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Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous.
Speaker 5: Killers in true crime history.
Speaker 4: True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. A nineteen year old accused of killing his
Speaker 5: parents is diagnosed with an unusual psychiatric disorder and spends
Speaker 5: a torture of six years in the Colorado judicial and
Speaker 5: mental health systems before his case experience is an unexpected end.
Speaker 5: Just in the Nick of Time is one of the
Speaker 5: most profound cases of multiple personality disorder MPD, all told
Speaker 5: from the perspective of the person who interacted most with
Speaker 5: the personalities, his criminal defense lawyer, David Sabots. It is
Speaker 5: a book about what happens when a mental disease far
Speaker 5: outpaces the understanding of the courts, the psychiatric community, and
Speaker 5: the public. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 5: just in the nick of time with my special guest,
Speaker 5: author and attorney David B. Sabots. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much for this interview. David B. Sabots,
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me, Dan, thank you very much,
Speaker 5: and congratulations on this extraordinary book. It's very unique. And
Speaker 5: congratulations on bringing this story to the public.
Speaker 6: Thank you, and thank you for allowing me to share
Speaker 6: it with your public.
Speaker 5: Let's get right to this extraordinary story.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 5: You take us to September twenty third, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 5: and you write that you get a call from your mentor,
Speaker 5: long time mentor and lawyer extraordinaire, Walter Garash. Tell us
Speaker 5: about this phone call what he had to say to you.
Speaker 6: I believe it was a Friday night, Dan, and I
Speaker 6: was home. My experience with Walter by then a span
Speaker 6: about eleven twelve years in which we tried cases together.
Speaker 6: He was a mentor and teacher of mine during that
Speaker 6: time and throughout the time we practiced together. So I
Speaker 6: received a phone call from him and he says, David,
Speaker 6: I need you to get money from the estate of
Speaker 6: Rod and Marilyn Carlson were found murdered about a month
Speaker 6: or so ago and their son, Ross is the individual
Speaker 6: suspected of having committed their murders. He's been arrested. The
Speaker 6: parents left a will included a trust funded by assets
Speaker 6: including life insurance left by them. Ross wants to hire me, David,
Speaker 6: but I can't get on the case unless we can
Speaker 6: get the money from that trust. So I need you
Speaker 6: to go into the probate court in Denver and argue
Speaker 6: the entitlement and discretion of the trustee to take money
Speaker 6: from that trust and pay me to defend Ross in
Speaker 6: his case. And if you succeed, David, then I'll get
Speaker 6: you on the case as well. So with that carrot
Speaker 6: man and with the challenge ahead of me, I learned
Speaker 6: about the case fel of the motion in the probate
Speaker 6: court to have the probate court order the trustee to
Speaker 6: make the distribution from the trust, and that was the
Speaker 6: beginning of the relationship between me and Walter and Ross.
Speaker 5: You right that there was some trepidation in terms of
Speaker 5: the grandparents' response and potentially their refusal to be able
Speaker 5: to give up those funds for Ross to be defended
Speaker 5: by attorneys.
Speaker 6: I think it wasn't so much of their refusal, but
Speaker 6: I think it was a sense of confusion that they
Speaker 6: had about the whole process and what we intended to
Speaker 6: use the funds for and what the defense of Ross
Speaker 6: would be. In the trust, Ross was the primary beneficiary
Speaker 6: and the two sets of grandparents were the contingent beneficiaries.
Speaker 6: The contingent beneficiaries would then the people who would receive
Speaker 6: the trust assets if the primary beneficiary, namely Ross, was
Speaker 6: not allowed to take a trust assets in Colorado, there
Speaker 6: was a law which exists in many states that does
Speaker 6: not allow the recipient of trust funds who may have
Speaker 6: been the perpetrator of the deaths of the people who
Speaker 6: left the trust to receive those funds. Essentially, the law
Speaker 6: doesn't want the killer to benefit from mondis left by
Speaker 6: the people whom he killed. So explain that to the parents.
Speaker 6: I got them an attorney to represent them, told them
Speaker 6: that under Colorado law, we were going to advance the
Speaker 6: defense that Ross wasn't responsible for the murders of their children,
Speaker 6: bringing the grandparents' children because he suffered from a mental
Speaker 6: illness and wasn't sane at the time the accused crime.
Speaker 6: Once the grandparents understood the dynamics of the defense and
Speaker 6: were able to speak with their own attorney, whom I
Speaker 6: had retained for them, and they eventually agreed that they
Speaker 6: would consent to the distribution of the trust proceeds to Ross.
Speaker 6: That gave the probate court the green light to order
Speaker 6: a trustee to make the distribution without an object action
Speaker 6: from the grandparents.
Speaker 5: You say, one of your first tasks was to learn
Speaker 5: more about your client and the faithful night his parents
Speaker 5: were killed, and you spoke to doctor Gregory Willitts. Tell
Speaker 5: us what doctor Willitts had said about his treatment of
Speaker 5: Ross or his assessment and valuation of Ross Carlson.
Speaker 6: When attorneys in these types of cases decide to advance
Speaker 6: or are going to consider a mental illness defense or
Speaker 6: mental capacity defense, one of the aspects of that defense
Speaker 6: is to see if the individual was undergoing mental health
Speaker 6: treatment or had a history of mental health treatment. And
Speaker 6: we were fortunate in this case to learn that for
Speaker 6: approximately one year before the murders of Ross's parents, he
Speaker 6: had been in treatment with doctor Willitts. The year before
Speaker 6: these homicides of the parents, Ross was arrested for having
Speaker 6: posed as an individual who wanted to buy dynamite from
Speaker 6: a representative of a soldier of Fortune magazine. Undercover officers
Speaker 6: learned of Ross's intent to buy the dynamite, pos as
Speaker 6: representatives of that magazine to distribute the dynamite to him,
Speaker 6: arrested him at the scene and learned that the reason
Speaker 6: he wanted to buy the dynamite, in part was to
Speaker 6: blow up the house that he and his parents lived in,
Speaker 6: because he Ross believed that he was a burden to
Speaker 6: his parents and one way he could alleviate them of
Speaker 6: their burden, namely him, was for him to die, and
Speaker 6: he thought by blowing himself up in a house and
Speaker 6: that would accomplish that purpose. Ross was placed on probation
Speaker 6: in that dynamite case, with the condition that he undergoes
Speaker 6: psychiatric treatment, and he did that with doctor Willis, so
Speaker 6: he Doctor Billets was someone whom we wanted to speak
Speaker 6: to to get an idea of what Ross's mental condition
Speaker 6: of mental health was for the year before the homicides.
Speaker 6: At the time we met with doctor Wilberts, he was
Speaker 6: anxious and fearful that we might be using that meeting
Speaker 6: as an opportunity to obtain evidence against him for his
Speaker 6: failure to make a diagnosis that put the Carlson's and
Speaker 6: harms Way, namely at the death of their son. So
Speaker 6: we assure doctor Bilarts that that was the last thing
Speaker 6: that we had in mind. We gave him a release
Speaker 6: we would not sue him, and that gave him the
Speaker 6: green light to discuss Ross's treatment with us in detail.
Speaker 6: At the time of our discussion, we had some information
Speaker 6: from investigation that we had done before we met with
Speaker 6: doctor Willets, which suggested that Ross thought of himself as
Speaker 6: being more than one person. We didn't know exactly what
Speaker 6: that meant. What the investigation showed was that Ross would
Speaker 6: mention to friends that he Ross had a twin brother
Speaker 6: who lived in Arizona, whose name was Justin. We knew
Speaker 6: that Ross was an only child, so we didn't know
Speaker 6: what Ross's reference to Justin meant. But as we met
Speaker 6: with doctor Willarts and began discussing with him some of
Speaker 6: the investigation that we had done, including the mention of
Speaker 6: this other individual named Justin, a light bulb went off
Speaker 6: in doctor Willarts's mind. He slammed his fist on the
Speaker 6: conference table around which he sat and said, to the
Speaker 6: words of the effect instead of a bee, I missed it.
Speaker 6: This guy may have suffered from multiple personality to disorder,
Speaker 6: and that provoked a very lengthy discussion then during our
Speaker 6: meeting with Dr Bolts as to exactly what he was
Speaker 6: talking about, and the more he discussed multiple personality disorder,
Speaker 6: which he abbreviated as MPD, the more we refer to
Speaker 6: investigation that we had done which seemed to be consistent
Speaker 6: with some of the features the illness that Dr Woltz
Speaker 6: was discussing with us. That was the first time that
Speaker 6: we had heard about this potential diagnosis, which obviously would
Speaker 6: form the basis of a defense of ours, an eventual
Speaker 6: plea to this recurt of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Speaker 5: Now, what was the first thing that you had to
Speaker 5: do in terms of finding more about this mental illness
Speaker 5: but also Ross's background and his parents and the influence
Speaker 5: of his parents' background on Ross's psychological development.
Speaker 6: Obviously we had to historyans, namely his parents, who were
Speaker 6: deceased and could not provide us with any information about
Speaker 6: his upbringing, so we had to rely on other sources
Speaker 6: for that information. That in part included the grandparents. That
Speaker 6: in part included notes and history that Doctor Bullets took
Speaker 6: about Ross's background because at the time when Ross was
Speaker 6: in treatment with Doctor Bullets. Ross's parents were still living
Speaker 6: and Doctor Bullets from time to time, what had families
Speaker 6: had family psychiastic sessions with them and learned information from them.
Speaker 6: The key information about the suspected abuse of Ross by
Speaker 6: his parents and or others would not have been revealed
Speaker 6: by the parents, of course, because that kind of behavior
Speaker 6: is typically kept secret from anybody. So we had to
Speaker 6: go through other sources that included, but were not limited
Speaker 6: to Ross being a historian, Doctor Billets and also being
Speaker 6: a historian, to experts whom we hired, actually Walter hired
Speaker 6: them to do their forensic evaluation of Ross. It is
Speaker 6: those doctors with whom we met after we spoke to
Speaker 6: Doctor Billets again. Those doctors views as to their diagnoses
Speaker 6: of Ross. One of our doctors diagnosed Ross as having
Speaker 6: a narcissistic personality and being insane. Another doctor diagnosed Ross
Speaker 6: as having a mixed personality disorder with features of MPD.
Speaker 6: A third doctor, who was our psychologists, actually dinoses Fross
Speaker 6: as suffering from MPD based upon both clinical diagnosis and
Speaker 6: testing that these psychologists had done with Ross. It was
Speaker 6: that psychologist, doctor Ralph Fish, with whom I relied on
Speaker 6: for the most part, because he was the most knowledgeable
Speaker 6: of all of our experts regarding the diagnosis. He had
Speaker 6: made it years before in a previous case. He had
Speaker 6: an abundance of literature regarding the diagnosis. He discussed the
Speaker 6: reasons for his findings with us, and I dove into
Speaker 6: that information head first, with as many pieces of literature
Speaker 6: and data that I could in order to understand more
Speaker 6: fully the diagnosis.
Speaker 5: You write about the extraordinary meeting you have with Ross
Speaker 5: and with your partner, Walter. Can you tell us about
Speaker 5: this experience and tell us about the plan to videotape Ross.
Speaker 6: One of the aspects of our defense was to review
Speaker 6: all the discovery material that the police had amassed regarding
Speaker 6: Ross the case against him. So Walter and I, after
Speaker 6: we had spoken to our experts, including this doctor Fish,
Speaker 6: went to the police department to review all the material.
Speaker 6: There was a smoking gun piece of evidence, which was
Speaker 6: a black suitcase filled with various personal items, including driver's
Speaker 6: license of his mother, of his father of Ross, a
Speaker 6: thirty eight caliber Rossy pistol bullets for the weapon. All
Speaker 6: the kinds of things that would tie individual to the
Speaker 6: murder were in that suitcase the weapon and the bullets
Speaker 6: found in the suitcase matched the bullets uncovered from the
Speaker 6: Carlson the students during their autopsy. So, after that review
Speaker 6: of evidence, which was at the police station where Ross
Speaker 6: was detained in jail, Walter and I went back to
Speaker 6: the jail to talk to Ross to let him know
Speaker 6: about the reasons, results of our interviews with our experts,
Speaker 6: as well as the evidence that we saw a masked
Speaker 6: by the police. And Ross began discussing aspects of his
Speaker 6: mental state, and he began discussing other parts of him
Speaker 6: and included names that he discussed with us and revealed
Speaker 6: as Steve Justin and other personalities whom doctor Fish had
Speaker 6: told us about, but whom Ross never had revealed himself
Speaker 6: to us. So the first time that Ross was providing
Speaker 6: us with informatory information to some degree of his illness,
Speaker 6: I took out a piece of paper and I said
Speaker 6: to him, you have an idea of how many different
Speaker 6: parts of you or personalities exist, And he said, yeah,
Speaker 6: I believe I do. I believe there are nine different personalities.
Speaker 6: And I said, can you write on the sheet of
Speaker 6: paper what the names of them are? And he drew
Speaker 6: a diagram, which had three levels of names on it.
Speaker 6: There was the first level Justin Steve. There was a
Speaker 6: next level of Blue, Gray, Michael Stacy. There was a
Speaker 6: next level of Norman, and Black. And Ross described these
Speaker 6: levels of personalities as Ross, Justin and Steve as being
Speaker 6: the capable personalities or aspects of the some of his parts.
Speaker 6: Gray and Blue were the incapable parts of his persona,
Speaker 6: and Norman and Black well what Ross described as the Antichrist,
Speaker 6: or the bad persons of the some of his parts.
Speaker 6: So he constructed this diagram described these various personalities. A
Speaker 6: half hour or forty minutes went by. I put the
Speaker 6: diagram in my suitcase. Before Walter and I left the jail,
Speaker 6: I said, by the way, Ross, just for my own purposes,
Speaker 6: I'm going to give you a second piece of paper.
Speaker 6: Can you again write the construct the construct of personalities
Speaker 6: that you had written to me before? He said sure,
Speaker 6: and he did it in exactly the same way as
Speaker 6: he had drawn before. As we left the jail, my
Speaker 6: mentor looked at me with some look of disagreement and said,
Speaker 6: I know what you did, David. He said, the client
Speaker 6: may think that you didn't trust him by asking him
Speaker 6: to rewrite a configuration, and I said Walter, I needed,
Speaker 6: for my own purposes to believe that what he was
Speaker 6: telling us was credible. And now I'm convinced that it is.
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Speaker 5: Now you have a doctor asking Ross questions, but a
Speaker 5: little bit to your surprise, he is asking Ross if
Speaker 5: there's other characters that will emerge. Tell us about this
Speaker 5: incredible experience that you witnessed.
Speaker 6: After Walter and I had that meeting with Ross at
Speaker 6: the jail and these different names of these personalities as
Speaker 6: close to us as well as their features, and as
Speaker 6: we learned more information about how these personalities manifest themselves
Speaker 6: from the jailers who observed Ross's behavior, it dawned on us,
Speaker 6: I mean, you meet him altered that we had to
Speaker 6: find a way to present this disorder to a jury
Speaker 6: would be seated and judging whether or not Ross was
Speaker 6: insane at the time of the crime. So it dawned
Speaker 6: on me that the best way to do that was
Speaker 6: the videotape a conversation between Ross and our doctors to
Speaker 6: see if these personalities would emerge during the interview process.
Speaker 6: If they did, then we'd make a decision about whether
Speaker 6: or not to show them to a jury. If they
Speaker 6: didn't emerge, we didn't have to disclose to anyone that
Speaker 6: we had conducted this interview, so there was no fould,
Speaker 6: no harm done if nothing positive emerged. So we had
Speaker 6: a session in jail where we had one of our doctors,
Speaker 6: Robert Fairburn, in whom Ross established a great report, sitting
Speaker 6: with Ross to interview him with a videographer there with
Speaker 6: me and Walter sitting in the room along with the doctor.
Speaker 6: Fairburn and Ross. Ross had been alerted by doctor Fairburn
Speaker 6: what the purpose of the interview would be, and he
Speaker 6: Doctor Fairburn began asking Ross questions, some of which were
Speaker 6: to whom am I speaking? And Ross initially announced, you're
Speaker 6: talking to Justin. Now, that's the first time I ever
Speaker 6: heard Ross respond in that fashion by saying, in response
Speaker 6: to a question, so was everybody's responding to doctor Fairburn
Speaker 6: that you are talking to Ross? The client said, you're
Speaker 6: talking to Justin. Doctor Fairburn then asked Justin to discuss
Speaker 6: what Justin's features were as a sixteen year old social butterfly,
Speaker 6: bone vivant, someone who handles all the social aspects of
Speaker 6: the various personalities. As the interview progressed, Ross then switched
Speaker 6: from Justin the personality called Steve, who described what his
Speaker 6: features were only a forty two year old who took
Speaker 6: care of the intellectual aspects, what the sum of the
Speaker 6: parts were all about. After Steve was talking to doctor Fairburn,
Speaker 6: eventually another personality, Norman emerged. Norman was a street punk,
Speaker 6: someone who took talked like a hoodlum on the street,
Speaker 6: someone whom you might see from a gangbanger or what
Speaker 6: have you. And Norman was a foul mouth, cigarette smoking,
Speaker 6: rough talking kind of a guy, and the only one
Speaker 6: of the personalities who actually smoked. The other personalities, Ross, Steve, Justin,
Speaker 6: and Norman was the only personality who smoked. The other
Speaker 6: ones did not. And the way some of the other
Speaker 6: personalities knew that Norman had been what we called out
Speaker 6: both quote, namely he was the one doing the acting
Speaker 6: was on another personality such as Steve rid Justin may
Speaker 6: have felt or tasted a cigarette taste in his mouth.
Speaker 6: So if Justin all of a sudden emerged after Norman
Speaker 6: and when Norman was out Norman was smoking, Justin would
Speaker 6: say I think Norman was out, and he'd be asked,
Speaker 6: how do you know that, and he would say, because
Speaker 6: I feel like taste cigarette smoke. Also emerging during that
Speaker 6: session with doctor Fairburn was a weeping six year old
Speaker 6: who didn't talk. He just sat there and cowered and cried.
Speaker 6: And it was incredible to sit in the same room
Speaker 6: as this client, whom I had only known as Ross,
Speaker 6: and seeing him all of a sudden power and begin
Speaker 6: crying inconsolably. The last personality who emerged during that session
Speaker 6: with doctor Fairburn was Black. Black was the demonic, ruthless
Speaker 6: protector of all the personalities and would be able to
Speaker 6: defend against any attack, an assault or otherwise against any
Speaker 6: of the other personalities and which and protect them and
Speaker 6: fend off the attacker by his might. And Black emerged
Speaker 6: during that session with doctor Fairburn by ripping away restraints
Speaker 6: that doctor Fairburn had tied on Ross's arms and feets,
Speaker 6: knowing that he doctor Fairburn was going to try to
Speaker 6: get Black to emerge, and he doctor Fairburn wanted some
Speaker 6: protection with these restraints if Black in fact emerged with
Speaker 6: the restraints on, Black eventually emerged and freed himself with
Speaker 6: his might from these restraints. After that, another personality emerged
Speaker 6: from Black's presence and realized that Black had been out
Speaker 6: because that new personality had a metallic taste in his mouth,
Speaker 6: and that meant to the personality, who I believe was Steve,
Speaker 6: that Black had emerged.
Speaker 5: You talk about the characteristics of multiple personality disorder. What
Speaker 5: I'm talking about is the hypnotize ability and also the
Speaker 5: aspect of amnesia between personalities. Can you explain how the
Speaker 5: doctor explained how he went from one personality to another,
Speaker 5: but also what did you witness yourself in that transformation
Speaker 5: from one personality to the other. What did you witness
Speaker 5: ross do?
Speaker 6: The nature of the illness is that the individual, in
Speaker 6: order to protect himself from external stress, danger, unpredictability, or
Speaker 6: other events, will switch from one personality to the other
Speaker 6: for the purpose of adapting to the environmental or internal
Speaker 6: stressful situation that has occurred. For example, the illness usually
Speaker 6: against developing at an early age. It develops usually from
Speaker 6: repeated acts of abuse, and often from repeated acts of
Speaker 6: sexual abuse, and often from other kinds of horrific kinds
Speaker 6: of abuse. Oftentimes the perpetrator as a caregiver for someone
Speaker 6: whose responsibility is to care and love for that child,
Speaker 6: so as the recipient of the abuse and the anger
Speaker 6: and sadness that befalls that individual. What happens is that
Speaker 6: the child, psychologically, to avoid experiencing the continual pain of
Speaker 6: anger and sadness from the abuse, develops another side of
Speaker 6: him which is a happy side. As a happy side
Speaker 6: because he doesn't want the caregiver to know that he
Speaker 6: the child is suffering and is angry. And the only
Speaker 6: way the good and the bad side can coexist is
Speaker 6: if both sides or either side does not know what
Speaker 6: has happened to the other. So psychologically, the brain develops
Speaker 6: a wall of amnesia between the happy between the two
Speaker 6: different parts of the individual, and that phenomenon, that psychological
Speaker 6: phenomenon where the wall of amnesia is constructed happens with
Speaker 6: each successive ecostate might be formed within the individual. Now
Speaker 6: the way that I see them, or the way that
Speaker 6: I saw them was. After a while, we learned that
Speaker 6: the way these different ego states or personalities emerged or
Speaker 6: came out was that Ross would suddenly pause and he
Speaker 6: would stare, and his eyes would spasmodically rotate back and forth,
Speaker 6: and all of a sudden, while his eyes are rotating
Speaker 6: spasmatically for maybe fifteen seconds or so, a new personality
Speaker 6: would emerge. So, for example, let's say Justin is out
Speaker 6: when he's talking to me, and it becomes a parent
Speaker 6: to Justin that I need to talk to someone who
Speaker 6: understands what's happening in courtroom and can talk intelligently about
Speaker 6: proceedings that are occurring in court. All of a sudden,
Speaker 6: Justin will stop talking, they'll pause, they'll stare, his eyes
Speaker 6: will rotate spismatically back and forth, and then Steve will
Speaker 6: emerge and he will say hi, David, and I would
Speaker 6: say Steve and he would say yeah. If that would
Speaker 6: happen frequently, and it would be the clue to me
Speaker 6: that Ross was about to switch. It was the kind
Speaker 6: of dynamic that appeared on these videotape sessions that our
Speaker 6: doctors did of Ross, including the one that I just
Speaker 6: previously talked about regarding doctor Fairbirgh.
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Speaker 5: that you have to get a nationally known expert to
Speaker 5: win the sanity case, and you believe that the priority
Speaker 5: for your team is to address this upcoming sanity trial
Speaker 5: after a competency trial. We were told something by doctor
Speaker 5: Wilbur I believe about the importance of the competency trial
Speaker 5: before the insanity trial. So could you explain that sure.
Speaker 6: One of the questions I asked doctor Fairburn after he
Speaker 6: had this session with Ross was seeing that Ross switched
Speaker 6: from one personality to another, and that he wasn't able
Speaker 6: to remember that one personality wasn't able to remember all
Speaker 6: of what another personality may have known. I asked doctor
Speaker 6: Fairburn about the issue of competency, namely, well, based upon
Speaker 6: what we've just seen in your video tape session with Ross,
Speaker 6: doctor Fairburn, is a client competent to proceed because it's
Speaker 6: unpredictable in terms of how often he will switch, and
Speaker 6: whether he will have and whether the new personality will
Speaker 6: have any memory just what happened in court. And doctor
Speaker 6: Fairburn eventually answered the question by saying, I agree, he
Speaker 6: is not competent, and you should file a motion to
Speaker 6: determine that he is incompetent. By then, we already had
Speaker 6: a sanity trial, I believe sept for some time. In
Speaker 6: June of nineteen eighty four, we filed our motion to
Speaker 6: the Claire Ross was incompetent, but we weren't confident that
Speaker 6: that motion for competency would prevail because frankly, we didn't
Speaker 6: know enough about how important a determination of competency was. Plus,
Speaker 6: we believed that we needed to prepare more for the
Speaker 6: sanity case than the competency case. Even though the competency
Speaker 6: emotion was being heard first. So during a session with
Speaker 6: our doctors, we all agreed that we needed to probably
Speaker 6: find some national expert to help us address the issue
Speaker 6: of sanity and to advance the notion of MPD. So
Speaker 6: I called Cornelia Wilberg, who was famous for having noticed
Speaker 6: the famous character that she wrote about in which a
Speaker 6: movie was written about, called Sybil, and I called her
Speaker 6: doctor Loliber. She was a professor emeritus in Kentucky, and
Speaker 6: introduced myself, told her what I was looking for and
Speaker 6: a only an expert an MPD to testify on our
Speaker 6: behalf at the Stanley trial, and because she had a
Speaker 6: conflict and an illness, she couldn't come. But she referred
Speaker 6: me to other experts in the field of MPD, which
Speaker 6: eventually led me to what experts referred to as the
Speaker 6: foremost expert in the world on MPD, a critical and
Speaker 6: forensic psychologist in Santa Monica, California called Bernauer Newton, also
Speaker 6: known excellently as Fig Newton. I called doctor Newton three
Speaker 6: days before the competency hearing was to begin, a few
Speaker 6: weeks before the sanity trial was to begin, with the
Speaker 6: objective of seeing if he would agree to be our
Speaker 6: witness at the sanity trial, and he was emphaetic by saying, well,
Speaker 6: wouldn't you want me or the competency hearing, because the
Speaker 6: competency hearing is probably just as important, if not more important,
Speaker 6: than the sanity hearing. And he explained that if Frosts
Speaker 6: were deemed incompetent, that the hospital or other treatment providers
Speaker 6: would be required to treat him and to eventually successfully
Speaker 6: treat him, which would be to fuse or merge all
Speaker 6: the personalities into one hole, and by that treatment process,
Speaker 6: all the incidents of abuse would be uncovered by the
Speaker 6: individual personalities who were abused by their perpetrator. If we
Speaker 6: hadn't succeeded in that kind of treatment process, we were
Speaker 6: not going to be able to uncover the full body
Speaker 6: and ocean of abusive acts that would have been committed
Speaker 6: against Ross, because they would have been encased in secretive
Speaker 6: charts of Ross's ego, only to be uncovered with extensive
Speaker 6: and expert treatment. And since that hadn't occurred, we didn't
Speaker 6: have the full body of abusive behavior that we believed
Speaker 6: we needed to deem the illness of MPD credible in
Speaker 6: the face of a FactFinder. So when doctor Newton told
Speaker 6: us about the importance of the competency hearing, and to
Speaker 6: my surprise, said he could hop on a plane that
Speaker 6: night and come to Colorado evaluate Ross and be ready
Speaker 6: to testify at the competency hearing. We accepted the invitation,
Speaker 6: and long story short, doctor Newton came here with his
Speaker 6: own video equipment, interviewed Ross, concluded that Ross was definitely
Speaker 6: suffering from MPD and was one of our star witnesses
Speaker 6: at competency hearing.
Speaker 5: At that competency hearing, can you tell us about the
Speaker 5: outcome and then this treatment that you expected and you
Speaker 5: and Walter had expected for Ross to be able to
Speaker 5: get at this Colorado State Hospital at the competency.
Speaker 6: Hearing, the burden was on us the show Ross was
Speaker 6: incompetent and that finding would be that as a result
Speaker 6: of his mental illness, he was unable to assist us
Speaker 6: and our defense and was unable to cooperate with us
Speaker 6: and our defense a large measure because the nature of
Speaker 6: his illness was such that he switched constantly and didn't
Speaker 6: have continual memory or continuity of memory. Plus, because of
Speaker 6: his illness, we weren't able to discover the incidents of abuse,
Speaker 6: and all of that rendered Ross incompetent because he was
Speaker 6: incapable of assisting us and uncovering that information and making
Speaker 6: him whole to the point where he had continuity a memory.
Speaker 6: So we presented evidence to show the barrent behavior of
Speaker 6: Ross's before the homicides, and for that we used friends
Speaker 6: of Ross's who talked about his unusual behavior before the
Speaker 6: homicides were consistent with the personalities of Justin, Stephen, and Norman.
Speaker 6: We had our expert witnesses who had diagnosed Ross with
Speaker 6: MPD testify to their conclusions. We had them talk about
Speaker 6: the information they uncovered in their videotape interviews of Ross.
Speaker 6: We had doctor Newton testify as our last key expert,
Speaker 6: and then we cross examined vigorously the experts for the prosecution,
Speaker 6: who concluded, among other things, that Ross did not suffer
Speaker 6: from MPD and if anything, he was a malingerer and faker,
Speaker 6: that he suffered perhaps from mixed personality disorder, not MPD.
Speaker 6: And after the prosecution's witnesses concluded, Walter and I knew
Speaker 6: that we had an ace in the hole, another late
Speaker 6: witness when we decided we would save for the end
Speaker 6: and rebuttal if we deemed it necessary.
Speaker 5: To call him.
Speaker 6: And this was an individual who was the son of
Speaker 6: a couple who lived in the Carlston's neighborhood who employed
Speaker 6: Ross when he was aged fifteen or so to cut
Speaker 6: their lawn. And we're talking now in the competency hearing
Speaker 6: of Ross, of the client being nineteen years old, and
Speaker 6: we're talking about a witness who was talking about Ross's
Speaker 6: behavior when Ross was fifteen years old. And the behavior
Speaker 6: was that Ross knocked on the door of the neighbor's
Speaker 6: home and yelled and pro tested to the young man
Speaker 6: that someone not Ross, but that someone else had cut
Speaker 6: the lawn. And the young man said, Ross, you cut
Speaker 6: the lawn. And Ross said, iding cut the lawn. The
Speaker 6: kids said, yeah, you cut the lawn. And Ross accused
Speaker 6: the family of trying to beat him out of the
Speaker 6: feet that he was entitled to for cutting the lawn.
Speaker 6: That was dramatic evidence that two different personalities had been
Speaker 6: present at this neighborhood home, one of whom cut the lawn,
Speaker 6: the second of whom both tested that accused the neighbors
Speaker 6: of cutting it along themselves and not knowing that another
Speaker 6: personality had done it that evidence was along with our
Speaker 6: expert testimony, evidence of pre homicidal instances, evidence from me
Speaker 6: and Walter, who also testified its competency hearing and testified.
Speaker 6: The difficulties we had in representing Ross because of his
Speaker 6: ability to cooperate and his frequence switching, persuaded the trialogue
Speaker 6: to conclude that Ross suffered from MPD and was incompetent
Speaker 6: and would have to be then housed at the State
Speaker 6: Hospital and they're treated until restore to competency, which would
Speaker 6: be the successful treatment and fusion of his personalities at
Speaker 6: the order, although something that we wanted in reality turned
Speaker 6: out to be a nightmare because of the failures and
Speaker 6: excuses and neglect and refusals by the State Hospital and
Speaker 6: their incompetency with respect and the treatment of this illness.
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Speaker 5: Now you write about the reasoning that they gave that
Speaker 5: prosecution as involved as well and the hospital in denying
Speaker 5: this order for treatment or Ross Carlson.
Speaker 6: We're talking about a period of five years or so
Speaker 6: that Ross was in the custody of the State Hospital
Speaker 6: under orders to treat him, and they five year debacle
Speaker 6: of their failure to do that. Early on, within days
Speaker 6: after Ross was declared incompetent in June nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 6: and Ross being then admitted to the State Hospital in
Speaker 6: early July upon admission and the admissions director of the
Speaker 6: hospital goopooed the court finding, ridiculed the findings made by
Speaker 6: the judge, ridiculed the defense that Ross that Walter and
Speaker 6: I advanced, maligned Walter's lawyering ability, and in a sense
Speaker 6: undermined the court order, and suggested to Ross at the
Speaker 6: hospital was not going to treat him. We found out
Speaker 6: about that exchange early on from Ross. It took copious
Speaker 6: notes and the exchange between this admissions director and Ross,
Speaker 6: and reported and we reported this to the hospital people
Speaker 6: and to the judge. The hospital quickly did about face,
Speaker 6: removed that omissions director and any other people who may
Speaker 6: have had previous contact with Ross from further treatment of him,
Speaker 6: and appointed their chief psychologist and chief psychiatrist as the
Speaker 6: lead treatment caregivers or Ross. After their appointment. These individuals
Speaker 6: independent of one another and on the basis of their
Speaker 6: own clinical diagnosis and findings as well as testing. That
Speaker 6: the psychologists did both opine that Ross suffered from MPD
Speaker 6: and that in order for treatment to be successful you
Speaker 6: would have to undergo extensive treatment that might take years
Speaker 6: to accomplish. Before his personalities were refused, that was a
Speaker 6: good sign. It was a promising sign for successful treatment.
Speaker 6: In accordance with the judges order, unbeknownst to us, the
Speaker 6: prosecution directed their principal investigator to go into the Carlson
Speaker 6: neighborhood in Littleton, Colorado, to go back to where the
Speaker 6: Carlsons came from in Minnesota and interviewed people to find
Speaker 6: out if anyone of the neighbors or people who knew
Speaker 6: the family saw any evidence of childhood abuse, and the
Speaker 6: reports came back that none of them had, which was
Speaker 6: not surprising because child abusers do not abuse kids publicly
Speaker 6: or in front of others, So those findings and that
Speaker 6: investigation was not unexpected. Notwithstanding, the prosecutors sent the body
Speaker 6: of that investigator information to the state hospital, to the
Speaker 6: chief psychiatrists, to the chief psychologists, who then began questioning
Speaker 6: Ross as to the history of abuse, which is a
Speaker 6: question that a skilled clinician would never ask a patient,
Speaker 6: for the patient to justify how he or she has
Speaker 6: been abused by human When with that sophomore, I'm of
Speaker 6: questioning the report that had been established between Ross and
Speaker 6: the chief investigators, meaning the chief psychiatrists and chief psychologists,
Speaker 6: was demolished, destroyed in Ross's abandon and withdrew many further
Speaker 6: contact with these people and then was left to wallow
Speaker 6: in the state hospital without treatment.
Speaker 5: There was one bright spot, and before we get to
Speaker 5: talking about this tragic conclusion to this, but there was
Speaker 5: one bright spot. Former girlfriend name has changed, but Kelly
Speaker 5: Olsen comes back into his life, gets his phone number
Speaker 5: from a friend of Ross, and then calls him and
Speaker 5: then eventually makes the trip to the Colorado State Hospital
Speaker 5: to visit with him.
Speaker 6: You properly informed your readership or a listening group that
Speaker 6: the woman's name as I describe her in my book
Speaker 6: as Kelly Olsen, which is not her real name. I
Speaker 6: purposely avoided disclosing the real name with this girlfriend because
Speaker 6: she is someone who when Ross was eighteen years old,
Speaker 6: dated when when this young girl was fourteen years old,
Speaker 6: they became levers. During the year or so that they dated,
Speaker 6: and a month or so before the homicides, this young
Speaker 6: girl had to move to Arizona with her family because
Speaker 6: her father's job required a transfer of him to Arizona.
Speaker 6: When Ross was arrested and accused of this crime, and
Speaker 6: this young woman found out what had happened to him,
Speaker 6: and eventually that in nineteen eighty four, he was found incompetent.
Speaker 6: By then, she had reached the age of seventeen eighteen
Speaker 6: years of age and wanted to visit him at the
Speaker 6: State hospital. We agreed to that visit. Ross wanted to
Speaker 6: see her. The two visited sometime in nineteen eighty by
Speaker 6: or so, they were kindled their relationship and continued having
Speaker 6: an ongoing correspondence between the two Well, she was in
Speaker 6: Arizona and he was at the State hospital, keeping me
Speaker 6: in the loop about their continual communication, and they continued
Speaker 6: to do that throughout Ross's hospitalization, and she went from
Speaker 6: time to time come back to Colorado to visit with
Speaker 6: him while he was at the hospital. And there was
Speaker 6: one time in particular when he was having a bad
Speaker 6: time at the State hospital and was switching from unpersonal
Speaker 6: to the next. We were in court having a hearing, Ross,
Speaker 6: me and Walter. Spectators, as often occurred, were seated in
Speaker 6: the courtroom, and one of whom was this former girlfriend.
Speaker 6: Ross looked back into the spectators section to see who
Speaker 6: was there. He looked at me and said, there's a
Speaker 6: young woman looking at me. I'm not don't know who
Speaker 6: she is, and you tell me who she is. I
Speaker 6: told him who she was. After the court hearing was over,
Speaker 6: I informed Kelly what I call her in the book,
Speaker 6: that she had to forgive Ross because he was having
Speaker 6: a difficult time justing and going in and out from
Speaker 6: one personality to another, that he didn't recognize her and
Speaker 6: wasn't going to meet with her, and she was devastated
Speaker 6: by it.
Speaker 5: You find a person named Quinn, doctor Quinn, and if
Speaker 5: he'd been treating someone named Dupre with multiple personality disorder,
Speaker 5: and you thought he might be the person to treat
Speaker 5: Ross while he was in the hospital, and as of course,
Speaker 5: you got doctor Quinn to be the person to be
Speaker 5: able to treat him. What happened with that treatment order?
Speaker 6: After doctor Quinn was given to go ahead by our
Speaker 6: judge to treat Ross, the question was who is going
Speaker 6: to pay for the treatment? And it was our belief
Speaker 6: that because it was the hospital's burden and responsibility to
Speaker 6: treat Ross, that's the financial obligation to be theirs. Doctor
Speaker 6: Quinn agreed, Walter and I agreed, and we presented the
Speaker 6: motion to our competency judge, the one who found Ross incompetent.
Speaker 6: It was still our judge, our retired Supreme Court Justice
Speaker 6: Edward Day, and judge they agreed that it was the
Speaker 6: hospital's responsibility to pay for Ross' treatment. The hospital balked
Speaker 6: at that. They appealed dutch Day's order to the Colorado
Speaker 6: Supreme Court. After several months of a matter of pending
Speaker 6: before it, the Supreme Court reversed Judge Day and said
Speaker 6: sufficient findings of the hospitals inadequacy and negligence and treatment
Speaker 6: hadn't been established on the record, and therefore the hospital
Speaker 6: was relieved of the obligation that this juncture to pay
Speaker 6: for Ross's treatment. So doctor Quinn never got the opportunity
Speaker 6: to pursue the court order of treating Ross. The hospital
Speaker 6: prevailed and establishing a roadblock to that treatment.
Speaker 5: Now, through this you continue this fight advocate for your client,
Speaker 5: Ross Carlson. But then you get a call about his
Speaker 5: health from the hospital one day. Tell us what that call,
Speaker 5: what information you get from that call.
Speaker 6: I got a call from a psychiatrist through High Lee
Speaker 6: was Don McNeice, and she said, mister Carlson has been
Speaker 6: observed in the cafeteria and it appears that he has
Speaker 6: become incontinent, that he has soiled his pants and is
Speaker 6: unaware of how it occurred, and we believe that we
Speaker 6: believe he should be investigated for some kind of brain
Speaker 6: injury or brain tumor. I knew when this event occurred,
Speaker 6: which was the day of Ross's birthday. I said, doctor McNeice.
Speaker 6: I don't want to quibble with your diagnosis because you're
Speaker 6: the doctor I'm not, but I think there may have
Speaker 6: been a psychological dynamic for what he did because he
Speaker 6: does not like his birthday, because he does not believe
Speaker 6: his birth was a positive event in his life. Nevertheless,
Speaker 6: she said, well, I think he needs to be examined
Speaker 6: for a possible brain tumor, and would you agree to
Speaker 6: an order to have him sent to a hospital in
Speaker 6: Denver because the state hospital was located a few hours
Speaker 6: from Denver in the city called Pueblo. And I said sure.
Speaker 6: So Ross was transferred to Denver Health examined there, and
Speaker 6: not surprisingly, it was determined that he did not suffer
Speaker 6: any kind of brain tumor of their brain invasion or problem,
Speaker 6: in that the event of his incontinence was probably psychologically based.
Speaker 5: Tell us about the diagnosis of leukemia.
Speaker 6: At some point in time, a different judge was appointed
Speaker 6: to oversee the competency aspect of Ross's case. Because the
Speaker 6: prosecution succeeded in having the previous judge, Judge Day, increased
Speaker 6: himself or withdraw from further involvement in the case on
Speaker 6: an unfounded accusation of bias. Judge Day voluntarily agreed the
Speaker 6: drop out of the case, and a successory judge was appointed,
Speaker 6: Judge Kingsley, at another competency hearing in September of nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty seven. Judge Kingsley again found Ross incompetent, and the
Speaker 6: competency hearing was held in November nineteen eighty nine, by
Speaker 6: which time Ross had created another personality to make it
Speaker 6: appear as if he were competent because he wanted to
Speaker 6: get the heck out of the state hospital, and he
Speaker 6: knew the only way he could do that was to
Speaker 6: make it appear he was competent. So a hearing in
Speaker 6: November of nineteen eighty nine, Judge Kingsley found Ross to
Speaker 6: be competent, which means which meant that Ross would now
Speaker 6: face a trial regarding was it not he was insane
Speaker 6: at the time the crime was committed. A virtue of
Speaker 6: the finding of competency by Judge Kingsley, Ross was then
Speaker 6: released from the state hospital and returned to the jail
Speaker 6: in Douglas County where he was originally housed after his arrest. We,
Speaker 6: meaning Ross, me and Walter, appeared before the Prow judge
Speaker 6: who would then be in charge of the sanity case.
Speaker 6: We got a new date with a sanity trial. After
Speaker 6: the fantity trial, we met with Ross in the jail,
Speaker 6: and he complained of a nosebleed, and he said he
Speaker 6: never had had this kind of physical event before and
Speaker 6: didn't know what it was all about. The suspect it
Speaker 6: may have begame, It may have been because he felt
Speaker 6: you had a cold and children, what have you. So
Speaker 6: we thought nothing of it and we left. A few
Speaker 6: days later, I received a phone call early in the morning,
Speaker 6: one or two in the morning from the jailers who
Speaker 6: said that Ross was rushed to a local hospital in
Speaker 6: Castle Rock because of his chronic nosebleeds, that that doctor
Speaker 6: recommended that Ross be immediately transferred to a more comprehensive
Speaker 6: hospital for a more comprehensive exam because he the doctor
Speaker 6: feared that Ross might be suffering from leukemia. Ross was
Speaker 6: transferred to a hospital not too far from Denver in
Speaker 6: a city called Lyttleton, where a specialist in blood work,
Speaker 6: a hematologist and on college inducted some tests and made
Speaker 6: a plminary diagnosis that Ross suffered from leukemia. And the
Speaker 6: call that I got at two o'clock in the morning
Speaker 6: from a chaff provided that history to me that I
Speaker 6: just described to you, and further asking that I come
Speaker 6: to the hospital in Littleton as soon as possible, because
Speaker 6: Ross was refusing treatment for they suspected leukemia unless I
Speaker 6: was there and approved of the treatment. I got in
Speaker 6: my car, rushed to the hospital, met with the treating
Speaker 6: oncologist hematologist who provided me with the preliminary diagnosis. I
Speaker 6: met with Ross and persuaded him to undergo some of
Speaker 6: the tests enabled the doctor to make a more specific
Speaker 6: diagnosis that was made and Ross was eventually transferred from
Speaker 6: that hospital in Littleton to a more experts facility in
Speaker 6: the Denver area called the University of Colorado Health Hospital.
Speaker 6: Were he there treated for his leukemia.
Speaker 5: You had to say goodbye to Ross, didn't you.
Speaker 6: I'm going to measure my words for any number of
Speaker 6: any number of reasons, including an agreement I have with
Speaker 6: my publisher about describing the end of this case. So
Speaker 6: I will say, yes, I did was able to spend
Speaker 6: time with Rocks and get him through aspects of his treatment.
Speaker 5: I want to just thank you, David B. Sabats for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking about just in the nick of time.
Speaker 5: For people that want to find out more about this case,
Speaker 5: is there a website they might refer to?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 6: And thanks for asking Danny. It's w ww dot Ross,
Speaker 6: R O S. S. Carlson, c A R LSO and
Speaker 6: Bryle Ross Carlson Trial. Those three words I run together
Speaker 6: dot com.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you very much, David B. Sabats
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about your book just in
Speaker 5: the nick of time. Thank you very much for this
Speaker 5: interview and you have a great evening.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me and likewise see you Dan
Speaker 5: Thank you, and good night, grac