GREENFIELD, Ind. – The suspect charged with murder in the death of a Greenfield man told police he hit the victim ten times in the head with a hammer.

Why did he do it?

Based on court documents from Hancock County, 39-year-old Daniel Smith’s answers ranged from a brain implant to a strained relationship with the victim and suspicions that the dead man may have been an artificial being.

Deputies with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department were dispatched to a home on E. U.S. 40 in Greenfield around 10:20 p.m. on Feb. 16. They found 69-year-old Freddie Patterson dead.

Patterson’s half-sister made the discovery, telling police she went to bed around 9 p.m., heard banging downstairs and went to check. She found Patterson’s face “all smashed in,” with what appeared to be brain or flesh matter on the floor. The woman told police she couldn’t “figure out what she was seeing” and almost felt like she was “imagining it.”

It just “wasn’t real,” she told authorities.

The probable cause affidavit describes a gruesome scene, with Patterson still sitting in a chair when police arrived. Investigators noticed human tissue on the floor; there was a large amount of blood, with spatter on the wall and floor. Patterson sustained severe facial trauma and wasn’t breathing.

Smith’s mother told police she passed her son in the hallway and noticed something on his hand—she couldn’t tell if it was “Jell-O or blood with fruit in it,” according to court documents. Her son then went inside the bathroom to wash up. She conceded Smith didn’t have a very good relationship with Patterson, her half-brother and Smith’s uncle.

Smith was unfocused during his interview with police. He asked if his mother and Patterson were okay. He shared a story about stepping on a spider in the 1980s. He mentioned advanced technology, his parents’ divorce and a move from Richmond, Indiana.

Investigators attempted to get him to stay on task, but Smith “spoke about random things not really focusing on any one particular thing,” according to court documents.

When asked about his relationship with Patterson, Smith said he respected him because he served in the military. But he also told police that “he was not really sure” if the man in the house was actually Patterson and suggested he may have been part of a cult. He discussed the value of the Greenfield home and informed police “it was being used as a channel for trafficking and illegal products” involving “Singapore and the Chinese mafia.”

Police tried to pin down what Smith had been doing before Patterson’s death. He told them he’d gone to the store and bought some beer in the evening. He didn’t eat dinner, he said, but recalled having spaghetti for lunch. He drank some booze on the back porch, he said. Police also asked him about his medication, which he’d switched about two months ago.

Smith said he liked Patterson but didn’t approve of his “prior brushes with the law” and added that they didn’t see “eye to eye” on some things. He revealed he called the FBI to report Patterson, although he “wasn’t sure why” he did it.

In Smith’s account, he said Patterson “verbally abused him” in the kitchen. He couldn’t remember the details. He also, at one point, checked to “see if [Patterson] had a mask on,” according to court documents. He became “angry and disgusted” after an apparent delusion in which someone was “molesting a minor on the recliner,” he told police.

Smith then claimed he had a brain implant that “programmed” him to hit Patterson in the head with a hammer. He told police he struck Patterson about 10 times in the head and then went to take a shower “because he didn’t feel clean” and had “artificial human matter” on him.

When informed that Patterson died, Smith simply replied, “Sorry.”

He “then offered to donate some of his front lobes to [Patterson], and we told him it wouldn’t help him,” according to court documents.

Smith is charged with murder. He entered a not guilty plea during his initial appearance on Friday and is next due in court for a pretrial conference in April.