The man accused of killing three children and their mother told a judge Thursday he has fired his attorneys because they were conspiring against him.

Jeffrey Hutchinson, who was scheduled to go on trial Tuesday, was appointed a new attorney. His trial has been delayed until January.

Hutchinson, a 36-year-old former Army Ranger, faces the death penalty in the murders of his girlfriend, Renee Flaherty, 32, and her children, Geoffrey, 8, Amanda, 6, and Logan, 4.

They were killed with a 12-gauge shotgun on Sept. 11, 1998, in their home near Crestview.

Hutchinson's court-appointed attorneys, Nickolas Petersen and John Harrison, asked to be taken off the case because he refuses to speak to either of them.

"I fired them," Hutchinson told a judge Thursday. "They didn't get rid of me."

Harrison said they had no choice but to drop the case.

"When your client has lost trust in your ability to represent him it presents a dilemma," he said. "We felt we could no longer represent him, especially considering the ramifications of the case and the possible outcome."

A motion to withdraw says Hutchinson "believed that both defense attorneys were conspiring with Assistant State Attorney Robert C. Elmore to put defendant in the electric chair." Hutchinson also believed that "everything he told his attorney in confidence was being relayed to Mr. Elmore."

Elmore, the prosecutor, dismissed any impropriety on the part of the attorneys.

"Hutchinson's claim that Nick Petersen and John Harrison have or would disclose his confidences to me is an outright lie and fabrication," Elmore said. "Both Petersen and Harrison are attorneys of the utmost competence and integrity."

In the end, attorney Stephen Cobb was assigned the case. He vowed to be ready for trial in January. Before then, he must question 62 state witnesses, familiarize himself with evidence, and figure out a defense strategy.

Hutchinson, who remains in custody at the Okaloosa County Jail, is accused of shooting his girlfriend and her children in the home he shared with them on John King Road, just south of Crestview.

An Okaloosa Sheriff's Office report says Hutchinson alluded "to some government operatives that may have been dispatched from Quantico to commit (the murders)."