The handyman captured on video fatally bludgeoning an elderly couple with his hammer at their Irondale motel took the stand in his own defense Friday, telling jurors a lifetime of mental illness and heavy drug use caused him to blackout and carry out the horrific killings.

“My body just took over,’’ Steven Richard Mulkey testified. “It’s just animosity, aggression. It wasn’t me. It was not me. I can’t explain it.”

“I didn’t realize what I did until I woke up and looked around and I was like, “Whoa. What have I done?”

The 32-year-old Mulkey has pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to the charg of capital murder in the Sept. 16, 2018, slayings of Siumei Kao, 76, and her husband, 77-year-old Ching Kao, immigrants who came to the U.S. to live the “American Dream.”

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty if Mulkey is convicted.

The jury will begin deliberations at 9 a.m. Monday.

The killings happened inside the office of their Siesta Motel in Irondale during a dispute over money after Mulkey mowed grass for them at their two properties. The murders were captured on the surveillance video at the Crestwood Boulevard motel, a video that was played for the jury during this week’s trial.

Prosecutors – Chief Deputy District Attorney Joe Roberts and Deputy District Attorney Neal Zarzour – contend Mulkey, who has previous felony convictions, is a “cold-blooded killer” who killed the Kaos because he was angry at the way they treated him and their refusal to pay him what they owed him.

Mulkey’s attorneys, Chris Daniel and Scott Brower, say that their client’s mental illness and heavy drug use kept him from knowing right from wrong in the moments he carried out the murders.

Mulkey testified for more than an hour Friday morning in the courtroom of Jefferson Circuit Judge Alaric May, who is presiding over the trial.

There was extra security in the courtroom as Mulkey took the stand, including two deputies standing just feet from him.

Under questioning by Daniel, one of his attorneys, Mulkey explained that he suffered from behavioral problems beginning at an early age and spent much of his childhood in and out of group homes and institutions.

He said he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, ADD and ADHD.

Mulkey said he began using drugs at the age of 12, including alcohol, weed and methamphetamine. “Anything a teenager could get his hands on,’’ he said.

Court records show Mulkey pleaded guilty in December 2013 to a charge of third-degree robbery.

He was originally charged with first-degree robbery but pleaded to a reduced charge. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with 30 months to serve followed by five years of probation,

Mulkey was sent to Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, which is responsible for providing comprehensive psychiatric evaluation/treatment to the criminally committed.

The court ordered that Mulkey continue his mental health treatments once he was released from the facility. In 2014, according to records, Mulkey’s probation officer reported that mental health officers notified him to say that Mulkey had failed to show up for his “injections” and appointments.

He was sent back to prison for a couple of years and released when he was 28 years old.

When released, Mulkey testified, state prison officials gave him $10, a bus ticket and an outfit. They did not help with any other reentry resources.

He said he found work with a construction company and was living in an extended stay provided by the company that he was working for at that time. He said he was supposed to be on anti-psychotic and mood-stabilizing medication but was not taking it because the government denied him benefits.

Once the job was complete, he began living in the Econo Lodge in Irondale. He would go to various business to find odd jobs to make money.

Asked if he was still using drugs at that time, he replied, “All my life.”

“It made me balance out with my inner self more, why I don’t know. That’s complicated right there,’’ Mulkey said. “I was trying to stay with reality and trying to escape my past.”

He said on his daily route for odd jobs, he met the Kaos and said he noticed the motel needed work, so he stopped to ask them if they needed any work done. They hired him to mow the grass at their two properties, and perhaps fix a leak.

On the day of the murders, he said, he arrived at the motel “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed due to the drugs I was using.” He said he was taking a mixture of cocaine and meth.

He said Mrs. Kao took him to the other property to mow the grass while she was taking a nap in the car. “I was smoking reefer while out of the sight of Mrs. Kao while she was napping,” he said.

When the job was done, they went back to the Siesta Motel, which had been shut down earlier that year for code violations. The Kaos were the only people living there.

Mulkey said he put away the lawnmower then ingested a gram of a mixture of cocaine and meth.

“It takes a minute to hit you but when it hits you, it’s like an adrenalin that is uncontrollable,’’ he testified.

He went into the office where he met with Mr. Kao. He still had with him a hammer that he planned to use to help fix a leak at the motel.

“We started arguing about the money that was still owed to me and when that argument took place, I lost it,’’ Mulkey said. “I lost all self-control.”

His attorney asked him if, when he woke up from his blackout, did he realize he’d done something wrong. “I did do wrong.”

Mulkey said he panicked. “I started hyperventilating…tried to breath, tried to regain focus. It’s hard but I can regain focus,’’ he said.

He then dragged the victims’ bodies to the back office.

He said he didn’t know if it was day or night.

“Everything was discombobulated,’’ he said. “I was so shook up at what I’d done.”

He said he went back to his room at the Econo Lodge and did more drugs. “I realized then I was out of control at the moment I did what I did to the Kaos,’’ he said.

Hours later, he said, he went back to the motel to try to dispose of the bodies.

“My main focus was to try to put them in something and safely get them from Point A to Point B without being spotted,’’ he said. “I was so shook up about what I did. I was scared to call the police. I just wanted it to all go away, that it had never happened.”

He said he left and went to Graysville and bought more drugs. “I was trying to figure it out. It wasn’t an easy situation to figure. That was one of the most hardest situations I’d ever had to try to figure out.”

“I was all over the city, hardly any food,’’ he said. “I was flying by the seat of my britches.”

Eventually Mulkey went back to the motel where he wrapped the Kaos bodies in sheets and secured them with nylon rope. He put them in the trunk of their own vehicle, and also stole one of their safes.

He kept the bodies in the trunk overnight, and again went back to Graysville where he cracked open the safe.

“I took the bodies to the Leeds the following morning after the highways and traffic died down,’’ he said.

Mulkey dumped their bodies in a wooded area off Rex Lake Road, where they were found more than a week later. “I put them in woods, at the foot of a tree,’’ he said.

Mulkey ditched the victims’ vehicle and used their money to buy a Dodge Charger.

“That was my means of getting around until the U.S. Marshals got on me,’’ he said. “By that time, I figured the car would be too hot to actually put out on the road.”

He then bought another car and headed out of town.

“At that time, Trump had the borders locked down and I couldn’t go to Mexico. That was my first intention,’’ Mulkey said. He then headed to New York City to “blend in with 800 million people.”

“I figured I could blend in, get lost in the crown, and run from my past even more,’’ he said.

He never made it to New York. He was captured by U.S. Marshals on Sept. 25 at the Hometown Inn in Virginia.

“The U.S. Marshals located me off a cell phone signal at a motel and surrounded the vicinity and took me into custody,’’ he said.

Irondale detectives went to Virginia to question Mulkey. He waived his Miranda Rights and spoke with them.

“It was at that point it was over,’’ he said, “and it was time for me to face up like a man.”

He was shown the video of him killing the Kaos.

“I began to cooperate because I realized the family needed peace, that this needed to put away the right way instead of the wrong way.”

He told the investigators where they could find the Kaos’ bodies.

“It was important to me that it would be best for the family to put their loved ones at ease properly,” he said.

Daniel asked Mulkey about the three teardrop tattoos he has on his face, which he obtained while in the Jefferson County Jail after his arrest on the murders. Teardrop tattoos typically signify the wearer has killed somebody.

“The three teardrops had nothing to do with this case. No offense to the African Americans but I’m in a predominately Black jail and given the world of the jail and of the penitentiary, working out, tattoos things of that nature, puts off a more tougher appearance than I myself could put off without such things,’’ he explained.

Asked by his attorney if he killed the Kaos while he was high on meth, Mulkey said, “I honestly don’t know what overcame me, man.”

Under cross examination by Roberts, Mulkey admitted he changed his appearance by shaving his head and goatee to try to avoid capture. He was also asked if he had planned to have his fingerprints surgically altered.

‘’That would have been in my mind of tasks to complete,” Mulkey said. “You could find a laser surgeon looking for a little extra money.”

Roberts questioned Mulkey about his argument with the Kaos. Mulkey said he had agreed to the mow the grass at the two properties for $100 but that Mr. Kao only wanted to pay him $20. That’s when the argument erupted.

Mulkey also testified that the couple had previously offered to let him sleep on the motel porch, but would not let him stay in one of the rooms.

“Did you take offense to that?,’’ Roberts asked. Mulkey replied, “Yes, in a way.”

“Did you say they were treating you like a dog?” Roberts asked.

“Yes,’’ Mulkey said. “That was my personal opinion, but I’ve been called a lot worse.”

Mulkey testified he remembered the argument, and the moments after the killings, but doesn’t remember the murders at all.

“Do you see that that’s kind convenient that you say, I remember everything right up to the murders and then I remember everything after the murders, but I just blacked out when the terrible thing happened that I did and I can’t talk about it because I don’t remember,’’ Roberts said. “You see how that’s convenient for the jury where (they don’t) get to hear your version of what happened? “

Mulkey replied that, “When you’re doing drugs like that, it just overtakes you all of the sudden, out of the blue.”

Mulkey said he tries not to watch the videotape of the killings because, “I watch it every night in my sleep while I’m sleeping.”

“You should,’’ Roberts said.

“You’re right,’’ Mulkey said.