WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT: Jay Katz shot his father and stepmother in their Maryland home, later confessing to the crime and being handed a 100-year sentence
A twisted killer has relived the moment he shot dead his dad and stepmum. Speaking on photographer Mark Laita’s Soft White Underbelly YouTube channel, Jay Katz revealed that he had been partly inspired by a 1991 crime thriller before deciding to kill his parents.
Katz – real name Jayant Narayan Katz – brutally murdered his dad Norman and stepmum Michelle R. Filling-Katz at their home in Burtonsville, Maryland, in 1991.
In a rambling tape confessing to the murders, he chillingly said the killings were “amazing” and enjoyed “a game of stalking and waiting, of cops and robbers”. According to court documents, Katz’s mother said he had been found to suffer from manic depression, which involves severe mood swings.
After spending 23 years behind bars for two counts of second-degree murder and two handgun offences, Katz was released in 2022. Speaking to Mark, he said he felt suicidal on the day of the murder in August 1991.
As Katz, who was 20 at the time of the murders, contemplated ending his own life in his parents’ house his dad – former US Army doctor Norman N. Katz – called up the stairs and asked if he wanted to watch a video of Wesley Snipes movie New Jack City.
“He had rented New Jack City,” Katz said. “I’d already seen it three times that week … I’m not blaming that movie but there’s some things in that movie that put some ideas in my head about vigilante justice.”
Katz alleges in the video he was sexually abused as a child but this was never proven during court proceedings. He later admitted to police that he had taken his stepmother’s five-shot .38 calibre revolver from her bedroom and took it downstairs with him.
He continued: “My stepmother was standing in the kitchen with her back turned towards me and she was cooking. Then I looked to my left and my dad was sitting on the couch and he had just put the movie in to the VCR. And I was standing there with the gun in my hand and they they didn’t even know what was going to happen.”
Katz’s first shot had passed through his stepmother’s hand as she raised her arm to defend herself, and the second bullet struck her in the face. Deafened by the gunshot, the twisted 20-year-old then chased his dad up the stairs and fatally shot him in the back. With no seeming emotion, the killer told Mark: “I stood there like in our kitchen dining room and I just watched them both bleed out.”
Katz’s younger brother Sanjeev returned home to discover the bloodbath. He called 911 and told police he believed his brother was responsible for the crime.
Sanjeev told police that Katz had repeatedly spoken of wanting to kill his father and stepmother and had discussed using their stepmother’s gun to carry out the murder.
Friends of the victims said that Norman and Michelle Katz had spoken of their concerns about their son, but said his mental health problems did not seem particularly extreme.
Katz pleaded guilty in Montgomery County to two counts of second-degree murder and two handgun offences.
He was offered a plea deal, which would entail a total of 100 years behind bars, adding: “As a 20-year-old kid turning 21 in the detention centre and sitting with having to say yes and sign that piece of paper for 100 years, like that was the hardest decision I ever had made.
“Pulling the trigger was horrible … but agreeing to a hundred years, I just thought man I’m cooked. This is over with. I mean that’s a life sentence too.”
Katz was eventually released in March 2022, having served 23 years behind bars.