A Largo man who snuck into a home and stabbed to death a woman and her 17-year-old granddaughter three years ago was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder Tuesday after a jury rejected defense arguments that he was insane at the time of the killings.
Jurors needed only about an hour to find Sage Curry, now 22, guilty in the April 2021 slayings of Zhaneta Dindi, 78, and Hera Dindi, 17, in a random attack that occurred after he followed them home from a walk on the Pinellas Trail.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Keith Meyer sentenced Curry to life in Florida state prison without the possibility of parole — the only sentence allowed because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
“We came here from a poor country (Albania) with nothing and wanted our children to succeed. Hera didn’t have that chance,” Arreti Dindi, daughter of Zhaneta Dindi and aunt of Hera Dindi, told the judge before sentencing. “This is where we are today. This is what he did to us. He took our future. Hera wanted to have her own family one day and he took that from her.”
Curry’s defense did not contest that he killed Zhaneta and Hera Dindi. Instead, they argued that he showed signs of mental illness long before the killings, and they urged jurors to find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
During closing arguments, Curry’s lawyers attributed his actions to “delusions” where he couldn’t tell fiction from reality.
Family members who took the stand last week said they noticed a shift in Curry’s behavior as he aged into his late teens.
They characterized him as a “gentle” kid who grew more erratic as his mental health began to slip. But the family, who lived in a Largo mobile home, couldn’t afford his medication.
“I knew he was mentally ill and I wanted him to get help,” said his mother, Angela Curry.
Prosecutors, however, argued Curry knew what he was doing the night of the killings, then quickly tried to cover it up while faking his insanity.
“He’s lying because he wants to spin a story that makes him look like the victim,” assistant state attorney Paul Bolan said during closing arguments.
‘The sharpest kitchen knife he could find’
Prosecutors said Curry followed Zhaneta and Hera Dindi home along the Pinellas Trail the night of April 25, 2021. He said he masturbat*d outside Hera’s bedroom window before quietly entering the house while she slept in her bed.
Curry then took multiple knives from the kitchen and placed them around the home, prosecutors said.
Curry later told Largo police that he attacked them both “with the sharpest kitchen knife he could find” — a butcher knife, according to an arrest report.
About 1 a.m., Curry stabbed Zhaneta Dindi multiple times in the heart while she slept on a couch, prosecutors said.
Hera came out of her room while Curry and her grandmother were struggling. The two fought, and Curry stabbed Hera nine times in the throat, prosecutors said. Before she died, she cut his hand and the back of his head.
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Explore all your optionsA neighbor called 911 after Curry showed up to a nearby home, bleeding from the head and banging on the man’s door.
Curry then told police a woman two doors down had stabbed him. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. When officers approached the house, they spotted the bodies through a window.
Insane or malingering?
Curry’s grandmother, Sharon Schwemmer, took the stand last week and spoke about her grandson’s upbringing. Defense lawyers and prosecutors asked her about multiple visits by the Florida Department of Children and Families to the home, of which “every inch of the floor was covered in dog poo,” she said.
“He was sweet. He was quiet,” Schwemmer said. “He liked to dress nice.”
All that changed around Curry’s 18th birthday, his grandmother said.
She worried about him after his grades slipped and he lost his job at a car wash in Largo. Schwemmer said it appeared her grandson couldn’t tell fiction from reality — TV shows he watched started to bleed into his perception of the world around him.
Court records show Curry spoke at length about fictional characters with detectives in a conflicting and confusing account of the murders.
In jail awaiting trial, Curry tattooed a crescent moon on his forehead — a reference to Moon Knight, the protagonist in a Disney+ show who grapples with dissociative identity disorder, prosecutors said.
Curry told a state expert he thought the tattoo would help his case.
Schwemmer said Curry thought he was a character in The Umbrella Academy, a comedy on Netflix that follows seven children with superpowers. When she disagreed with him, Curry became upset.
”You don’t understand,” Schwemmer recalled Curry telling her. “If I do math, cars will start crashing and things will happen out there. It’ll be a catastrophe.”
A friend of Curry’s said he went to lunch with him the day before the attack and heard Curry “talking insanity,” imagining himself having sexual relations with characters on television, including one from The Umbrella Academy, according to court records. They had been drinking and smoking marijuana.
Curry’s lawyers argued blood tests taken an hour after the killings showed he wasn’t impaired that night.
Curry first told investigators he had been stabbed by “Allison Hargraves,” after she and “Granny Smith” invited him to their home for a cigarette.
When asked why he killed them, Curry gave mental health experts a handful of answers.
In one account, Curry said they were time travelers and that he had to kill them to save the world. In another, he thought he was Jesus Christ and said he was going to have sex with them before leaving through a portal.
Assistant state attorney Bolan said this inconsistency in his story showed Curry could not have suffered from delusions, as his lawyers had argued.
Mental health experts called by the state defined delusions as “fixed, false beliefs.” If Curry’s symptoms fit the bill, he would have stuck to one story, Bolan argued.
“That’s not insanity,” Bolan said.
Assistant public defender Paige Parish said contradictions in Curry’s story could be explained by his mental illness. Recounting the incident to detectives was made more difficult by a recent dose of fentanyl he was given in the ambulance for his injuries, the defense argued.
“He’s trying to explain his delusions, which he’s never had to do before,” Parish said.
Parish argued that a mentally ill person’s account of events is bound to be confusing and that the details of Curry’s delusions might change, but his belief in them was unwavering.
“It’s just another sign of his delusions,” she said.
Prosecutors also argued that “a psychotic person could not compose himself in court without medication.”
Curry, wearing a pink shirt and silver tie, sat quietly at the defense table Tuesday while his lawyers and the state jousted.
On his ankle, another jail tattoo read a name repeated over and over during his trial: “Hera.”
Mental health experts who testified couldn’t agree on whether it was a trophy or a remorseful tribute to the slain girl.
