After over five years, Brian Matheny's case comes to an end. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for a charge of aggravated robbery. The time is not mandatory and he has been given credit for having already served over five years.
Matheny was ruled incompetent to stand trial until he was deemed to be restored in November. But instead of a trial, Matheny decided to plead guilty to his charge. It was in 2014 the northern Michigan man set off down I-75 when he decided to stop in Bluffton to rob the Chase Bank.
He has a long history of mental illness which he detailed during sentencing. He previously got treatment in Mexico that significantly helped and that's where he was headed when he robbed the bank. He said he did it because when he reached out to police for help with his issues, the help never came.
"I said I’m going to leave my country because they’re not policing what’s going on," said Matheny. "I’m going to do it on the federal government’s tab."
He led police on a Chase where it ended with Matheny setting himself on fire by way of Molotov Cocktail.
Matheny said he started hearing voices way back in 1996. From there it progressed to his mental health causing him physical harm.
"My pain," said Matheny. "I started feeling pain in like my feet, like I was walking on golf balls. Or that I didn’t have actual feet. It felt like my 'tib' 'fibs' were what I was stepping on."
Treatments and medications never worked for him, he said. So he wound up in Mexico with a police officer.
"I stayed with that gentleman for seven days and was symptom-free," said Matheny. "So I come back to live—you know it’s not like the kind of life I want to live down there. I come back to stay in Phoenix and it starts all over again."
Matheny says the treatment he’s gotten now and the pills he’s taken have made him feel the best he has in 20 years.
He ended by saying he does sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by his actions in Bluffton. His note to the teller even said he wanted no one else to hurt but himself.
