'My Son Has Killed My Wife'
Caratunk, Maine, June 20, 2006, at 4:49 p.m.
Dispatcher: 911. What is the address of the
emergency?
Mr. Bruce: My name is […] I live at […] in
Caratunk. Um, my son has killed my wife, he is schizo -- completely out of his
mind.
Dispatcher: Where is your wife now?
Mr. Bruce: She is in the bathtub, she is dead. I
just came home from work, her car is gone. […] I don't believe anyone
has been here, there is no sign the neighbors
are aware of anything going on. His name […]. He is 24 years old.
* * *
Dispatcher: How old is she?
Mr. Bruce: She's 48 years old. Please, please
don't put this out over the scanner. Just send someone up somehow. Would you please just do me that favor?
Dispatcher: Hold on just one second sir, OK?
Mr. Bruce: Yes.
Dispatcher: OK, we are going to send them out
over the phone that way….
Mr. Bruce: Yes, please. I will be right here.
There's uh….
Dispatcher: Do you have any idea where your son
may be going?
Mr. Bruce: I have have, he is completely out of
his mind.
Dispatcher: OK, what is your phone number there?
Mr. Bruce: [Number]. I don't know where the
phone went from up at the house, I'm down in her shop.
Dispatcher: OK. Stay right there, sir, I will be
in touch with you shortly. I am going to make some calls and get everyone
started that way, OK? Don't go anywhere.
Mr. Bruce: OK, yes. I will not.
Dispatcher: I'll call you back in a few minutes.
Mr. Bruce: Yes. Sir, I am going to arm myself.
Please, I will only have a weapon nearby. I don't intend to kill him or anything,
but if he shows up I do want to be able to defend myself. I don't want the
officers to feel threatened when they get here. I won't be standing out there
with a gun. I just wanted you to know that, OK?
Dispatcher: If you see a deputy or officer, just
make sure you keep your hands where they can see them. I will inform them of
that.
Mr. Bruce: OK.
Dispatcher: Just make sure if you see them you
keep your hands where they can see them.
Mr. Bruce: OK.
Dispatcher: Somebody will be in touch with you
shortly, sir.
Mr. Bruce: OK.
Dispatcher: Thank you.
* * *
[The 911 Center called back.]
Dispatcher: Did he have any access to weapons?
Mr. Bruce: I have… everything has been locked up
for a long time.
Dispatcher: Do all of your firearms are locked
up?
Mr. Bruce: Yes, I have a federal firearms
license. Everything has been locked in a building in a safe with an alarm system.
I have checked that.
Dispatcher: When was the last time you spoke to
your wife?
Mr. Bruce: About 7 a.m. this morning.
Dispatcher: Was your son there at that time?
Mr. Bruce: My son was here -- he was asleep. We
tried to get hold of the case manager. There's a guy they have, this, oh, this
f--ing system. They let these people out. They won't give them medications and
they let them out, and they put them with a case manager, I have called this
guy. We said, "Jeez he is getting worse." I said, "I can't go on
like this having him here, until he killed somebody."
Dispatcher: He has had some longer issues that
go back?
Mr. Bruce: He got out of Riverview, they
committed him and let him out, said there was nothing they could do for him, he
won't take medication and they won't give it to him under this these f--ing
nuts are the ones making these friggin, she was one of the most beautiful
people in the world. [Inaudible]
Dispatcher: You have to stay with me.
Mr. Bruce: I know, I'm OK.
Dispatcher: We need to make sure we get
everybody up there for you to make sure….
Dispatcher: I'm alright.
Dispatcher: OK. You are doing great.
Mr. Bruce: I'm alright. I'm, my other kids, the
rest of the family, the lives that are going to be ruined because of the lunatic
God D---laws. We told them he's going to kill somebody. They say, "Well he
seems OK now so there is nothing that we can do, you know."
* * *
Dispatcher: You're the one there correct, sir?
Mr. Bruce: As far as I know. I don't know where
he is.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: But the car is gone.
Dispatcher: And that is your wife's car,
correct?
Mr. Bruce: That is my wife's car.
Dispatcher: OK. There's a description showing on
the Department of Motor Vehicles. We got the plate number and everything.
* * *
Dispatcher: Does he have any friends? Any idea
at all where he might have gone?
Mr. Bruce: No clue. He has been completely out
of his mind. He's been home here with us… I'm going to say three weeks, and
he'll have periods where he'll calm down, but most of the time you talk to him
and you can't even carry on a conversation with him. He talks about, way gone,
way gone. Well, obviously.
Dispatcher: OK. I'm going to explain to you what
we are doing on this end. Just so you know real quickly. I have an ambulance
coming that way, but they are not going to be able to come there until the
police secure that scene. OK?
Mr. Bruce: Yes.
Dispatcher: For their protection and your
protection.
Mr. Bruce: Yes. I understand.
Dispatcher: OK. Police will come first. I've
already told them you have a firearm to protect yourself. It's close to you and
you don't have it on you. OK, when you see them….
Mr. Bruce: I know what to do. I will come out.
They will know its me and not him.
Dispatcher: Right. They're going to go inside, probably
just one of them.
Mr. Bruce: Which officers are coming up?
Dispatcher: I have numerous deputies coming.
Mr. Bruce: Alright. I know some of them.
Dispatcher: OK. [Name] is on his way. There's a
list of them. Probably just one of them will go into the house and secure the
scene.
Mr. Bruce: OK.
Dispatcher: And then the ambulance will go in,
OK?
Mr. Bruce: I've been upstairs. The only place I
haven't been down into the basement. I left my… I had no weapon, so I grabbed
my flashlight when I went down to check the gun room, I grabbed my flashlight,
that was the only light, but I'll….
Dispatcher: Do you have power there? There was a
big storm going through.
Mr. Bruce: We lost power. I hit the worst of it
in Solon, Bingham. It's just rain and a little lighter up here.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: Oh God.
Dispatcher: You haven't called anyone to come
down, have you?
Mr. Bruce: I haven't called anybody but you.
Dispatcher: OK. If you could refrain from doing
that for right now.
Mr. Bruce: [Inaudible] Yes… just, I don't need
all the, kinds of people getting wound up. We knew there was no plan and within
a week he was back up here and we … My wife wouldn't just leave him out. I
said, "If he comes here something bad is going to happen." I knew it.
I felt it.
* * *
Dispatcher: OK. They are actually coming towards
you. I just want to make sure that they are going to get there. OK, as soon as
they get there we can hang up.
Mr. Bruce: Yup.
Dispatcher: You're on the front porch now?
Mr. Bruce: I am on the front porch now.
Dispatcher: OK. Just so they can identify you
sir, what are you wearing?
Mr. Bruce: Blue jeans, black and white checked
shirt, sleeves rolled up, blue baseball cap on.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: I'm 54 years old […] I have the shot
gun sitting on the kitchen table. I don't know where he is.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: When they come, I'm watching, I'll go
out the door. There's nothing to worry about. I understand how it works.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: There's not going to be a problem.
You don't have to worry about it. I'm not going to do anything stupid.
Dispatcher: Please, don't walk around much sir.
Mr. Bruce: I am sure you have already put out an
APB, or whatever you guys call it. I just want to let them know they want to be
God D--- careful approaching him because he is completely out of his mind.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: And he was in the army and he does
know how to kill.
Dispatcher: He does, OK. So he would be
considered armed and dangerous.
Mr. Bruce: He must be. I don't know what he is
armed with. I don't know what he is armed with. I've got to say it's a knife of
some sort.
* * *
Dispatcher: So, is it still raining up there?
Mr. Bruce: Yeah, but not hard.
Dispatcher: Does your wife work, sir?
Mr. Bruce: Yeah, home business.
Dispatcher: And your son, does he work?
Mr. Bruce: My son does not do anything. He is
totally incapable of functioning.
Dispatcher: OK. Was he on any medications, I
know you said he refused?
Mr. Bruce: No.
Dispatcher: OK. Does he have a diagnosis?
Mr. Bruce: Yes.
Dispatcher: Do you know what that is?
Mr. Bruce: Yes, schizophrenia. [Inaudible]
Dispatcher: What was that?
Mr. Bruce: I haven't checked out the barn yet.
Dispatcher: OK. Don't go in there then.
Mr. Bruce: OK.
Dispatcher: Hang on a second. I am going to ask
them how long it is before they get there.
Mr. Bruce: OK.
Dispatcher: They are about four minutes out.
Mr. Bruce: Yup.
Dispatcher: Think you can take talking to me for
another four minutes.
Mr. Bruce: Still hanging in there.
Dispatcher: Alright. Good deal. When you called
me today, sir, you had just arrived home from work?
Mr. Bruce: Yes. I work for […]. I just left the
Fairfield office, stopped at Dr. ------ office to pick up a prescription and didn't
stop for gas…..
Dispatcher: Is there something else?
Mr. Bruce: No.
Dispatcher: Just trying to see if you knew what
he was wearing when you left for work or was he still sleeping so you wouldn't
know that.
Mr. Bruce: I have no idea what he was wearing.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: He's got… I believe it's… [Inaudible]
Dispatcher: Have you been fighting lately? I'm
sure it is hard to live with someone with that diagnosis. Do you know if they
were fighting?
Mr. Bruce: No.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: No, he was really whacked out the
last couple of days. We talked about it last night. I said, "He's getting worse,
more aggressive." I called this guy named [Name] who is the case manager
three times trying to get hold of him.
Dispatcher: Are you south of the Pleasant Pond
turnoff, sir?
Mr. Bruce: [Directions]. As soon as I see a
cruiser I'll be right out the door.
Dispatcher: OK. He is on the road now, just
looking for your place.
Mr. Bruce: Yup, I'll stand out on the porch.
Dispatcher: OK. You can see the porch from the
road?
Mr. Bruce: Yup.
Dispatcher: They're there sir?
Mr. Bruce: No.
Dispatcher: He's asking if you are north of the
Village.
Mr. Bruce: I'm in the Village, [Directions].
I'll be standing out in the driveway.
Dispatcher: OK.
Mr. Bruce: I see him right now.
Dispatcher: Is he there with you?
Mr. Bruce: He is coming, they're pulling in now,
two of them.
Dispatcher: You got them?
Mr. Bruce: Yes.
Dispatcher: OK. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Bruce: Good bye.
* * *
Police arrested William at his grandparents'
house, 120 miles away in Portland, Maine, and charged him with his mother's
murder. William was eventually found not criminally responsible by reason of
insanity for the crime and was sent for treatment at Riverview Psychiatric
Center, in Augusta, Maine, the same hospital that had released him shortly
before the murder. He will be there indefinitely.
Following is Joe's testimony:
My name is Joe Bruce. I live in Caratunk, Maine.
On February 6, 2006, my son William Bruce, age 24, was involuntarily committed to Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, Maine. On April 20, 2006, with help from federally funded patient rights advocates from the Disability Rights Center of Maine (DRCM), Will was discharged early from Riverview without the benefit of any medication.
As is most often the case with severely and persistently mentally ill persons across the country, Will returned home. Fears his mother and I had voiced to his doctors that Will would hurt or kill someone came true. On June 20, 2006 I returned home to find the body of my wife Amy.1 Will, in a state of deep psychosis, had killed her with a hatchet.2
Will was advised that without his consent, his parents had no right to participate in his treatment, or have access to his medical records. Will believed there was nothing wrong with him, that he was not mentally ill, a condition characteristic of many persons with severe bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia, particularly of younger ages such as Will's. He would not consent to our involvement with his treatment, and because he was an adult, his mother and I were barred from all access to his treatment. The doctor’s decision to release him, which resulted in such a tragic outcome, was made without the benefit of all of Will’s history or any input from Amy and me.
After his commitment to Riverview by the criminal court, I applied to become his guardian. Will was agreeable to this until, incredibly, a patient advocate told him, “The guardianship is a bad idea. It would give your father complete power over you.”
The attending physician (a new doctor), undoubtedly at the urging of DRCM, refused to provide the evaluation required in the guardianship application. He told me, “I could never participate in anything that would cause your son to be considered an incapacitated person.”
Bear in mind that at this point in time, Will had been placed in the hospital after being found incompetent to even stand trial!
Suffice it to say, I finally did become guardian, and I was able to participate in Will’s treatment and to obtain the medical records of his prior treatments. Until then, I had not known the role the patient advocates had played in Will’s premature and unmedicated release.
The medical records revealed exactly what the patient advocates had recklessly done and said to encourage Will to avoid the treatment he so desperately needed. His doctor had recorded verbatim what the patient advocates said to Will in the meetings from which Amy and I had been excluded.
– The patient advocate, a Trish Callahan, told the treating doctor that DRCM regarded Amy and me as a “negative force in Will’s life.” Amy and I had never met any of these people or even heard of Disability Rights Center of Maine.
– In the treatment meetings, she acted like a criminal defense lawyer. She openly coached Will on how to answer the doctor’s questions so as to get Will the least treatment and the earliest release. She did this in the face of strongly contrary evidence of Will’s unsuitability for unmedicated release.
– She repeatedly pressed for his early release despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that he was unsuited for it.3
DRCM willfully neglected Will’s need for treatment, and their pressure on the doctor to release Will led directly to Amy’s death. But neither the patient advocates nor the DRCM has ever acknowledged they did anything wrong. They have not changed their procedures and Trish Callahan, the advocate who helped fuel Will’s paranoid hostility towards his mother and contributed to her death, continued to work on the same unit at Riverview for years afterwards.
Lest anyone believe this is a local, isolated occurrence, the National Disability Rights Network, responding to the Wall Street Journal’s page one article4 concerning Will’s case, defended the actions of DRCM, 5 and even prepared talking points to deflect criticism.6 The patient advocates can do this with impunity because they are literally accountable to no one. But my experience with the patient advocates did not end here.
I have come to know the stories of many other families, and their experiences with the advocates’ surprising approach to these issues.
Beginning in 2007, I joined with other family members of some of the most severely mentally ill individuals in the State of Maine to seek legislative change to laws that had prevented our loved ones from receiving treatment. We took our concerns to the lawmakers in the Maine legislature.
To the shock of all of us we met with fierce lobbying opposition from Disability Rights Center of Maine. Nonetheless, we were successful in obtaining helpful legislation in 2007providing for medication over objection in appropriate cases. Having failed in the legislature, the lawyers at DRCM filed a legal action challenging the law, which thankfully was unsuccessful.
At the time of Amy’s death, the courts in Maine only had two options at a commitment hearing: to place someone in the hospital or to release them unconditionally. In 2008 and 2009 I and other Maine families worked to give the court a third option, that of releasing an individual into the community on the condition that he remain on medication. These types of laws are known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment laws and they have been opposed across the Nation by PAIMI organizations. Maine was no exception.
DRCM mounted a well-orchestrated lobbying attack on the proposed AOT law. It was joined in this effort by the Advocacy Initiative Network of Maine, another SAMHSA funded organization. Their campaign included proffering 20 or so consumer witnesses in opposition to the law, but these consumers were completely aware of their mental illness, stable on medication and successfully living in the community – the very goals that the proposed law was designed to achieve for our loved ones. DRCM had persuaded them to oppose the law by misrepresenting its essential provisions. This cynical opposition to the AOT law (which failed, because the law was ultimately enacted) shocked me and the families. The incident illustrates the national policy of the PAIMI program to oppose any form of involuntary treatment.
The PAIMIs, like DRCM, are so concerned that one person may be inappropriately treated involuntarily that they seek to prevent anyone from being medicated. In Will’s case, once I became his guardian, medication over his objection was his route to recovery.
As another example of DRCM’s lobbying influence in this area, while the Maine families and I were busy working on the AOT law, DRCM was successful in getting a bill through the Maine legislature to make it more difficult for families to become guardians. Becoming a guardian is the only way families of adult patients can be involved in the treatment of their loved ones where the patients are unwilling or unable to consent. Why do PAIMIs want guardianship to be more difficult? Because a guardianship lifts HIPAA secrecy and allows the guardians into the treatment meetings.
Will is still in Riverview, to which he was committed by the criminal court. Once he was committed, he got the care he should have gotten before. Ironically and horribly, Will was only able to get treatment by killing his mother. We have found a medication that works. He leaves the hospital frequently on supervised release with staff or family members. He is being successfully treated and he is doing extremely well.7 He now recognizes that if he had been treated his mother would still be alive today. He stated to the Wall Street Journal, “The advocates didn’t protect me from myself. None of this would have happened if I had been medicated.”
Tragedy visits families every day. That is a sad fact of life. But an unbearable aspect of Amy’s death is that my own tax dollars helped make it possible. A retired nurse from Riverview may have summed it up best. She wrote: “Mr. Bruce . . . Your losses didn’t happen for reasons other than your family’s misfortune to become involved with the mental health system, when politics (now) override sound medical decisions.”8
Thank you for hearing my testimony. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Exhibits to the Testimony of Joe Bruce
1. Pictures of Amy and Will.
2. Transcript of Joe Bruce’s call to 911 operator, June 20, 2006.
3. Transcript of hearing in State of Maine v. William Bruce, March 27, 2007. (Once Will started antipsychotic medication in December 2006, it brought about “remarkable change” in his insight into his need for treatment. At 51.)
4. The Role of the Patient Advocates, A Summary of the Medical Records of William Bruce, prepared by Robert D. Owen, counsel to Joe Bruce.
5. William Bruce: Chronology of His Medical Records and Treatment, prepared by Robert D. Owen, counsel to Joe Bruce.
6. Preliminary Appointment as Guardian, In Re: William H. Bruce, Piscataquis County (Me.) Probate Court, Feb. 8, 2007.
7. “A Death in the Family: Aided by advocates for the mentally ill, William Bruce left the hospital -- only to kill his mother,” WALL ST. J., August 16, 2008.
8. National Disability Rights Network “Summary in Response to WSJ Article.”
9. National Disability Rights Network talking points memo.
10. Letter dated Dec. 16, 2006 to Joe Bruce from Maria Champine, a registered nurse who worked at Riverview.
