Render Stetson-Shanahan may not remember the merciless moment cops say he plunged a kitchen knife into his roommate three times, but he does know he shouldn’t walk free.
“Even if I had the option to get out of here, I wouldn’t want to go,” the 26-year-old Queens artist and accused killer told The Post in an hour-long jailhouse interview on Rikers Island.
“There’s something very wrong. I need to be in a psychiatric hospital,” he said in a strained voice, looking pale and exhausted.
Stetson-Shanahan was charged with second-degree murder after he allegedly snapped on Sept. 28 and brutally stabbed Carolyn Bush, 26, in the neck, arm and back with a kitchen knife inside the Ridgewood apartment the two Bard College graduates shared.
Stetson-Shanahan — the son of famed New Yorker magazine illustrator Danny Shanahan — claimed he could not remember the grisly act, but pieced together in detail the moments before and after it.
“I remember taking my clothes off for bed and telling myself that I needed to go to sleep,” he said.
“I felt my mind shifting states. It was distinct and very sudden. I started being really loud, stomping around, calling people and talking loudly on the phone. I was also talking really fast. It was like I was someone else.”
Then, he turned his attention toward his roommate, Carolyn, whom he’d been introduced to two years ago through a mutual friend because she needed a new flatmate.
“At one point I . . . asked Carolyn how to use my phone,” he recalled of the bloody night.
“She laughed, gave me a weird look and asked if everything was OK. She knew something was off.”
Police say this is when the frenzied artist took Bush’s life — leaving her sprawled on the floor of their second-story Stanhope Street apartment in a pool of blood. He then maniacally sank the knife into his own leg.
When asked to recall the brutal crime during the Friday interview, Stetson-Shanahan looked down, closed his bright blue eyes and said, “I’d rather not talk about that.
“The next thing I remember is running down the street barefoot in my underwear. I was almost euphoric. The pavement under my feet was wet and I was a bit cold, but I didn’t feel any pain.
“I started smashing people’s car windows with my fist and a knife, I think. I was also going around asking people how to get to Manhattan. I don’t know why,” he said.
‘I felt my mind shifting states. It was distinct and very sudden. I started being really loud, stomping around, calling people and talking loudly on the phone. I was also talking really fast. It was like I was someone else.’
- Render Stetson-Shanahan
His single moment of lucidity came, he recalled, “when I registered that I wasn’t wearing any clothes and felt a bit embarrassed.”
Neighbor Joshua Cruz heard “high-pitched” screams, and spotted Stetson-Shanahan outside in his underwear and covered in blood around 11:25 p.m., Cruz said.
Cruz went outside to talk to him, and the crazed cartoonist lunged at him with a knife, Cruz said. The terrorized neighbor then called 911.
Stetson-Shanahan told The Post he was relieved to be captured.
“I’m actually glad the police arrested me when they did. I think if I had kept running I may have done more harm to myself.”
When asked if he would have killed himself, Stetson-Shanahan — who is on suicide watch at Rikers — replied, “It’s possible.”
The tortured artist said he has long been depressed but was not being treated for it and never sought help.
“I’d become really good at hiding it. I chose to ignore it and just dealt with it on my own,” he said.
The illustrator may have been self-medicating and reportedly told cops he “smoked weed” and “drank a lot of beer” the night of Bush’s murder.
Stetson-Shanahan didn’t deny drinking, but told the Post, “I wouldn’t exactly say I was drunk.”
He also struggled to suppress his anger, he said.
“I’ve always buried my anger at small annoyances,” he said.
Though depression and rage had been building inside of him, he harbored no ill will toward Bush.
“It was all about me, not her,” he said, wincing. “She was a very nice person.”
Stetson-Shanahan said he does not want freedom, but does want help.
“I’d like to be put somewhere upstate. Somewhere I can draw, paint and read. That’s really all I need. It will of course put a strain on all my relationships with family and friends,” he said.
“My family told me they’re supporting me and standing by me,” he said, adding they’re working to find him a private therapist.
“I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since last week,” he said. “I keep waiting for someone to come out from behind a curtain and tell me this is all a joke,” he said.
“Of course, it’s terrible she’s gone.”