade,” he flew into a psychotic rage and choked her to death. Neighbors called the police, who arrived just moments after she died.

Clarke says he had no idea what he had done. In the film, he describes the killing as the end of a movie. “It stopped as fast as it started,” he says. “Suddenly I was Chris Clarke again, and my fiancee was lying on the floor.”

Taken to jail, he couldn’t deal with the horror of the situation. He tried to commit suicide several times. In his last attempt, which almost succeeded, he tried to hang himself at County Jail in downtown San Diego.

Found not-guilty by reason of insanity, he was sent to Patton, where he exhibited signs of extreme depression. A therapist who put him on a regimen of playing tennis and other recreational activities helped start him back on the road to the world of the living.

At Patton, Clarke says, he “felt more love and affection than any time in my life.” He became something of an expert on psychology, reading every book he could on mental health, exhibiting intelligence that made him an “atypical” Patton patient, Smith says.

The turning point came in 1989, Clarke remembers. Following the steps in a self-help book, he listed all the bad things he had done and disclosed them to a therapist, a cathartic experience for Clarke.

“Those were the things I had been hiding, that I wasn’t dealing with,” he said.

“Asylum” gives viewers a straightforward, cinema verite look at the inner workings of the Patton facility. Several other patients also were interviewed (including one woman who killed her baby) and followed through their daily rituals and therapy sessions.

Clarke’s story becomes an emotional centerpiece for the film; his imminent release and articulate nature are used to demonstrate that Patton’s techniques can have an effect.

“I find him to be a very compassionate character,” “Asylum” producer Shari Cookson said. “The scariest thing about meeting Chris was it made us realize it could happen to anyone.”

Clarke saw an advance copy of the documentary and says the film demonstrates what Patton does to help people. One scene is particularly important, he says: A hysterical woman convicted of arson is shown being brought into the facility for the first time, screaming incoherently about torturers and Lionel Richie.

Doctors give her drugs, though, and she calms down. Throughout the film she is seen as relaxed and in control.

“People don’t trust psychotropic medication,” Clarke says. “I’ve seen so many cases where remarkable things happen.”

Clarke laughed about another scene, in which he is shown taking a pill. The viewer may assume he’s taking some type of mood-altering medication. In fact, he was taking aspirin, the only medication he takes regularly.

Clarke’s problem was “not brain chemistry,” Smith said. “It is more certain that Chris’ psychosis was brought about by a series of stressors in his life, exacerbated by his upbringing,” particularly a history of abuse during his childhood.

According to Smith, Clarke was suffering from a form of schizophrenia that can result in brief psychotic episodes.

“Generally, it’s not recurring. It is unlikely that he would have another psychotic episode in his life,” Smith said.

Clarke has a strong support group in San Diego, including many relatives, which is a big advantage, Smith says. Fourteen people showed up to support him at his hearing to decide if he would be released from Patton, Clarke says proudly.

Early in the interview, Clarke said he still stays in touch with many of the people he knew before the killing. But later he conceded that that is not completely true. Many people he was close to don’t talk to him anymore. His best friend visited him in the hospital before he was released, and it was clear to Clarke that he was there to say goodby.

“People who are supportive, and there are a good many of them, are so supportive and understanding that it far outweighs those that have cast me away,” he says quietly.

He doesn’t judge those that have turned away. “I was there,” he says.

It’s a few hours before Clarke’s release from Patton, and he is reflecting on his past life.

“I know now that I am mentally ill,” he says. “Just like someone with cancer who has to take chemotherapy, I know I have to do certain interventions to prevent another psychosis. And I know I’ve learned those things here and that I can do them.

“Just like someone who takes medication for a heart problem. If they don’t take that medication, they may die. If I don’t take steps to keep myself from going insane again, someone else may die.”

Because of the insanity verdict, Clarke is not a convicted felon, and his civil rights are not restricted in any way; for example, he can vote. He will stay in the conditional release program until Superior Court fully restores his legal status, releasing him from the program. Patients such as Clarke usually stay in the system for two to three years, Smith says.

Although he lived in a halfway house when he was first released, he now lives on his own in San Diego County and is financially self-sufficient. As long as he maintains contact with the release program and doesn’t violate any of the agreements he made when he left Patton, such as not drinking or doing drugs, he is free to do what he wants. In addition to his job, he helps raise money for the La Mesa YMCA. He plays tennis and volleyball regularly, and he’s taking a French class.

He seems happy. The smile comes quickly. But the memory that he has committed a killing is never far away.

“I still think about it, not everyday, but I see things that trigger the memories,” he says, his voice trailing off. “And that dampens any happiness I feel.”

According to the film, 88% of patients released from Patton never commit another crime. Clarke says he would recognize it if he was getting into trouble again. He knows the signs now--the mistrust of others, the lack of sleep, the compulsive behavior. He knows what to do to avoid stress.

When asked about the pressures he’s facing now, the stress of going public with his story, he takes off his glasses and leans forward.

The stress is “not as much as murdering somebody,” he says, forming the words slowly.

“This is a cakewalk compared to that.”