Posted on 03/13/2008 4:26:05 AM PDT by Freedom'sWorthIt
Durham, N.C. — Heavily armed Durham police, surrounding a house before dawn Thursday, captured the second of two men charged with murder in the shooting of the student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lawrence Alvin Lovette Jr., 17, surrendered to officers from the department's Selective Enforcement Team outside a house on Cook Road at 4:16 a.m. Police had surrounded the house hours before after receiving an anonymous tip through the Durham County Sheriff's Office
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
Bwhahaha! I like that. I'm going to call them Front Seat and Back Seat from now on. Thanks!
I am glad these monsters are off the street. They should have been in jail instead of walking the street. This is another murder that could have been prevented. My heart goes out to Eve’s family.
There’s always hope Doc. Why, there’s rehabilitation and Pell Grants!
Yes, we covered that extensively.
Does the law require it to be an NC doctor? If so, amend the law to eliminate that requirement.
"Have Degree, Will Travel" reads the card of a man...
Apparently not. He looks a lot like the driver. The other guy, the one arrested earlier, doesn’t look at all like the driver.
Good surveillance pic. It actually makes him identifiable.
I doubt anyone will get the death penalty here. They will be tried in orange county(chapel hill) very liberal and against the death penalty.
These predators should have been arrested simply for being ugly.
How long before we hear about his “difficult” childhood that led him to do these things?
Change the law. What is a doctor going to do there anyway? Get a veterinarian’s assistant or just hold a mirror up to the mouth and if it fogs up, juice ‘em some more til it doesn’t.
I didn't remember but found for anyone else ~ Another Indian student shot dead in US university [DUKE UNIV.]
Piece of garbage was a one man killing machine. Lucky they caught him or no doubt more students would have ended up slaughtered.
“As I understand it the Faculty has already asked one of the perps to give this year’s Commencement speech where he’ll award the victim an honorary degree to go along with his! Several Durham newspapers have agreed to support both killers for Nobel Peace Prizes. Liberalism, don’t you love it!?”
Every day, the fence between reality and stupidity gets a little lower.
By the time graduation comes, you may end up being right.
OMG!
How evil! And he’s 17? I sure hope they don’t give him any breaks because of his age!
No they didn't think that at all.
They knew she would have only a small amount of money, but they also knew they could keep repeating the murder & rob tactic for a long time.
I bet it will come out there was a rape involved also, the cops took DNA from one of them.
Re: being set for life by stealing her money, I was sort of joking. My point was were they stupid enough to think they could committ a murder any time they needed $$ and get away with it the rest of their miserable lives? Maybe some of these dirtbags are that stupid.
I have seen no mention of sexual assault in the media but I would be surprised if that was not involved. Almost all these types of incidents seem to result in rape before the murder. I guess the feeling of hopelessness that comes from the poverty foisted on them by society also makes them act with sadistic violence.
Enough of my sarcasm now.
It’s Durham/Chapel Hill. It won’t be because of his age.
For example. A selection of articles from many...
Published: January 27, 1995
CHAPEL HILL — A young man armed with a high-powered rifle marched methodically through the heart of this college town Thursday, firing indiscriminately at any passing target and killing two people before he was shot by police and arrested.
Two other people were wounded, including a police officer, before the suspect was shot in the leg and tackled by the manager of a downtown bar. One of those killed was a university lacrosse player. Police have identified the suspect as Wendell Williamson, 26, a troubled third-year law student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was taken into custody immediately and was charged late Thursday with one count of murder.
One of those killed was Ralph Walker, a 42-year-old management trainee at the McDonald’s restaurant on West Franklin Street. He was shot on the front porch of his rooming house on Cobb Terrace.
Elmer Zink, who was inside the residence at 2 Cobb Terrace when the gunfire rang out, was the first to reach Walker lying on the stoop. “I came out and felt his pulse, and there was none,” he said.
[b]A block away, the body of UNC-CH student and lacrosse player Kevin Reichardt lay in front of a sorority house, his bookbag by his side and his bicycle nearby.[/b]
Williamson was treated at UNC Hospitals for a gunshot wound and was listed in good condition Thursday.
The shooting spree erupted about 2 p.m. as students made their way to and from class in the brisk sunshine. Witnesses said the man, wearing sunglasses and camouflage gear, sprayed gunfire — 20 or 30 blasts — as he walked from Cobb Terrace to Henderson Street.
He made his way for several blocks, systematically firing at bicyclists, pedestrians and, finally, police who arrived on the scene and returned fire.
Police said there was no apparent connection between any of the victims and the suspect.
“It just appears they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Chapel Hill Police Chief Ralph Pendergraph.
During the panic, bullets whizzed along Henderson Street, hitting windows, buildings and parked cars beside the courthouse. Passers-by ducked behind cars. On McCorkle Place, the main campus quadrangle, students dived for cover behind the hardwoods.
“People were running behind trees and buildings, wherever they could get out of the way,” said Ryan Burch, a Chapel Hill High School junior who was downtown on his lunch break. “I was watching people drop.”
Afterward, students and townspeople descended on downtown as police rushed to cordon off several blocks and gather statements from witnesses.
At least 10 clips of ammunition, with eight rounds in each, lay along the gunman’s path. Shaken sorority sisters at the Phi Mu house on Henderson Street huddled on their porch and looked on in horror as police covered the body of the bicyclist.
“I just pray I don’t know him,” said student Jodi Halkin, as she shielded her eyes when a medical examiner arrived and lifted the bloodied sheet. “I was supposed to be on the street, but we were late for class, thank God.”
Jason Howard, a 24-year-old graduate student, was on Henderson Street when he encountered the suspect. The gunman had was described as conservative a short haircut and wore sunglasses and a camouflage hunting shirt.
“He looked right at me,” Howard said. “He didn’t say anything to me. He just looked right at my eyes. He raised his rifle at me, then I basically turned and ran. He shot at me twice.”
The bullet entered the pocket of his jeans and bounced off his car keys. He wasn’t hurt. “Frankly, I’m in disbelief.”
There were plenty of witnesses to the carnage, including Joe Herzenberg, a former town council member who lives on Cobb Terrace.
Herzenberg looked out his window and saw a man carrying a rifle. Then the shots came.
“He was walking, deliberately, not slowly, but in a moderate pace up the street,” Herzenberg said. “He wasn’t running around acting crazy.”
Two officers arrived on the scene. One of them, Demetrise Stephenson, was wounded in the hand and upper arm as she drove onto the scene. Another officer also arrived and opened fire.
Finally, witnesses said, the gunman neared the corner of Henderson and Rosemary streets and paused to reload.
That’s when Bill Leone, a manager at Tammany Hall bar on Rosemary Street, crouched behind the suspect and tackled him.
By the time the shooting stopped, Leone had been wounded in the shoulder, and the suspect had been hit in the lower leg. Police say they think Leone was wounded by an officer.
Released from the hospital late Thursday, Leone was recuperating at home.
“Bill just kind of jumped on his back and put his arm on his head,” said Jeff Stout, one of Leone’s co-workers. “He grabbed his gun and threw the gun. The guy didn’t look like he resisted. He didn’t try to wrestle.”
Officer Stephenson was in good condition at UNC Hospitals after surgery.
The suspect had been treated for mental illness recently, according to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dee Williamson, who were reached by phone at their home in Clyde, a mountain hamlet west of Asheville.
Other law students painted a picture of a disturbed man who sometimes had outbursts in class and mumbled to himself in downtown bars.
University officials and town leaders were stunned by the rampage.
“We are profoundly shocked and saddened by the violence in Chapel Hill this afternoon and extend our deep sympathy to the victims and the families,” said UNC-CH Chancellor Paul Hardin.
Though the randomness of the shooting came as a jolt, Chapel Hill has had its share of violence in the past few years. A murder inside McDonald’s in September and the killing of a jogger in 1993 shook the college town.
Those who saw Thursday’s gunfire stood by the police lines and shook their heads in disbelief.
LAURIE WILLIS STAFF WRITER
Published: January 27, 1995
CHAPEL HILL — Wendell Williamson, 26, the third-year law student charged in the deaths of two people Thursday, reportedly had threatened classmates and caused disturbances at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” said a faculty member when told of the incident. The professor, who once taught Williamson, said the student had recently begun taking medication that appeared to have “worked wonders for him.” “I didn’t have any sense that he would do something like this,” he said, asking that he not be identified. “The last time I talked to him, he was real happy.”
But his parents, who learned of the shootings when contacted by a reporter, described their son, a 1990 UNC honors graduate who majored in English, as a sometimes troubled man.
“He’s been under medication for psychiatric problems,” his father, Dee Williamson, said by phone from his home in Clyde in central Haywood County near the Tennessee border.
“He was in the hospital, but he hasn’t been in the hospital for some time, and he’s been seeing a psychiatrist at the university,” the elder Williamson said.
Wendell Williamson is the youngest of Dee and Sonda Williamson’s three children. The couple said they couldn’t think of any reason why their son, an avid World War II history buff, would go on a shooting spree with a rifle from that era.
“I’m very surprised that he’s done this, although I do know that he was troubled,” Mrs. Williamson said, her voice shaking.
The couple said their son appeared to be all right, but reserved, when he came home for the holidays after spending New Year’s Eve in New York with friends. Mrs. Williamson said he didn’t leave the house during the 10 days he was home.
“He came home on Jan. 2, and he had a very good trip,” she said, noting that her son and friends had gone to Times Square where they watched the ball drop at the stroke of midnight. “He had had a good Christmas.”
Williamson did talk about school while at home and appeared to relish the thought of graduation, his father said.
“He was enthusiastic about finishing law school so he could start earning,” Dee Williamson said. “He wanted to get a job.”
Mrs. Williamson said she had made repeated attempts to contact her son since he returned to Chapel Hill.
“I have made every effort on Earth to talk to him,” she said. “I left messages on his machine and called the law school. It’s uncharacteristic of him not to return my calls.”
In Chapel Hill, Williamson lived at Rock Creek Apartments, where residents said he mostly kept to himself.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said one neighbor after learning of the incident.
Another neighbor was more blunt: “He’s psycho,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified.
A notice on Williamson’s apartment door from Piedmont Electric Membership Corp. indicated that his power bill was delinquent and that he was in arrears for $154.50. “Collect or cut off,” the notice said.
Several people who often saw Williamson walking downtown said he appeared to be a nice man with a few personal problems.
“He wears an Army coat with Dr. Feelgood written on the back” said Tom Herzog of Zog’s Pool Hall. “He comes in the bar, and he sits and talks to himself.”
John Lauby, who works at the Henderson Street Bar & Grill, said Williamson had been asked to leave the establishment because of his strange behavior.
“We’ve thrown him out a couple of times,” Lauby said. “He always talks to his beer when he drinks. We, like, banned him from our bar ‘cause he’s weird.”
Even though Herzog, Lauby and others said Williams often acted strangely, no one expected what happened Thursday.
“I’m still sort of in shock,” Dee Williamson, his father said. “I’m sorry that this happened.”
Added his mother: “He has had 100 percent of my support from the minute he was born, and he always will.”
SUSAN KAUFFMAN and JOYCE CLARK STAFF WRITERS
Published: January 28, 1995
CHAPEL HILL — Kevin Reichardt and his lacrosse teammates had practiced together every day this week — until Thursday — when Reichardt never showed up.
On Friday, his teammates stood together, mourning him as a family. They came to the site of his death on Henderson Street to leave cards and flowers and to search for comfort. And they will stand together on Tuesday in Annapolis, Md., where the sophomore will be buried. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will pay for the entire team to travel together to mourn its loss.
“Kevin Reichardt was the kind of human being every parent would want their son to be,” David Klarmann, the UNC-CH lacrosse coach said Friday “This waste is impossible to describe.”
In the block next to where Reichardt was killed, two of Ralph Walker’s sisters crouched sobbing on the steps outside the boarding house at 2 Cobb Terrace where he died 24 hours earlier.
“He was a very good person,” said Beverly Walker of Chapel Hill, one of the sisters. “He never had an enemy. He always worked, and he loved our family.” Walker was a management trainee at McDonald’s.
“I’m going to miss him so bad,” sobbed June Cayton, the other sister. “Oh God, I’m going to miss him.”
Although the two men who were killed in Thursday’s shooting rampage came from different walks of life, their friends and relatives were united Friday in their grief.
Reichardt was described by his teammates and coach as dedicated, honest, articulate and handsome. “He was the epitome of what you would like to have in any sport in America,” Klarmann said. “Our team is crushed and disillusioned. But we will rebound.”
Rob Tobin, a junior and Reichardt’s best friend from high school, recalled that the last time they spoke Reichardt gave him encouragement. “He said, ‘You had a great practice and should be proud of yourself.’”
Reichardt, who had turned 20 last week, was known to friends as “Reichs.” He was the younger son of Karl Reichardt, a veterinarian, and Carol Reichardt of Riva, Md., a suburb of Annapolis.
“I would say both Karl and Carol are in a stunned state of disbelief,” Klarmann said. “They are holding up as well as anybody could. I’m sure it’s going to get much more difficult in days to come.”
Friends said Reichardt was not only a star athlete, but also an honor student and a warm person.
“He’s a friend with everybody on the team,” said Chip Mayer, an assistant coach at UNC-CH last season and now coach at Chapel Hill High. “Not everybody’s like that. Everyone liked Kevin Reichardt. He was one of their brothers.”
The loss also hit hard at St. Mary’s Catholic school in Annapolis, where Reichardt graduated two years ago. He was a frequent visitor to the school and stopped in during the Christmas holidays.
In addition to playing basketball, soccer and lacrosse at St. Mary’s, Reichardt was student body president and a member of the honor society. His voice was a familiar one because he led the prayer and pledge of allegiance every morning, and gave the morning announcements.
“We’re really struggling today,” said Sister Phyllis McNally. “He was a leader and blessed with a lot of talent both academically and athletically, but not arrogant at all.”
James Morehead, St. Mary’s president, said Reichardt loved Chapel Hill “from the get-go. He was doing great, and he loved the academics at Carolina.”
Amy Roberts, a soccer player who visited the memorials placed on Henderson Street, said Reichardt was the first person she met at UNC-CH.
“He was very, very kind,” Roberts said. “He’s one of the people as a student-athlete at this university that I could honestly say had it all together. He knew where he was going in life.”
At the impromptu memorial site for Walker, a picture postcard lay among a bundle of carnations and daisies that marked the spot where he had fallen. It was unsigned, but read: “You will not be forgotten because of the random acts of violence in our society. I am very sad that you were taken so suddenly and wrongfully. You will be remembered and greatly missed.”
“He never had an enemy,” said Beverly Walker, his sister. “His dream was to be a free-lance photographer. He was getting ready to have a show of his work in March.”
During the Christmas holidays, she said, he had gotten engaged to a woman in Montreal. “He was real excited and planned to move up there in the next year.”
Walker was divorced twice and had three children: Ralph Walker, 16, from the first marriage, and Chaz, 12, and Samuel, 9, from the second. His second wife moved away with the children when they divorced five years ago.
“He loved them even though he couldn’t see them,” Beverly Walker said. Instead, he spent much of his free time with her four boys, playing, talking and taking trips. “He loved it here. He was very satisfied and happy.”
For the past two years, Walker had been renting a small bedroom in the back of a boarding house for $160 a month.
“He came here a couple of years ago and was down on his luck,” said Ross Jackson, manager of the K&W cafeteria where Walker worked as a stockroom clerk. “He had no money whatsoever. He was living in a homeless shelter and looking for a job so that he could turn his life around. He performed well, saved his money and got out of that shelter on his own.”
After about a year, Walker wanted to start learning about managing a business. He took a second job at McDonald’s, where he was in the management trainee program.
He had been working both jobs up until three months ago, when he quit to work full time at McDonald’s.
Walker often talked to co-workers about his passion for photography and loved to share his photos, always of scenes in nature.
In his room there were picturesque shots of rainbows, a mountain scene and two photos of sunsets. He had planned to use them in an exhibition of his work at Judges, a local coffee shop.
“He even agreed to do {take photos of} my wedding,” said Jackson. “He wasn’t even going to charge me.
“He was a person who would never hurt nobody.”
Staff writer Beth Velliquette contributed to this report.
The News & Observer
TODD NELSON STAFF WRITER
Published: February 21, 1995
HILLSBOROUGH — Wendell Williamson, the UNC law student accused of killing two people in Chapel Hill last month, was indicted Monday on two counts of first-degree murder.
Orange County grand jurors ordered Williamson, 26, to stand trial in Superior Court for the deaths in the Jan. 26 shooting rampage, District Attorney Carl Fox said. Those were the only counts against Williamson submitted to jurors, who returned more than 100 true bills Monday in other cases. A 15-year-old Mebane boy accused of fatally shooting his father was also indicted on a murder charge.
Fox said he expects to seek indictments on additional felony charges against Williamson at a future grand jury session. He could not do so Monday because he had not received Chapel Hill police reports on the shootings.
“I didn’t have the reports in hand so that I could determine what if any additional charges need to be submitted to the grand jury,” Fox said.
Police say Williamson was arrested after he marched along Henderson Street, randomly firing an M-1 rifle at cars and passers-by.
Ralph Walker, a 42-year-old management trainee at the McDonald’s restaurant on West Franklin Street, and Kevin Reichardt, 20, a student and lacrosse player at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, were killed.
The gunman was wounded twice in the legs while exchanging fire with officers. Williamson’s parents said their son had been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
CHRIS O’BRIEN STAFF WRITER
Published: April 18, 1995
HILLSBOROUGH — The former law student accused of killing two people during a shooting rampage in downtown Chapel Hill will plead not guilty by reason of insanity, his attorneys said Monday.
A judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation for Wendell Williamson as the 26-year-old defendant made his first appearance in court. District Attorney Carl Fox also confirmed that he considers the killings capital offenses and will seek the death penalty. After the hearing, an attorney for Williamson said the defense will argue that their client was not of sound mind.
“I think the evidence strongly supports a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity,” said Public Defender James Williams.
Williamson faces two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of firing into an occupied dwelling and 11 counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
On Jan. 26, police say, a heavily armed man walked down Henderson Street randomly firing a rifle. Ralph Walker, a restaurant manager, and Kevin Reichardt, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student, were killed. Police Officer Demetrise Stephenson was shot in the hand and had to have a finger amputated, Fox said in court.
Williamson was arrested after police shot him in both legs and a bystander tackled him.
He appeared in Orange County Superior Court on Monday for a pre-trial hearing. He hobbled into court using crutches and wearing what appeared to be a brace on his right leg.
As his attorneys discussed several motions, Williamson sat rigidly in his chair, his hands resting in his lap. He never moved as Fox described the charges against him.
Fox said he was basing his request for the death penalty on the nature of the shootings, the threat to other people on the street that day and the cruelty involved in the killings.
Superior Court Judge Gordon Battle ordered Williamson sent to Dorothea Dix Hospital. Williamson will undergo tests to determine whether he is able to stand trial and whether he can be held legally accountable for his actions Jan. 26.
Williamson’s family has said he has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Williams said after the hearing that his client is on medication and has already undergone at least one medical examination.
The judge also ordered investigators to preserve all their notes in the case and make them available to attorneys. Defense attorneys indicated that they plan to challenge a police search of Williamson’s apartment in Carrboro, where officers seized a host of personal letters, cards, writings and other items.
Williamson will enter a plea at his arraignment scheduled for the week of June 19. The judge said he hopes the trial will begin in September or October.
Todd Nelson Staff Writer
Published: November 8, 1995
Hillsborough - Wendell Williamson’s deadly Chapel Hill shooting rampage landed him in a state hospital Tuesday instead of a prison cell, a verdict that outraged victims’ families and that jurors said was their only choice.
An Orange County jury found the former law school student not guilty by reason of insanity. Williamson’s attorney said the public has little to fear from the outcome.
Karl Knudsen, who represents five killers sent to Dorothea Dix Hospital - where Williamson was taken - said the severity of Williamson’s illness and the fact that he killed two people will weigh heavily against him in commitment hearings.
“I don’t know for sure what is likely to happen on down the road,” Knudsen said. “But if there are people who believe that Mr. Williamson is going to be walking away from that hospital anytime soon, I don’t think that’s realistic. I don’t think that’s a concern people need to have.”
Some jurors said they would have preferred to find Williamson guilty but mentally ill.
With state law limiting their choices to finding Williamson guilty of capital murder or not guilty by reason of insanity, jurors said they could not ignore overwhelming evidence, including testimony from two state psychiatrists, of Williamson’s mental illness.
“That was a problem for some people, the terminology,” jury foreman Horace Grant said. “But when we went around the table this morning, everyone used the same term. They felt that he was insane, all the way around. Then we said, this sounds unanimous, so that’s it.”
Jurors deliberated two hours Monday and then met for a half- hour Tuesday morning before returning the verdicts in a tense Orange County courtroom.
When Judge Gordon Battle announced the verdicts, Iris Walker, sister of shooting victim Ralph Walker, doubled over in grief, sobbing silently with her face in her hands. The son of the slain 42-year-old Chapel Hill restaurant worker and other family members refused to comment.
The verdicts also brought tears to Dr. Karl and Carol Reichardt of Annapolis, Md., parents of victim Kevin Reichardt, 20, a lacrosse player and student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“We came to this courtroom screaming for justice and accountability,” Dr. Reichardt said. “Justice has not been served. Two people have been murdered. Where is the justice if Wendell Williamson is not convicted?”
Mrs. Reichardt said her son’s death had been like a prison sentence imposed on her family, which was in court throughout the two-week trial.
“We as a family now have another sentence, to follow Mr. Williamson,” she said, referring to the periodic commitment hearings in which he could gain his release from Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh.
“We were there to support Kevin throughout his life and through this trial,” his father said. “Obviously we’re going to have to come back to these hearings and make sure {Williamson} is not released.
“We have to. Nobody else is going to represent Kevin. We have to make sure he doesn’t get out.”
“We will continue to be there for him as long as we live,” Mrs. Reichardt added.
Reichardt’s parents announced the formation of a memorial foundation to provide scholarships to student-athletes, with a goal of raising $1 million by 1997.
Williamson’s father said he thought the jury had reached the right conclusion.
“It is a relief to have this over,” said Dee Williamson of Clyde. “We believe it was a correct verdict. We are most sorry for all concerned.”
Williamson, 26, shook his head, declining to speak when Battle asked him whether he had anything to say after the verdicts were in.
But his words - in a taped confession defense attorneys played in court - helped jurors make up their minds, Grant said.
“He seemed really intent,” Grant said. “We really didn’t put the voice with him, having seen him sit there the whole time not saying anything and then to hear this very stern voice.”
Juror Mary Caudill said the panel thought the evidence showed Williamson had been schizophrenic for some time before the shootings.
“It’s a very tough decision for the jurors because we do not like having to say the words ‘not guilty’ because, of course, he committed the crime,” Caudill said.
“It was very tough saying that he was not guilty. But it’s the way the law is written and the only thing that we could do,” she said.
On the tape, Williamson told a Chapel Hill detective just hours after the shootings of the telepathic delusions that he said drove him to kill, part of a history of irrational behavior dating back to January 1992.
Public Defender James Williams conceded that playing the tape was risky because Williamson also described the meticulous planning that went into his Jan. 26 assault.
But Williams said the tape “conveyed the depths of this man’s insanity.”
Williamson, diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, has improved since he has been under medication for almost a year.
“He now understands the gravity of what he did,” Williams said. “As recently as today he expressed remorse and concern. He remembers it in the context of his delusion.”
District Attorney Carl Fox conceded that Williamson was mentally ill but contended that he had understood the difference between right and wrong when he opened fire with an M-1 rifle.
“Sometimes people do things to call attention to their illness,” Fox said.
But the prosecutor said he realized early on that the weight of testimony from expert witnesses would make it difficult to win first-degree murder convictions.
“I knew it would be an uphill battle for us,” particularly when state psychiatrist Nicole Wolfe testified that Williamson was insane, Fox said.
Todd Nelson Staff Writer
Published: December 29, 1995
Chapel Hill - Eager to make some good come from their loss, Karl and Carol Reichardt have formed a foundation to award scholarships to student-athletes like their son Kevin, who was killed in a downtown shooting rampage.
And now they’re hoping to make their son’s killer, former law student Wendell Williamson, and his family contributors to the project - through a wrongful-death suit they have filed in Orange County Superior Court. Meanwhile, Williamson, 27, apparently will stay in the secured unit at Dorothea Dix Hospital for at least 90 more days.
The prospect of winning damages they could funnel into the foundation was one of the Reichardts’ primary motivations in bringing the lawsuit, their attorney, Joe Poe of Durham, said Thursday.
The Reichardts also hope the trial on their civil suit will answer questions that still vex them about how and why their son died, and what could have been done to prevent his death, Poe said.
Such questions persist for Kevin Reichardt’s parents, despite the criminal trial that ended Nov. 7 when an Orange County jury found Williamson not guilty by reason of insanity, Poe said.
Williamson was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and 13 other felonies in a Jan. 26 shooting spree on Henderson Street.
Killed were Kevin, 20, a student and lacrosse player at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Chapel Hill restaurant worker Ralph Walker Jr., 42.
Chapel Hill police Officer Demetrise Stephenson, who lost a finger to one of Williamson’s gunshots, is also seeking damages in a civil suit she has filed against him.
In their lawsuit, the Reichardts seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, saying their son’s death has caused them “great mental anguish and distress, anxiety, loss of sleep and other emotional injuries requiring therapy and other treatments.”
Carol Reichardt, contacted at the family’s home in Riva, Md., declined to comment Thursday.
Williamson’s parents, Dee and Fonda Williamson of Clyde, could not be reached for comment.
On the day of the shooting, Kevin Reichardt was riding his bike to lacrosse practice when a gunshot hit him in the left thigh, knocking him to the street, the lawsuit says. As Reichardt tried to crawl away, Williamson shot him twice more, the suit says.
The complaint concedes that Williamson’s actions were not intentional, because of his mental illness, but asserts that the actions were grossly negligent.
Poe said the Reichardts’ wrongful-death suit might be one of the first in the state based on a person’s diminished mental capacity.
The suit alleges that Williamson’s parents knew of their son’s illness and the danger he posed but did nothing to help him or stop him from causing harm.
The suit also contends that Williamson’s parents were grossly negligent in failing to secure the rifle their son used in the shootings.
The gun had been at the Williamsons’ home in Clyde, but their son brought it with him to Carrboro when he returned to classes last winter, the suit says.
“Although they knew or should have known he had the gun, they negligently failed to warn officials at the University of North Carolina, authorities in Carrboro, or any other authorities of the known danger posed by their mentally ill son and his possession of a weapon,” the suit says.
At Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, meanwhile, Williamson is expected to waive his right to a commitment hearing 50 days after the jury’s insanity verdict sent him to there, assistant Attorney General Kathleen Baldwin said.
Such a hearing had been set for Jan. 12, but the attorney appointed to represent Williamson in commitment proceedings, Karl Knudsen of Raleigh, has given notice that his client will forgo the hearing, Baldwin said.
Williamson, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, would have to prove he is no longer insane or no longer a danger to himself or others to win his release.
ANGELA PAIK STAFF WRITER
Published: November 18, 1996
The parents of a UNC-Chapel Hill student slain by an insane gunman last year have reached an undisclosed settlement in a lawsuit against the killer and his parents. But for Karl and Carol Reichardt, who lost their son, Kevin, in a Chapel Hill shooting rampage and then saw his killer acquitted because of insanity, their work to change the system is far from complete.
“We want to raise the level of awareness of this problem in the general public,” the Reichardts said in a statement released through their attorney. “The manner in which our society handles mental illness is a very serious concern of our family.”
The family wants changes in laws concerning the insanity defense. “The North Carolina legislature needs to take a serious look at how these issues are handled in the courts and in its educational institutions,” the Reichardts said.
Karl Reichardt expressed outrage when his son’s killer was acquitted, saying there was no justice without a conviction.
Kevin Reichardt, 20, who played lacrosse for UNC-CH, was gunned down by Wendell Williamson in a January 1995 shooting spree that left another man dead.
Williamson, then 26 and a UNC law student, remains in treatment at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh as a result of his acquittal. Before the shooting, Williamson had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
The Reichardts sought punitive and compensatory damages from Williamson and his parents in a wrongful-death suit. They charged that both the shooter and his parents, Dee and Fonda Williamson of Clyde, were grossly negligent for not preventing Reichardt’s death.
Last week, the details of the settlement were finalized, and while the terms are confidential, the Reichardts’ attorney, G. Jona Poe Jr. of Durham, said the family was satisfied with the outcome.
“All the issues that were raised... were resolved,” Poe said in an interview Sunday. Among them was the assertion that the Williamsons were to blame for knowing of their son’s mental illness but failing to stop him from causing harm.
The details of the financial settlement were not disclosed. In pursuing the lawsuit, the Reichardts hoped to fund a foundation they created to award scholarships to student-athletes.
The Kevin Reichardt Foundation has been successful so far, Poe said, and publishes a monthly newsletter and has raised scholarship funds toward a $1 million goal.
The Reichardts, of Riva, Md., were unavailable for comment Sunday.
Dee Williamson declined comment on the case, and his attorney could not be reached for comment.
Poe said the resolution of the case answered questions about whether the accused, family or insurance companies are liable when diminished mental capacity is involved.
To be released from the hospital, Williamson, while acquitted of first-degree murder charges, would have to prove he is no longer a danger to himself or others.
The Reichardts will keep fighting for changes in laws concerning mental illness.
“I don’t think you can say that any of the issues that led to the initiation of this lawsuit are over,” Poe said.
TODD NELSON STAFF WRITER
Published: May 20, 1997
HILLSBOROUGH — Former law student Wendell Williamson would not have gone on his deadly Chapel Hill shooting rampage if a retiring psychiatrist had ensured he would continue treatment, a malpractice suit against the doctor contends. Instead, Williamson, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, stopped taking his medication and did not seek further treatment shortly after Dr. Myron Liptzin retired in May 1994, the suit says.
Eight months later, Williamson marched through downtown Chapel Hill with an M-1 rifle, killing two people and severely injuring a Chapel Hill police officer before other officers shot him in both legs. Jurors in a capital murder trial found Williamson not guilty by reason of insanity.
Attorney Nick Gordon of Winston-Salem filed the suit late Friday on Williamson’s behalf in Orange County Superior Court. Gordon said Monday he expected to file a similar complaint against the university this week with the N.C. Industrial Commission.
“He is tremendously sorry for what has happened,” Gordon said in an interview. “Wendell is certainly not a monster. He’s a very intelligent young man and would never have had this happen for anything in the world, in his right mind.”
The suit raises broader questions about how doctors and institutions deal with continued treatment of patients with chronic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, which causes problems with both the structure and the content of a patient’s thoughts.
“His position is that things shouldn’t have been done the way they were and if they hadn’t been, there would have been different results,” Gordon said of Williamson, who has been committed to a state mental hospital. Under state law, he cannot get out unless he proves that he is sane.
Liptzin, a former Student Health Services psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was out of town Monday and could not be reached for comment. Health services officials were not in their offices Monday.
In his suit, Williamson said he developed an unusual sense of trust in Liptzin during his treatment from March through May of 1994.
Williamson took his medication and was beginning to control his mental problems, which included hallucinations and delusions that he was telepathic.
Liptzin, however, should have known that a person suffering from paranoia would have trouble transferring to a new doctor and that Williamson would not seek further counseling and would stop taking his medication, the suit said.
### Negligence alleged: The complaint alleged that Liptzin was negligent in: - Stopping treatment without taking proper steps to transfer Williamson to another doctor.
- Changing Williamson’s medication on his last visit without providing for monitoring its effects.
- Retiring without taking steps to ensure that Williamson would continue taking his medicine.
After leaving Liptzin’s treatment, Williamson went home for the summer to a small town in the North Carolina mountains, then returned to Chapel Hill for classes in the fall. He soon fell into delusions again, said Chapel Hill lawyer Kirk Osborn, who defended Williamson at his murder trial.
“The one thing that he responded to was medication,” Osborn said. “He went home to an environment that was void of any stress, went off the medication and was OK. In a non-stressful environment, he didn’t have the problems he had had.
“Then he goes back to law school, he’s put into that stressful environment and it didn’t take long before he was back into the problems with his mental illness. They surface under stress.”
### Doctor set to testify: Ready to testify on Williamson’s behalf is Raleigh psychiatrist James Bellard, who stated in an affidavit filed with the lawsuit that Liptzin “deviated from the appropriate standard of health care” in Williamson’s treatment.
Bellard examined Williamson extensively beginning five days after the fatal shootings and testified as a defense expert at the criminal trial.
After several weeks of Liptzin’s counseling and taking the anti-psychotic drug Navane, Williamson said he “realized he was thinking more clearly, or at least that he didn’t think he was a telepath, “ Bellard testified.
When Liptzin retired, he told Williamson he could see whomever took his place at Student Health Services or go to the outpatient psychiatry department, Bellard testified.
“Dr. Liptzin, I think, unfortunately left it up to Wendell to follow up,” Bellard testified. “Dr. Liptzin had made great progress with Wendell and that progress was partially medication, but it was largely because of the relationship that he had established with Wendell.
“And when Dr. Liptzin left, the impetus or drive on the part of Mr. Williamson to continue the medication was a whole lot less and he quit the medication very quickly thereafter.”
Under similar circumstances, Bellard testified, he would “not leave a person without somebody to continue the work that I was doing.
Todd Nelson Staff Writer
Published: May 23, 1997
The gunman who killed two people in one of Chapel Hill’s most notorious episodes is now blaming his shooting spree on UNC-CH - and saying he is due $1 million in damages. Former law student Wendell Williamson contends that officials were negligent in failing to properly treat the mental illness that drove him to his deadly 1995 shooting spree.
That negligence breached the duty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to provide him treatment and to “prevent him from harming himself or others,” said a complaint filed Wednesday with the N.C. Industrial Commission by Williamson’s attorney, Nick Gordon of Winston-Salem.
“As a direct and proximate result of UNC’s breach of duty, Wendell killed two individuals and injured several more,” the complaint said.
As a further result of the university’s inaction, Williamson “has had his mental problems and the fact that he engaged in a shooting spree killing and wounding others televised nationally to his great embarrassment and humiliation” and has “lost the opportunity to be a meaningful member of society,” his claim said.
Williamson’s damages greatly exceed the $150,000 maximum compensation he thinks he can recover under the North Carolina Tort Claims Act, according to the complaint.
If he can get more, Williamson wants compensatory damages of $1 million for the injuries he suffered when police shot him in both legs, as well as indemnification or a contribution for any claims made against him, his complaint said.
In an unusual twist, it puts him on the same side as the parents of one of his victims, who have accused university officials of negligence in a similar Industrial Commission claim. Karl and Carol Reichardt are seeking $150,000 to $1 million in damages in the death of their son Kevin, 20, a UNC-CH student and lacrosse player.
An Orange County jury found Williamson not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting deaths of Reichardt and restaurant worker Ralph Walker, 42. He has been committed to a state hospital until he can prove he is no longer insane.
This is the second complaint Williamson has filed in a week. The first was a medical malpractice suit in Orange County Superior Court against his former UNC-CH psychiatrist, Dr. Myron Liptzin.
Central to both cases is Williamson’s allegation that Liptzin failed to ensure that Williamson would continue treatment and keep taking medicine for paranoid schizophrenia after the doctor retired in May 1994.
The newer complaint also faults Winston Crisp, associate dean of the law school, and Dean of Students Frederic Schroeder for failing to monitor Williamson’s condition after Liptzin’s retirement.
With the medicine Liptzin prescribed and the trust Williamson placed in him, Williamson had begun to improve, according to his suit. After eight months without medication or psychotherapy, however, he marched through downtown Chapel Hill, firing an M-1 rifle randomly until the officers’ bullets felled him.
Williamson began seeing Liptzin in March 1994, after disrupting a law school class. He also had discussed with Crisp his belief that he had telepathic powers, that people injured him with their thoughts and that others were envious of his special powers, the complaint said.
The classroom disruption followed other signs of trouble, such as the time in September 1992 when campus police took Williamson to Student Health Services when they found him screaming and hitting himself.
Out of classes for two weeks to undergo evaluation, Williamson was involuntarily committed after another psychiatrist determined that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and that he had a gun in his apartment which he was unwilling to surrender.
A judge released Williamson on the condition that he continue treatment, the complaint said, but no officials made plans for doing so.
“UNC breached [its] duty in that it failed to secure adequate psychiatric care for Wendell despite the fact that it had determined that he posed a danger to himself and the university community and that he was suffering from extreme psychotic delusions as a result of his paranoid schizophrenia,” the complaint said.
TODD NELSON STAFF WRITER
Published: December 17, 1997
HILLSBOROUGH — Wendell Williamson struck a courtroom deal Tuesday to avoid transfer to a new Dorothea Dix Hospital unit intended to house him and other patients found not guilty by reason of insanity. The agreement, allowing Williamson to continue treatment at Broughton State Hospital in Morganton, angered the parents of one of the two men Williamson killed in his January 1995 shooting spree in Chapel Hill.
“This is one big game,” said Karl Reichardt, whose son, 20-year-old UNC-CH student Kevin Reichardt, died from repeated gunshots Williamson fired at him with an M-1 rifle. “The legal system has no way of handling these situations.”
The state is spending close to $3.6 million to open what by 1999 will be a 72-bed forensic psychiatric unit at Dix, the state hospital in Raleigh, said Don Willis, chief of mental health services in the state division of mental health.
Williamson and Michael Hayes, found not guilty by reason of insanity after killing four people in a 1988 shooting spree near Winston-Salem, were expected to be among the first patients transferred to the unit when the first 36 beds open at the start of the year, Willis said.
But Tuesday’s ruling made Reichardt and his wife, Carol, and the parents of one of Hayes’ victims who also attended Williamson’s hearing in Orange County Superior Court doubt whether the killers would ever see the unit designed to house them. “We understood the state would put Williamson and Hayes both in this unit once it is ready,” said Karl Reichardt. “This is a farce. It stinks.”
R.B. Nicholson of Winston-Salem, whose son died at Hayes’ hands, said he expected Hayes also would seek to avoid a transfer to the new unit.
“The public is going to be very disappointed to know that Hayes and Williamson are not going to be the principal residents of this unit,” Nicholson said.
Hayes and Williamson are perhaps the best known of the 16 people committed to state hospitals in North Carolina for treatment after being found not guilty by reason of insanity. Under state law, such defendants must remain in treatment until a judge decides that they are no longer mentally ill and no longer a danger to themselves or to others. The burden is on patients at yearly recommitment hearings to prove that they are sane.
Williamson waived earlier recommitment hearings without appearing in court, but he sought a hearing this year. His attorney, Kirk Osborn of Chapel Hill, said last week he would not seek Williamson’s release but would ask for expanded hospital privileges for his client.
Williamson, however, again waived his hearing after Osborn and prosecutors reached an agreement allowing Williamson to stay at the Morganton hospital in Western North Carolina, near his parents’ home in Clyde.
Under the agreement approved by Judge Coy Brewer, Williamson would be transferred to the forensic unit at Dix only if the staff treating him in Morganton found such a move medically necessary.
The agreement had nothing to do with avoiding a transfer to Dix, Osborn said, and instead stemmed from Williamson’s desire to be close to his family and continue care with the same treatment team.
“Wendell wanted to stay there,” Osborn said in an interview. “He’s got a great treatment plan. He’s doing well there. He’s got a great treatment team that gets along with him well.”
Williamson, diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia three years before his shooting spree, has made friends at his current hospital, Osborn said.
“His symptoms have been completely controlled with medication,” Osborn said. “His record there has been exemplary. He’s never had a problem there at all.”
Orange-Chatham District Attorney Carl Fox said he had no preference where Williamson is committed as long as he stays in a 24-hour locked facility, which both Broughton and Dix offer, and is not allowed to move about unsupervised.
Hayes’ attorney, Karl Knudsen of Raleigh, said the new forensic unit would not benefit his client or other patients transferred there, although he expects that’s where the hospital will move Hayes once it opens. Hayes was recommitted to Dix for another year in a hearing in September, Knudsen said.
“These patients already have treatment plans; they have doctors in place,” Knudsen said. “They’ll all get reshuffled and have to start at the very beginning, which will in my opinion will be extremely disruptive to them and to their progress.”
He said he will raise the issue of Hayes’ care at Dix at a hearing next month in Winston-Salem.
Even without Williamson, the forensic unit will have more patients than beds, Willis said. In addition to patients found not guilty by reason of insanity, the unit will house defendants found incompetent to stand trial, and inmates transferred from local jails because of suicidal behavior or mental illness. On a given day, that totals 140 people statewide.
Still, lawmakers were envisioning patients such as Williamson and Hayes as occupants when they voted to finance the unit.
“If all the judges for all 16 of these folks at least initially prohibit us from transferring them, we would have a forensic unit with no NGRIs in it,” Willis said. “I’m sure that’s not what the legislature had in mind.
TODD NELSON STAFF WRITER
Published: September 22, 1998
HILLSBOROUGH — Wendell Williamson’s former psychiatrist was ordered Monday to pay $500,000 in damages to the insane gunman who blamed the doctor for his deadly shooting rampage in January 1995. Jurors said they agreed with the central issue Williamson raised in his medical malpractice suit: that Dr. Myron Liptzin was negligent because he did not take Williamson’s mental illness seriously enough. They found that Liptzin failed to ensure that Williamson would continue to receive care after the doctor retired and that he hadn’t informed Williamson adequately about the long-term nature of his disorder and the need to seek further treatment and medication.
“I don’t see how someone can take responsibility and ownership of their illness if they don’t understand their illness and what’s expected of them,” juror Jeryl Appleby said. “The expectations of him were unrealistic.”
Jurors also said the shootings downtown on Henderson Street, which killed two people, might have been prevented - and Williamson spared the consequences - if he had received proper treatment. “We don’t have a crystal ball, so we can’t say with any certainty,” Appleby said. “But the likelihood would have been high. He had responded to treatment.”
Williamson, 30, sat quietly with his jaws clenched as a clerk read the verdict. Liptzin crossed his arms, kneaded his brow and shook his head from side to side.
The dismayed doctor joined jurors as they filed out of the courtroom and spent several minutes talking with them behind closed doors in the jury room, explaining himself and trying to grasp their verdict.
“I thought I had done the best that I could for Mr. Williamson,” he said later. “I have wracked my brain looking over my care and, even knowing the awful consequences of his psychotic behavior, cannot find anything that I would do differently.”
Williamson, his family and his attorney hailed the Orange County Superior Court verdict as a victory for their larger battle for greater public understanding of mental disorders. “They saw our point that mental illness needs to be taken seriously,” said Williamson, smiling briefly as a deputy escorted him across the street to the jail.
His mother, Fonda, said she believed the verdict would lead to better care for mentally ill patients. “People need to maintain a teachable spirit and be willing to learn what mental illness is and what it can do to people,” she said.
But the verdict added to the pain of relatives of shooting victims Ralph Walker Jr., 42, a Chapel Hill restaurant worker, and Kevin Reichardt, 20, a UNC-CH student and lacrosse player.
“It was kind of like that last little bit of hope that some kind of justice was going to come out of this,” said Walker’s sister, June Cayton of Selma, who was sobbing at the news. “It’s like, he’s doing it, he got by with it, and now he’s getting paid for doing it.”
Reichardt’s father, Dr. Karl Reichardt of Riva, Md., said the half-million-dollar verdict was incomprehensible to him and his wife, calling Williamson “a murderer who is now literally rewarded for what he did.”
“The legal system is just not doing its job in terms of justice,” Reichardt said. “There’s no justice for us, the victims.”
Williamson also has a complaint against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, alleging that school officials were negligent in treating his mental illness. The case is pending with the N.C. Industrial Commission, as is a similar claim by Reichardt’s parents.
Williamson was a law student at the university when, during a 1992 stay at UNC Hospitals, he was diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He saw Liptzin six times from March through May 1994 after he was sent to Student Health Services for disrupting a class with an outburst about his belief that he had telepathic powers. Liptzin began counseling him and prescribed low doses of an anti-psychotic drug. The doctor retired after their last meeting.
Eight months later, Williamson walked into downtown Chapel Hill, randomly firing an M-1 rifle in one of the town’s most horrifying episodes, killing Walker and Reichardt and injuring a police officer. He stopped shooting only when police shot him in each leg.
“The Williamsons, in bringing this action, more than the money, wanted a forum to discuss health care issues, such as how we treat people with serious mental illness,” said their attorney, Nick Gordon of Winston-Salem.
But Liptzin and his attorney, Bruce Berger of Raleigh, said the verdict was an outrage that contradicted the evidence. Liptzin had asserted that no one could have foreseen Williamson’s violent outburst. Berger argued that Williamson’s failure to oversee his own care contributed to his problems, which should have barred him from recovering damages under the legal rule of contributory negligence.
Berger said he thought the verdict was a product of sympathy or confusion on the jury’s part. Liptzin is considering an appeal, and Berger said he expected the result to be overturned.
Williamson had improved under Liptzin’s care, Berger said, with the delusions and hallucinations that were the major symptoms of his illness subsiding. Williamson complied with the doctor’s treatment plan, Berger said, and should have been able to understand and follow the doctor’s orders concerning further counseling and medication.
“At some point, people need to take responsibility for their own actions,” Berger said. “This responsibility shifting, which I think is what the jury did, is wrong.
“Williamson’s bad choices were what led to what happened, not Dr. Liptzin’s excellent care. He had responsibilities. To reward him is the height of absurdity.”
Liptzin said he was sad both for Williamson and for colleagues still in practice. Williamson lost his chance at a law career and family because of his illness, while mental health care providers may now find themselves subject to a new level of second-guessing.
“If we are held to a standard that is to prevent something that is neither predictable nor within our control, why would anyone want to take care of very sick people?” Liptzin asked.
The verdict was the second time an Orange County jury has absolved Williamson of responsibility for his armed assault. Jurors in a capital murder trial in November 1995 found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to Broughton State Hospital in Morganton, where he must stay until he is judged to be no longer mentally ill or no longer a danger to himself or to others.
Williamson, an Eagle Scout, standout high school athlete, musician and honors student as a UNC-CH undergraduate, now spends most of his time in a locked ward of the 60-year-old hospital, in a room barely large enough for a single bed. He shares a TV with other patients on his ward, and his main activity is walking the grounds as part of his therapy. He and his family have only slight hope he will ever be released.
To bolster his case against the doctor, Williamson, who had not testified at his criminal trial, took the witness stand to speak publicly for the first time about his illness and the shootings.
In chilling detail, he told jurors he was so deluded at the time that he thought he was saving himself and the world. Drastic action was the only way to force people to acknowledge his telepathic ability, he said, and to stop them from tormenting and torturing him with thoughts they projected into his mind. “I considered it a matter of self-defense,” Williamson testified. “I couldn’t live with it anymore. It had to stop. I thought if I didn’t do something like that, that the world would end.”
“Do you want them to find you had no responsibility for them at all?” Berger asked, referring to the shootings.
“Yes,” Williamson said.
Jurors agreed, rejecting Liptzin’s contention that Williamson was negligent in failing to seek additional treatment and medication after the doctor retired. That was Liptzin’s responsibility, jurors said.
“It’s hard for [Liptzin] to understand the verdict,” said juror Carol Sparrow, who called the trial and deliberations the most difficult ordeal of her life. “He’s a good man, but he has to follow the law.”
Jurors declined to say how they arrived at the figure they awarded for damages.
“It was a very difficult case,” forewoman Stephanie Wissinger said. “We realized there was no happy result. It was wrenching for everybody.
ALAN SCHER ZAGIER STAFF WRITER
Published: December 15, 1998
HILLSBOROUGH — Just weeks before a judge would decide his fate, Wendell Williamson got drunk on a pint of vodka inside a state psychiatric hospital. On Monday, that lapse in judgement cost the notorious Chapel Hill gunman a measure of his freedom. Superior Court Judge Ron Stephens ruled that Williamson, a former law student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who killed two men in a January 1995 shooting spree, should be transferred from Broughton State Hospital in Morganton to a unit for violent offenders at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh.
The decision brought an audible sigh of relief from Karl and Carol Reichardt, a Maryland couple whose 20-year-old son was killed by Williamson.
“Here’s a person who has a character flaw and a criminal intent,” Karl Reichardt said after the hearing in Orange County Superior Court. “He has never felt accountable. He has never admitted he has a mental problem. All of these issues are best dealt with in a secure environment.”
After a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity, Williamson spent a year at Dix before moving to Broughton in January 1997 to be closer to his parents’ home near Asheville.
Williamson has thrived in that setting, his psychiatrist testified.
“He has worked very hard,” Dr. Harriet Lehman said. “He has made strong efforts to increase his socialization. He’s showing a lot more insight not only into his illness, but he’s also getting in touch with the effects of his crimes on the (victims’) families.”
At Broughton, Williamson plays bass guitar in a rock band that consists of other patients and staff members. He has written a book about his experiences and is taking correspondence courses to become a paralegal.
Williamson takes anti-depressants and a powerful anti-psychotic medicine to combat paranoid schizophrenia.
And on Nov. 6, according to testimony, Williamson - an admitted substance abuser - was visibly intoxicated inside the locked ward.
The incident not only violated hospital rules but also jeopardized the effectiveness of the drugs used to control his mental illness.
Subsequent tests indicated that Williamson had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.11 - above the state’s legal limit for intoxication.
“I saw an opportunity to drink and took it,” Williamson told a therapist three days later, according to court testimony. “I still enjoy drinking and smoking pot.”
He showed little remorse afterward and admitted drinking in another episode for which he was not caught.
“After this incident, I’m still not confident that I wouldn’t do it again,” Williamson told the therapist.
Even though he refused to tell hospital workers how he acquired the alcohol, Williamson was not disciplined for the offense. “We chose to deal with it as a clinical issue,” Lehman said.
At Dix, Williamson will reside in a new forensic psychiatric unit designed specifically for mental patients found not guilty of violent crimes by reason of insanity.
The state spent $3.6 million on the 72-bed unit, half of which opened last year.
It also will house defendants found incompetent to stand trial, and inmates on suicide watch from local jails.
As of Jan. 1, all patients found not guilty by reason of insanity in cases involving serious injury or death must be committed to treatment at the Dix forensic unit.
District Attorney Carl Fox called Monday’s ruling appropriate.
“The legislature developed this unit for exactly these types of patients,” said Fox, who sat at the prosecution’s table throughout the 2 1/2 hour hearing but deferred presentation of the case to Robert Hargett of the state Attorney General’s Office.
Williamson did not attend the hearing, an annual inquiry into his mental capacity and potential danger to others. Nor did his attorney, Kirk Osborn of Chapel Hill, challenge his client’s confinement.
Instead, Osborn argued that a shift back to Raleigh would break Williamson’s bonds with his treatment team, reduce parental visits, and ultimately hinder Williamson’s recovery.
“We’re dealing with a person who is mentally ill,” Osborn said. “We’re not dealing with punishment. A transfer to Dix is punishment.”
Osborn also lobbied unsuccessfully to allow Williamson free time while on hospital grounds, outside the confines of the locked ward. A state rule requires that he be accompanied by at least one staff member when away from the ward.
Calling it a “matter of human dignity,” the attorney compared Williamson’s plight to that of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator who is fighting extradition from England on charges of genocide. Even Pinochet has been allowed to walk around outside while under detention, Osborne argued.
For the Reichardt family, Monday’s ruling was a long-awaited victory after a string of courtroom defeats.
Most recently, Williamson won a $500,000 malpractice judgement against his former psychiatrist for not ensuring continued treatment after the doctor retired.
The Reichardts now will turn their attention to changing state law to allow imprisonment of the mentally ill found guilty of violent crimes.
“It’s the first time we’ve been in a legal situation where it’s turned out the way it should have,” Karl Reichardt said. “But the problem is, the legal system can’t handle this. The only way to handle it is with a guilty-but-insane charge. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
NATALIE P. MCNEAL STAFF WRITER
Published: April 7, 1999
Hillsborough — The Superior Court judge who presided over the Wendell J. Williamson medical malpractice civil trial has upheld the jury’s verdict, which ordered Williamson’s psychiatrist to pay his former patient $500,000 in damages. In September, an Orange County jury found that Williamson’s psychiatrist, Myron B. Liptzin, was responsible for Williamson’s deadly 1995 shooting rampage in Chapel Hill.
Liptzin’s attorney, Bruce Berger, filed a post-trial motion to hold a new trial or to have the jury’s verdict overturned, but the judge ruled against the defense.
In a ruling dated March 31, but not made public until Tuesday, Superior Court Judge James C. Spencer Jr. wrote that “the evidence, taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, was sufficient to support a jury verdict for the plaintiff.”
The post-trial motion is the first step in the appeals process. Berger said he plans to file an appeal with the state Court of Appeals within the next week.
“I think that he’s a great judge, but I disagree with his decision,” Berger said. “I hope the Court of Appeals sees things our way.”
Williamson, who was a third-year law student at UNC-CH, said in his lawsuit that Liptzin did not take Williamson’s mental illness seriously enough. Jurors found that Liptzin failed to make sure Williamson continued to receive care after the doctor retired and that he did not inform Williamson about the long-term nature of his disorder and the need to seek further treatment and medication.
In his suit, Williamson said that he would not have gone on his shooting spree if Liptzin had ensured that he would continue to receive treatment.
Instead, Williamson stopped taking medication prescribed for his paranoid schizophrenia and did not seek further treatment after Liptzin retired from Student Health Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 1994.
Liptzin asserted that Williamson failed to follow the doctor’s recommendations to seek further treatment and medication. Liptzin also said no one could have foreseen Williamson’s violent outburst.
“I’m not the judge, and I can’t second-guess him,” Liptzin said Tuesday. “But this is still puzzling to me and makes no sense.”
In January 1995, wearing camouflage gear and sunglasses, Williamson marched through Chapel Hill with a M-1 rifle, firing indiscriminately at any passing target, killing two people and wounding two others - including a police officer - before Williamson was shot by police and arrested. Tried for murder, Williamson was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and is currently in a mental hospital.
ANNE BLYTHE STAFF WRITER
Published: December 12, 2000
HILLSBOROUGH — Wendell Williamson may not walk unsupervised at the state mental hospital where he is ordered to stay, a judge ruled Monday, even though a psychologist and other members of his treatment team at Dorothea Dix Hospital said his therapy would be stymied without such freedom. Williamson, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity five years ago for killing two men during a 1995 shooting rampage in downtown Chapel Hill.
Since the November 1995 jury decision, the former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law student has been confined in state mental hospitals by order of the court. For the past two years, he has been in a special forensic unit at Dix.
Life for him there consists of regular meetings with a social worker, psychologist, physicians and other members of his treatment team. He takes an anti-depressant and powerful anti-psychotic medicine to combat symptoms of his disease.
His parents, who live in Clyde, a small town in the North Carolina mountains, come to see him regularly.
He also has had visits from a female friend, with whom he could hug on arrival and departure, until this fall when Dix workers revoked that privilege because of prolonged contact. The woman, Dix workers said, also caused trouble for Williamson when she brought him bags of junk food and tried to hide spending money inside.
Those incidents with the woman, whose identity was not revealed, were highlighted Monday afternoon in an Orange County courtroom during an annual inquiry about Williamson’s mental health and his potential danger to others. Judge Robert Hobgood presided over the hearing, which Williamson did not attend.
“I cannot assure you that he would be safe if he were released to the community at this time,” Mark Hazelrigg, a forensic psychologist at Dix, told the judge.
Williamson could, however, be trusted to walk outside his ward at Dix without staff supervision, said Hazelrigg and Matthew Martin, Williamson’s lawyer. With such a privilege, Hazelrigg said, Williamson could work in the grill at Dix, in a warehouse or in the laundry — jobs that would be more stimulating than the one he has now cleaning tables in his ward. He could go to units on the Dix campus that have computers with Internet connections, which would enable him to take correspondence courses.
“Typically, the unescorted time is very brief,” Hazelrigg told the judge. “He would walk freely from one activity to the next without staff.”
The Dix campus, though, is not fenced in. Lawyers representing the state attorney general’s office argued that Williamson could flee and that any freedom would be too much for a man who killed two people.
Judge Hobgood agreed. “The potential danger to the public is a concern of the court,” he said.
Karl and Carol Reichardt, the parents of one of the victims in the shooting, praised the judge’s ruling. “He didn’t want to put the whole community at risk,” Karl Reichardt said.
Matthew Eisley STAFF WRITER
Published: December 20, 2000
The psychiatrist for mentally ill killer Wendell J. Williamson was not responsible for his patient’s 1995 shooting rampage in Chapel Hill and does not have to pay him $500,000, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. Overturning a 1998 jury verdict in a civil lawsuit, the appeals court ruled that retired psychiatrist Myron B. Liptzin’s alleged treatment lapses in 1994 did not cause the paranoid schizophrenic law student’s attack the next year. Williamson killed two people and wounded two others before police shot and arrested him.
Williamson’s personal injuries, career damage and hospital confinement - the things he sued over - were unforeseeable, the court panel concluded in a unanimous ruling written by Judge Patricia Timmons-Goodson.
The decision relieves psychiatrists and other doctors across the state and nation who had warned that an appeals ruling in favor of Williamson would lead doctors to avoid treating potential patients or to overtreat them - and encourage lawsuits.
“The (trial) ruling, if left standing, would have interfered in our ability of taking good care of our patients,” said Dr. Tom Stephenson, a Chapel Hill psychiatrist and a leader within the North Carolina Psychiatric Association.
Liptzin, a former psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Student Health Services, was not available for comment. Matt Sawchak of Raleigh, one of his attorneys, said the ruling was well-reasoned and thoughtful.
“As precedent,” Sawchak said, “it openly states that the facts of psychology are complicated, and it’s not easy for mental-health professionals to foresee everything that might happen. Psychology is not car repair.”
One of Williamson’s attorneys, L.G. “Nick” Gordon Jr. of Winston-Salem, said the appeals court’s ruling will make psychiatric malpractice cases harder to prove, which will hurt the mentally ill.
“This was not a runaway jury verdict,” Gordon said. It was predictable, he said, that Williamson’s mental illness would worsen without proper diagnosis and treatment.
“It’s like giving a child a can of gasoline and a match,” he said. “The mentally ill have major issues. If they do not have redress through the court system, then they have nowhere to go.”
Lawyers have eagerly awaited the court’s 27-page ruling since the case was argued eight months ago.
Because the ruling was unanimous, Williamson gets no automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court. But Gordon said he will ask the high court to take the case.
Williamson’s sensational story has been the subject of national TV shows and heated local debate. He remains in Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix state mental hospital, where a judge ruled last week that Williamson poses too great a public risk to walk around unsupervised.
After several years of mental trouble, Williamson turned violent on Jan. 26, 1995, when he walked down Chapel Hill’s Henderson Street firing a military rifle indiscriminately at passersby. He killed two people and wounded two.
Later that year, a criminal trial jury found Williamson not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Liptzin had treated Williamson for mental illness as a Student Health Services outpatient for several months in 1994. Liptzin allegedly did not review all of Williamson’s case files and diagnosed Williamson with “delusional disorder grandiose” rather than the more serious paranoid schizophrenia other doctors have since concluded that Williamson suffers.
Eight months before the shootings, Liptzin retired and told Williamson to continue treatment with another doctor. Williamson didn’t.
Williamson sued Liptzin in 1997, alleging that the doctor had misdiagnosed his mental illness and failed to make sure he got a new doctor and continued treatment.
A jury concluded not only that Liptzin’s treatment was substandard, but that it led to Williamson’s violence and that Williamson wasn’t responsible for his failure to get proper medical care. The jury awarded him $500,000 plus interest and court costs.
The appeals court concluded that whatever treatment mistakes Liptzin might have made did not cause Williamson’s violence.
Joining Timmons-Goodson in the ruling were Chief Judge Sidney Eagles and Judge Robert Hunter.
The court said psychiatry is an ambiguous art unavoidably involving “uncertainties in diagnosing diseases of the human mind and predicting future behavior.”
The most telling trial testimony, the appeals court said, was when one of Williamson’s own expert witnesses, a psychiatrist, said no one could have predicted that Williamson would kill.
“(N)obody’s crystal ball is that good,” he said.
###
The Williamson case
1990-1994: Wendell Williamson, an undergraduate and law student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is treated several times for mental illness.
May 25, 1994: Dr. Myron Liptzin, a staff psychiatrist with UNC-CH’s Student Health Services, sees Williamson for the last time after treating his mental illness for several months.
Jan. 26, 1995: Williamson’s shooting rampage in downtown Chapel Hill leaves two bystanders dead and two wounded; police shoot him.
Oct. 23, 1995: Opening day of Williamson’s double capital murder trial. Williamson pleads he was insane at the time of the killings.
Nov. 7, 1995: An Orange County jury finds Williamson not guilty by reason of insanity.
May 1997: Williamson files a medical malpractice lawsuit against Liptzin.
September 1998: Jurors find that Liptzin was negligent and did not take Williamson’s illness seriously enough. They award Williamson $500,000.
November 1998: Williamson is featured on “60 Minutes” on CBS.
April 1999: Liptzin’s lawyers appeal the jury’s malpractice verdict to the state Court of Appeals.
April 2000: Liptzin’s and Williamson’s attorneys argue the case before the appeals court.
Dec. 19, 2000: A state Court of Appeals panel overturns the jury verdict against Liptzin 3-0. Williamson’s lawyer says he’ll appeal to the Supreme Court.
Anne Blythe STAFF WRITER
Published: March 24, 2001
CHAPEL HILL — A vanity press has terminated its publishing contract with Wendell Williamson, the man diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia who killed two men during a shooting spree five years ago in downtown Chapel Hill.
A representative from iUniverse.com sent a letter recently to Amy Martin, a writing instructor at N.C. State University, to let her know that the company no longer would sell Williamson’s “Nightmare: A Schizophrenia Narrative.”
William Jordan, senior vice president for business development, told Martin in the letter that iUniverse.com had learned of potential liabilities and no longer was interested in the book. Jordan could not be reached for comment.
Williamson, who was found not guilty of the two shootings by reason of insanity, began to jot down thoughts as part of his therapy. He wrote down his recollections of the weeks and months that led to that January day six years ago when, dressed in camouflage, he marched down Henderson Street firing a military rifle. He is confined in the forensics unit of Dorothea Dix Hospital. He has been in locked wards of state mental hospitals since the shooting.
Williamson, who received an English degree with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shaped his notes into a first-person narrative, a manuscript that he and Martin have shopped around to a few publishers.
Williamson would have had to put any money he made from the sale of the book toward his treatment and hospital bills. He has declared himself indigent, which makes the state responsible for his bills. Williamson said he would rather any sales money go to the Treatment Advocacy Center, but those details had not been worked out.
Martin said she and Williamson would not give up on their efforts to get the manuscript published. She said they believe many people want to know what was going through his troubled mind at that time, and the book sheds light on that.
Published: December 11, 2001
Hillsborough — Wendell Williamson will be able to walk unsupervised on the unfenced grounds of Dorothea Dix Hospital, a judge ruled Monday, despite a state attorney’s argument that he could escape.
Judge Howard Manning Jr. gave Williamson the right to walk from his ward to other supervised activities at the mental hospital — work, classes and therapy — without an escort. Hospital staff must communicate with each other before and after he makes the trips, which can take no longer than 10 minutes.
A psychologist and social worker — members of his treatment team at Dix — said his therapy would continue to be stymied without such freedom. Williamson’s attorney, Matthew Martin, petitioned for the same privileges in 1999 and 2000 but was denied.
“We trust him not to run off,” said Mark Hazelrigg, a forensic psychologist at Dix. “There’s no benefit for him to leaving. We trust that he is capable of making those judgment calls.”
In an annual inquiry about Williamson’s mental health, Hazelrigg told the court that Williamson might have another psychotic episode if he were let out into the public and stopped taking his medications.
“I can’t assure that he would not be dangerous,” he said. “He can be safe in a confined area. ... I anticipate that he’ll be hospitalized for a number of years.”
Williamson, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity after he killed two men during a January 1995 shooting rampage in downtown Chapel Hill. He dressed in camouflage and marched down Henderson Street firing a rifle.
Since the November 1995 jury decision, Williamson, a former law student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been confined in state mental hospitals by order of the court. For the past three years, he has been in a special forensic unit at Dorothea Dix Hospital.
Williamson’s life at Dix includes regular meetings with members of his treatment team. He takes an antidepressant and powerful anti-psychotic medicine to combat symptoms of his disease.
This year, he has continued to not show symptoms, Hazelrigg said. He maintained his sobriety, quit smoking and wrote a book, “Nightmare: A Schizophrenia Narrative.”
“He is at the point where his symptoms are completely under control,” Hazelrigg said. “He understands that he has a mental illness.”
Manning denied Martin’s request to allow Williamson up to four hours of unsupervised time each day. Hazelrigg said that time is needed for him to learn to interact normally with other people.
But the Dix campus is not fenced in. Angel Gray, a lawyer representing the state attorney general’s office, argued that Williamson could flee. He remains ill and, according to medical records, may have shown symptoms as recently as October.
“The risk of exposing someone like Mr. Williamson to the public in this case is too great,” Gray said.
Karl and Carol Reichardt, parents of one of the shooting victims, drove from Annapolis, Md., for the hearing.
“My son’s dead, and we’re worried about what privileges he’s going to get,” Carol Reichardt said. “He thinks he’s got a raw deal. My son’s dead.”
Karl Reichardt agreed.
“It’s a game,” he said. “He’s got a mental illness that’s not going away. I’d like to see what this judge would do if it was his son that was murdered.”
Anne Blythe Staff Writer
Published: December 3, 2002
HILLSBOROUGH — A judge ruled Monday that Wendell Williamson will be free to walk unsupervised for up to an hour on the unfenced Dorothea Dix Hospital grounds in Raleigh, despite objections from the state that such freedom could pose a risk to the public.
Williamson, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity seven years ago after killing two men and severely injuring a female police officer during a shooting rampage in downtown Chapel Hill on Jan. 26, 1995.
The former UNC-Chapel Hill law student has been confined in state mental hospitals by court order since the jury’s decision in November 1995. He has spent the past three years at a special forensic unit at Dix.
Since December 2001, Williamson has been able to walk unescorted from his ward to music therapy sessions, computer training and his job with a dietitian on other parts of the hospital campus. Supervisors must communicate with each other before and after he makes the trips, which cannot exceed 10 minutes.
At an annual commitment hearing Monday in Orange County Superior Court, Mark Hazelrigg, director of the Dix forensic unit, asked Judge Jack Jenkins of Wake County to allow the treatment team to extend the time Williamson can go without supervision.
If the team could offer Williamson passes that allow him up to four unsupervised hours, Hazelrigg said, they could help him make progress toward independence.
“What I’m describing is free time, where he’s allowed to make his own decisions about what to do and where to go,” Hazelrigg said. “The progress of a patient toward independent functioning requires that they be able to practice that in a controlled format.”
Angel Gray, an associate state attorney general, objected to the request.
“You’ve heard a lot this morning about what would be good for Mr. Williamson,” Gray told the judge. “We would argue that there’s another side to this story which you need to weigh. You also must consider what’s good for this community.”
Gray said Williamson makes bad decisions and has a history of drug and alcohol abuse.
“He decided to kill two people and seriously wound another. Even two hours of free time is more than enough to put the public at risk,” Gray said. “We would argue that one hour, two hours, four hours is plenty of time for him to leave, for him to get to I-40 and downtown Raleigh.”
Matthew Martin, the lawyer representing Williamson, and Hazelrigg said that without more freedom, Williamson’s progress could be stymied. “He’s already off the ward without staff supervision,” Hazelrigg said. “There is nothing to prevent him from walking off currently. Whatever risk there is exists now.”
During the past year, Williamson has exhibited what his therapists described as a “brighter” disposition than in the previous year. Hazelrigg said symptoms of psychosis were in remission.
But in April, according to Gray, Williamson told the treatment team that he thought voices in the hallway were repeating his thoughts while he was lying in bed.
The treatment team switched his medication several months before the incident, and Hazelrigg said it was a positive sign that Williamson mentioned the voices so his dosage of the new drug could be altered. “That’s actually kind of rare,” Hazelrigg said. “Most patients hide their symptoms.”
During the past year, Williamson quit smoking, limited his caffeine intake and regularly attended support group sessions for alcohol- and drug-abusers. He also has been taking correspondence courses that put him close to attaining a law degree, Martin said.
The judge recommitted Williamson for 365 days. He said he thought four unsupervised hours would be excessive. “The court will allow up to one hour,” Jenkins said. “It is fully understood that he’s not going to get an hour tomorrow. It’s going to be incremental.”
Karl and Carol Reichardt, the parents of Kevin Reichardt, a UNC-CH lacrosse player killed during the shooting rampage, made their annual trip to Hillsborough for the hearing. They were disappointed with the judge’s decision.
“What’s interesting to me is that over these several years, the focus is privilege and trust between the care team and Williamson,” said Karl Reichardt, who recently read Williamson’s account of the events leading up to the shooting and after in a book published briefly on the Internet. “The problem is that from the time it happened until now, he’s never accepted accountability for what he’s done.”
Published: June 11, 2004
RALEIGH — Wendell Williamson, who killed two men in January 1995 during a shooting spree in downtown Chapel Hill, apparently was missing from Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh about 8:45 p.m. Thursday.
Dix hospital spokesman Mark Van Sciver confirmed that an unidentified patient participating in a group meeting left to get a drink at about 8:45 p.m. Thursday and did not return.
Raleigh police Lt. T.L. Earnhardt confirmed at 2 a.m. today that Williamson had not been located at the Dorothea Dix campus and that Raleigh police were looking for him.
Williamson, 35, was a law student at UNC-Chapel Hill when he shot and killed Ralph Walker Jr., an assistant manager at McDonald’s in Chapel Hill, and Kevin Reichardt, a UNC-CH student, on Henderson Street. Williamson also seriously wounded a police officer.
Williamson, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, has been confined in state mental hospitals since November 1995, when a jury found him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Each year, representatives of the state Attorney General’s Office and Williamson’s treatment team attend a hearing to decide whether he should remain committed at Dix, in Raleigh.
In March, he was re-committed to Dorothea Dix Hospital for another year with no expansion of his daily hour of unsupervised free time.
Anne Saker
Anne Blythe Staff Writers
CORRECTION: A report on the front page incorrectly identified who stopped Wendell Williamson’s January 1995 shooting spree in Chapel Hill. A resident knocked Williamson down and disarmed him.
Published: June 12, 2004
In Friday’s wee hours, police radios within 50 miles of Raleigh crackled with a warning: Be on the lookout for a tall man with a goatee, who had walked away from Dorothea Dix Hospital.
The news electrified Chapel Hill. Wendell Williamson, a killer, was on the loose.
“What went through my head? It was sort of like, ‘Well, it finally happened,’ “ said Ralph Pendergraph, who was the town’s police chief on the day that forever will be associated with Williamson. “You start thinking about what might happen, and then you realize the kind of person you’re dealing with, and you can’t know.”
Williamson, now 36, was a law student at UNC-Chapel Hill on Jan. 26, 1995, when, in the throes of schizophrenic delusions, he put on fatigues and walked down Henderson Street firing a military rifle. He killed Ralph Walker Jr., an assistant manager at McDonald’s, and UNC-CH student Kevin Reichardt. Williamson also shot and seriously injured one of Pendergraph’s officers. Then police brought him down.
Eleven months later, an Orange County jury that heard evidence of Williamson’s mental illness found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to Dix Hospital, the state psychiatric facility in Raleigh.
Every year since, Williamson has asked the courts for greater liberties at Dix, over the objections of his victims’ families. Judges have granted him increments of freedom, in much smaller parcels than his doctors recommended.
As of this week, Williamson was allowed one unsupervised hour a day and permission to go unescorted from building to building on the rolling, green Dix campus. Hospital officials said Friday that Williamson had never gone AWOL.
Then he did.
Minimal risk perceived
Hospital Director Terry Stelle said Williamson attended a Thursday night meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the McBryde Building with other Dix patients, residents of the alcohol-treatment facility The Healing Place, and neighbors from the community.
As the meeting ended about 8:25 p.m., Stelle said, a health-care technician saw Williamson leave and figured he was on his way back to his room a few hundred yards away.
But Williamson did not check in as required, and Dix personnel and the hospital’s security force fanned out across campus in a search. At 11 p.m., Dix officials asked for help because, as Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue said, “When you walk off the Dix campus, you’re in Raleigh.”
Patrol officers and detectives mobilized. The police issued the radio alerts in a 50-mile area at least once an hour through the night. As a sweaty dawn broke, residents called in with reports that Williamson was at the International House of Pancakes on Hillsborough Street or later at the McDonald’s in Cameron Village. He wasn’t.
In Chapel Hill, Williamson’s disappearance ignited a fear as well as an I-told-you-so.
Some people were convinced that Williamson would make his way back. Town employees received e-mail warnings. Police administrators issued photos of Williamson taken in January. Extra officers got ready for posting downtown.
“My first thought was that he would come back to Chapel Hill and attempt to harm people in the way he had before,” Town Manager Cal Horton said. “All we knew was that he had walked off. ... He fooled everybody over there and got them to relax. He’s calculating and very deceptive. I think he worked a very long time to get the caretakers to relax so he could walk off. I hope they won’t let that happen again.”
Carl Fox, the Orange-Chatham district attorney who tried Williamson on murder charges, was tipped off by his wife when she heard a broadcast on public radio.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Fox said. “Dorothea Dix is not a secure facility when there’s no fence there and you’re between I-40 and Western Boulevard. All you’re doing by giving him privileges is giving him a head start on authorities.”
Echoes of pain, anger
Dee Williamson, Wendell’s father, was in Newport, Tenn., when his son disappeared. He said he had not heard from him nor had he seen him lately. “I see him about every six months,” the elder Williamson said.
Word of Williamson’s disappearance got to Kevin Reichardt’s father in Maryland, and he grew angry.
“The legal system can’t handle this situation. It’s obvious that’s the case,” Karl Reichardt said.
“He’s obviously not trustworthy. That’s verified by what he did Thursday night and into the morning.
“My son, obviously my other son, was absolutely beside himself when he heard this. He said, ‘It’s never going to end.’ You never knew what [Williamson] is going to do. If he chooses to, he might come up here after us because we’ve been speaking out against giving him more privileges.”
Williamson falls into a gray area of the law: Because he is not guilty by reason of insanity, the state hospitalizes rather than imprisons him. His case undergoes annual judicial review because of the seriousness of his crime. He has complied with his treatment, including anti-psychotic medications, and was considered a minimal risk.
A forensic unit established at Dix in 1998 holds 86 of the state’s most severely ill criminals, including 26 found not guilty of their crimes by reason of insanity. Mark Van Sciver, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said 10 people have walked away from the forensic unit. All returned safely.
Until Thursday, three AWOLs came out of the not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity population.
Then Williamson left.
A stroll to the lake?
Psychiatrist Nicholas Stratas, a former deputy commissioner of the state mental health division who practiced at Dix, said walkaways are an unusual but not rare experience at a public hospital. They most often end uneventfully.
“In my experience, it’s the commonest that the patients will come back or be found. In 90 percent or more of those situations, when a patient walks off, they’re found. Or they call,” he said. “In the old days, it was very common for them to walk off, stay gone during the summer and call during the winter and say they want to come back.”
Stratas said people walk off for many reasons. “Sometimes, they’re walking off just to take a walk,” he said.
About 8:30 a.m. Friday, just as the area’s law enforcement infrastructure cranked up to search for Williamson, a tall man with a goatee entered the Lake Wheeler Park marina, nearly seven miles from Dix. He asked to use the office telephone and assured the park staff it was a local call.
Sughrue, the Raleigh police spokesman, said, “He told the Dix people something to the effect of, ‘Y’all come get me.’ “
Dix security officers poured into the marina offices.
Stelle said he and the Dix staff had no idea about what caused Williamson to leave, but they believed he walked to the lake.
As soon as Williamson returned to Dix, the privileges for which he had fought for nearly 10 years were suspended.
Fox News is reporting that one of the suspects may have killed the Duke grad student that died in January (shot in his apartment).
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