Redmond O'Neal Held Without Bail After Preliminary Hearing Victory

Eight years after his 2018 arrest, Redmond O’Neal remains locked in a legal and psychiatric holding pattern that shows no clear exit. On Thursday, June 25, a Los Angeles court commissioner ruled there’s sufficient evidence to move forward with 13 felony and misdemeanor charges against Farrah Fawcett’s son, effectively keeping him remanded without bail to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, California—where he’s been housed for over three years.

The preliminary hearing, which began in December 2025, centered on whether there was probable cause to believe O’Neal committed the crimes alleged: attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, criminal threats, brandishing a knife, battery, and drug possession stemming from a violent crime spree in Venice Beach and Palms during May 2018. L.A. County Superior Court Commissioner James P. Cooper didn’t mince words. The injuries sustained by victim Seth Folkerson—stabbed five times in the neck and torso—were evidence enough of intent to kill. The doctors saved his life; he spent months on life support. Cooper made clear this wasn’t a close call:“If the doctors weren’t so good, he would have been dead.”

What’s striking is the mental health backdrop threading through this case. O’Neal was deemed incompetent to stand trial in 2019, evaluated and diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. He was found mentally competent earlier this year and pleaded not guilty in March. His attorney, Dana Cole, argued that a psychologist should testify about O’Neal’s mental state during the alleged crime spree, but Cooper rejected that as irrelevant at the preliminary stage—a decision that frustrates the defense’s broader strategy of shifting focus from incarceration to treatment.

Cole’s position post-hearing was telling: O’Neal has“already done his time”on most charges, and the defense is positioning this as first-degree versus second-degree attempted murder territory. The lawyer emphasized that bail could be reconsidered at the next hearing, scheduled for July 9, and suggested O’Neal might eventually move from Patton to“a private setting”with proper structure and supervision. Yet despite nearly eight years in custody or psychiatric facilities, the criminal machinery keeps grinding forward.

Perhaps most human was the moment when Commissioner Cooper told O’Neal he remembered him as a boy at Pro Gym in Brentwood, his parents’gym, where they’d joke about“Redmond’s weights.”A small world, Cooper said. And a tragic one, where a child of Hollywood’s golden age finds himself in a state hospital, waiting for a jury to decide what comes next.

The next bail hearing is July 9.