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.
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“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.
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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.”