Tarloff was questioned for about 20 minutes, and the interrogation stopped when he asked for a lawyer, police said. Murder and attempted murder charges were pending, Kelly said. It wasn't clear Saturday evening whether he had gotten a lawyer.
Therapist Kathryn Faughey was slashed 15 times with the cleaver and 9-inch knife in her Manhattan office Tuesday evening. A psychiatrist who worked in the building, Dr. Kent Shinbach, went to Faughey's aid and was badly injured.
During questioning, Tarloff said he had gone to the office because Shinbach had him institutionalized in 1991. He said he planned to rob the psychiatrist and leave the country with his mother, who lives in a nursing home, but until recently had lived with him in an apartment in Queens.
Kelly couldn't confirm whether Tarloff was ever Shinbach's patient, or whether he had met Faughey. It remained unclear why Tarloff would have attacked Faughey, police said.
The breakthrough in the case came as friends, relatives and former patients attended a funeral for the slain therapist in Manhattan. Hundreds of mourners filled St. Monica's Roman Catholic Church on Manhattan's East Side, just down the street from the scene of the crime.
