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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening, the true story
Speaker 4: of air force men and women who struggle to prevent
Speaker 4: a mass murder and an aviation disaster, and the heroic
Speaker 4: response to both tragedies when the warnings go unheeded. Have
Speaker 4: you ever heard somebody say that a tragedy struck without warning?
Speaker 4: On June twentieth, nineteen ninety four, a former airman sought
Speaker 4: vengeance with a rifle at the Fairchild Air Force Base Hospital.
Speaker 4: Four days later, a rogue pilot crashed to B fifty
Speaker 4: two outside a Fairchild's nuclear weapons storage area. Both tragedies
Speaker 4: had been predicted and repeatedly warned about. Warnings unheeded is
Speaker 4: a rare look inside the troubled mind of a would
Speaker 4: be active shooter. It is an exclusive look at a
Speaker 4: talented pilot whose dangerous flying prompted air crews to refuse
Speaker 4: to fly with him. Is a look at the leadership
Speaker 4: culture that allowed both men to travel unchecked on the
Speaker 4: pathway toward destruction. This unique true crime book reads like
Speaker 4: a suspense novel, densely packed with details garnered from medical records,
Speaker 4: police reports, and first hand accounts obtained from journal entries, letters,
Speaker 4: witness statements, and personal interviews. These empowering stories detailed the
Speaker 4: heroic response to the tragedies, the events that lead up
Speaker 4: to them, the precursors of violence and disaster, and the
Speaker 4: traumatic aftermath. Written by Andy Brown, the man who ended
Speaker 4: the hospital killing spree, Brown's narrative focused mainly on others,
Speaker 4: including heroic life saving actions of hospital patrons and staff,
Speaker 4: but he also describes the preparations he made which enabled
Speaker 4: him to win a pistol versus rifle gunfight, as well
Speaker 4: as his own experience with the effects of trauma. The
Speaker 4: book that were featuring this evening, his warnings unheeded Twin
Speaker 4: Tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base with my special guest,
Speaker 4: author and former starf staff Sergeant Andy Brown. Welcome to
Speaker 4: the program, Andy Brown.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Dan, I appreciate you having me on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for joining us with this incredible tale.
Speaker 3: Actually two tales interwoven into one here, two disasters of
Speaker 3: epic proportions. Here, let's get right to your background. You
Speaker 3: talked about sort of the Air Force and military being
Speaker 3: in your blood. Tell us about your life growing up,
Speaker 3: your mom and your dad, where you grew up, and
Speaker 3: what things shaped you and made you want to become
Speaker 3: a member of law enforcement.
Speaker 7: Sure. I grew up in Port Orchard, Washington, Washington State,
Speaker 7: and my family had a long military history. My father
Speaker 7: and grandfather were in the Navy, my brother joined the Army,
Speaker 7: and my sister was in the Air Force. My dad
Speaker 7: was also a firefighter after he got out of the Navy.
Speaker 7: So I was always interested in public service, and I
Speaker 7: was a volunteer firefighter for a short while. But I
Speaker 7: also had a fascination with firearms. So I eventually decided
Speaker 7: that I wanted to become a law enforcement officer, and
Speaker 7: right out of high school, they didn't have any career
Speaker 7: paths and you couldn't become a police officer in a
Speaker 7: civilian life. So I joined the Air Force and with
Speaker 7: the intent of going into the security police, the Air
Speaker 7: Force's military police career field. So at the age of nineteen,
Speaker 7: I joined the Air Force and went through basic training,
Speaker 7: and my first duty station was in Mountain Home, Idaho,
Speaker 7: which I kind of wanted to see the world, and
Speaker 7: the deserts of Idaho weren't exactly my cup of tea,
Speaker 7: so I put in for an overseas tour and went
Speaker 7: over to Greece. I spent three years there and then
Speaker 7: ended up at Fairchild Air Force Base. But I enjoyed
Speaker 7: the career. I enjoyed law enforcement. However, I didn't think
Speaker 7: that the training that we received was adequate enough, especially
Speaker 7: when it came to firearms. I took the job very
Speaker 7: seriously and knew that there might come a time where
Speaker 7: I would encounter a lethal force situation, and I wanted
Speaker 7: to be as prepared for that as I could be.
Speaker 7: And we only fired our duty weapons, the Barretta M
Speaker 7: nine twice a year, and so as soon as I could,
Speaker 7: I bought my own handgun it was a clone of
Speaker 7: the Barretta, and practiced with it as often as I could,
Speaker 7: and just so that I could have the the best
Speaker 7: marksmanship skills as possible. Outside of the train at the
Speaker 7: Air Force gave me, and I also wanted to work
Speaker 7: on my officer safety and my mindset, so I read
Speaker 7: a lot of books on tactics and such, and one
Speaker 7: of the things that I found most useful, especially in
Speaker 7: the incident that we're going to talk about, was mental rehearsal,
Speaker 7: where every night before I went to bed, I would
Speaker 7: envision a different lethal force encounter that I that I
Speaker 7: might experience someday, and I would practice what specific steps
Speaker 7: I would take as far as seeking cover and and
Speaker 7: getting my site alignment with my handgun, and and just
Speaker 7: visually practice those those events so that if I ever
Speaker 7: did encounter them, it would be like it wasn't the
Speaker 7: first time that I was experiencing it, and I would
Speaker 7: be able to just go on instinct and be able
Speaker 7: to automatically react to the situation in front of me.
Speaker 7: A lot of people made fun of me for that.
Speaker 7: They thought I was being paranoid, and with the different
Speaker 7: tactics that I would practice, they thought I was gonna
Speaker 7: go on overboard. But there were some who who, like me,
Speaker 7: took the job as seriously as as they would possibly could,
Speaker 7: just so that we would be ready, just in case,
Speaker 7: we were called upon not only to save our own lives,
Speaker 7: but to save the lives of others. I've made a
Speaker 7: commitment to myself that if I was ever in that
Speaker 7: situation and somebody's life was in danger, I didn't do
Speaker 7: all that I could to protect them, that I wouldn't
Speaker 7: be able to live with myself.
Speaker 3: So right, So tell us a little bit about sorry,
Speaker 3: tell us a little bit about Fairchild Air Force Base
Speaker 3: as well, and also in sort of the air show
Speaker 3: culture that existed there as well, and tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about that.
Speaker 7: Sure, if Fairchild is located near Spokane, Washington, was about
Speaker 7: two hundred and fifty miles away from my hometown, so
Speaker 7: it was an area I was somewhat familiar with. But
Speaker 7: it had two aircraft stationed there at the time, two
Speaker 7: different types. The KC one five, which is a refueling airplane.
Speaker 7: It was like a modified airliner designed to carry a
Speaker 7: lot of fuel. And then the B fifty two bomber,
Speaker 7: which was also the size of a small airliner, had
Speaker 7: maybe one hundred and eighty five foot wingspan, a very large,
Speaker 7: long range bomber. But fair Child, like most air Force bases,
Speaker 7: had a long history of putting on air shows. Most
Speaker 7: of your air shows, they're mostly filled with a single
Speaker 7: engine jet fighters that are more maneuverable and can perform aerobatics.
Speaker 7: But a fair Child had a history of trying to
Speaker 7: use their heavy aircraft the size of an airliner in
Speaker 7: the air shows and performing aerobatics with those aircraft. They
Speaker 7: developed an air show stunt team with their heavy aircraft,
Speaker 7: and it resulted in a crash, a fatal crash, and
Speaker 7: that was in nineteen eighty seven, so they kind of
Speaker 7: stepped away from that and stopped that program. Within a
Speaker 7: few years after, they kind of forgot the lessons that
Speaker 7: they learned that tragedy and started allowing the B fifty
Speaker 7: two specifically to fly in some very dangerous aerobatic maneuvers
Speaker 7: that were crowd pleasers. It was very impressive, but it
Speaker 7: was also very dangerous if you knew anything about the
Speaker 7: handling capabilities of that airplane.
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about your duties at Fairchild
Speaker 3: Air Force Base, and then tell us just a little
Speaker 3: bit about the hospital, the medical center there, and the
Speaker 3: buildings that are around there that become important in this story.
Speaker 7: It's okay, I was a patrolman, a motorized patrolman for
Speaker 7: the most part in a patrol car, just like you
Speaker 7: would see in a civilian law enforcement. We would patrol
Speaker 7: the base doing traffic enforcement, responding to bar fights and
Speaker 7: loud and noise complaints and domestic disturbances, that type of thing.
Speaker 7: The hospital, we had a full size hospital on the base,
Speaker 7: but this particular at this particular base, the hospital was
Speaker 7: located just outside the perimeter fence and it was surrounded
Speaker 7: by two military housing areas on either side of it.
Speaker 7: It was a three story building and there was an
Speaker 7: annex building that used to be dormitory for the medical personnel.
Speaker 7: It had been converted to office spaces and one of
Speaker 7: the units in that annex building was the mental health facility.
Speaker 7: But it had the full capabilities of any other hospital,
Speaker 7: just like you would see in the civilian world.
Speaker 3: Right, let's talk about Dean Melburg. You talk about Gary
Speaker 3: and Louise Melburg, and you've done extensive research to be
Speaker 3: able to tell about Dean's life with his parents. Very interesting.
Speaker 3: His role of his mother has in his story and
Speaker 3: he was born in Lansing, Michigan. Tell us about Dean
Speaker 3: Milburgh Melburg like you do in.
Speaker 7: Your book, sure, Dean Melberg. He grew up in Lancing, Michigan.
Speaker 7: He was always kind of an outsider. He didn't have
Speaker 7: the social skills that most people did, and early on
Speaker 7: he showed some signs of mental health impairment and just
Speaker 7: didn't have just wasn't a normal kid. And in high school,
Speaker 7: probably throughout all of his school years, but especially in
Speaker 7: high school, kids were prone to picking on him because
Speaker 7: he didn't fit in. They would push him around in
Speaker 7: the hallways and verbally abuse him and trip him in
Speaker 7: the halls and knock his books out of his hand,
Speaker 7: that kind of a thing. Self proclaimed jock said that
Speaker 7: he was treated like any other nerd who wouldn't defend himself,
Speaker 7: So I guess you could say he was bullied, but
Speaker 7: he also kind of brought that treatment upon himself. He
Speaker 7: just acted very strangely, and he was accused of openly
Speaker 7: masturbating in classrooms and staring at girls while he was
Speaker 7: doing it. There were people who tried to befriend him,
Speaker 7: and he just seemed to push them away through his behavior.
Speaker 7: One girl who took pity on him and tried to
Speaker 7: befriend him and be nice to him, he returned that
Speaker 7: favor by masturbating in class in front of her until
Speaker 7: she eventually just told him to leave her alone. And
Speaker 7: there were other kids who would be nice to him
Speaker 7: and befriend him, but he just always seemed to distance
Speaker 7: himself from his peers by mistreating his his friends. He
Speaker 7: also had a mother who people say was very overbearing
Speaker 7: and very protective of him, which may have contributed to
Speaker 7: his lack of coping skills. Whenever something went wrong, she
Speaker 7: seemed to be able to She seemed to just step
Speaker 7: in and try to handle it for him and not
Speaker 7: give him any life experience. Also, he had an interest
Speaker 7: in the military, and right after he graduated high school
Speaker 7: he joined the Air Force, and it seemed like that
Speaker 7: was going to be his escape where he could maybe
Speaker 7: get away from his mom's overbearingness and get a new start,
Speaker 7: start fresh, and make a good life for himself, it seemed,
Speaker 7: but his behavior interfered with that as well. In basic training,
Speaker 7: he was pretty quickly identified as having mental health problems
Speaker 7: and was referred to the mental health facilities there at
Speaker 7: Basic Training, and they pretty quickly recommended he be discharged
Speaker 7: from the military. He wasn't military material. He had very
Speaker 7: poor social skills and paranoid or personality disorders, and the
Speaker 7: basic training instructor agreed that yes, he shouldn't be in
Speaker 7: the military, he should be discharged, but it wasn't up
Speaker 7: to them, and it wasn't up to the doctors either.
Speaker 7: They could only make a recommendation, and the commander of
Speaker 7: his basic training squadron overruled the doctors and told his TI,
Speaker 7: his training instructor, to get him back in training and
Speaker 7: let him graduate. Something similar happened at his tech school.
Speaker 7: He was going to go to school to be a
Speaker 7: lab technician to calibrating electronics and other equipment and tools
Speaker 7: for the Air Force, and at his basic or at
Speaker 7: his tech school, he had problems with his roommates and
Speaker 7: he threatened to set one of his roommates on fire
Speaker 7: when it while he slept, told him he was going
Speaker 7: to douse him in lighter fluid and set him on fire,
Speaker 7: and that pretty quickly led to another referral to mental health,
Speaker 7: and I can only assume that they recommended his discharge
Speaker 7: from the military as well, but for some reason, none
Speaker 7: of the records exist on that trip to mental health
Speaker 7: from his tech school, but several of the instructors there
Speaker 7: recommended that he be kicked out of the Air Force
Speaker 7: and they were overruled from the leadership gooul. They said,
Speaker 7: he's got good grades and he's going to graduate sooner enough,
Speaker 7: basically that it would be somebody else's problem. Let's just
Speaker 7: graduate him and push him down the line. His first,
Speaker 7: very first duty station after tech school was Fairchild Air
Speaker 7: Force Base, and wasn't a very good performer in his laboratory.
Speaker 7: He could perform well on tests, but he had a
Speaker 7: hard time applying any of the skills that he learned
Speaker 7: in the real world, so he was very difficult to train.
Speaker 7: And again he had zero social skills. He didn't know
Speaker 7: how to talk to people. When he did speak, which
Speaker 7: wasn't very often, he would speak in a halting whisper.
Speaker 7: So he had trouble at work, but also with his roommates.
Speaker 7: He went through several roommates and each one of them
Speaker 7: complained about him openly masturbating in front of them and
Speaker 7: their girlfriends. Just pretty really difficult person to live with.
Speaker 7: So he was referred to mental health there at Fairchild,
Speaker 7: and again they recommended he'd be discharged from the military,
Speaker 7: but his commander at Fairchild thought that the Air Force
Speaker 7: just spent a lot of money training him, and that
Speaker 7: we need to get the money's worth out of him
Speaker 7: and give him a chance to adapt to military life.
Speaker 7: So they the commanders overruled the mental health recommendation to
Speaker 7: discharge him and kept him in the military.
Speaker 3: What was he What was his appetitude? Though what was
Speaker 3: interesting wasn't surprising to some people. What was his aptitude
Speaker 3: in the military towards we'll say marksmanship.
Speaker 7: He was an expert marksman. He was allowed to train
Speaker 7: on the M sixteen rifle, and even though the mental
Speaker 7: health doctors at basic training said if he is ever
Speaker 7: kept in the military, he should be excluded from weapon
Speaker 7: handling and nuclear weapons facilities and such, but that word
Speaker 7: didn't get passed down the line. So he was allowed
Speaker 7: to train on the M sixteen and he was an
Speaker 7: expert shot with that. He after he was recommended referred
Speaker 7: to mental health, he developed a fixation on that and
Speaker 7: thought that just seeing the mental health doctors was going
Speaker 7: to be on his permanent record and ruin his military career.
Speaker 7: So he pretty much fixated on his roommate. Because the
Speaker 7: complaints from his roommate which led to his referral of
Speaker 7: mental health, he began to stalk that roommate, and he
Speaker 7: became so fixated on the roommate's complaint that his work
Speaker 7: performance suffered even more. Was kind of a weird situation
Speaker 7: where if he'd just let that go, he was going
Speaker 7: to be allowed to stay in the military, and because
Speaker 7: his commander was given a second chance. But by that
Speaker 7: time he was so obsessed with the complaint that he
Speaker 7: pretty much let everything go as far as his work
Speaker 7: performance and just obsessed over his roommate's complaint to where
Speaker 7: that led to another mental health referral. By that time,
Speaker 7: the doctors at Fairchild began to get the impression that
Speaker 7: he was a danger to himself or others, more so
Speaker 7: to him to others because of his fixation on the roommate,
Speaker 7: that they referred him to mental health hospital in Texas,
Speaker 7: where he spent ninety days on the psychiatric ward of
Speaker 7: Wilford Hall Medical Center. While he was there, he received
Speaker 7: numerous diagnoses. The nurses there were afraid of him. He
Speaker 7: also exhibited his perverse behavior there right in front of
Speaker 7: all the other patients and doctors. It didn't seem to matter.
Speaker 7: Nothing could stop him from masturbating openly in front of
Speaker 7: whoever happened to be in the area, but they he
Speaker 7: was diagnosed with anxiety disorders and antisocial personality. A lot
Speaker 7: of the nurses thought that he was attending to internal
Speaker 7: stimuli or hearing voices. He would always just smile for
Speaker 7: no apparent reason and or laugh to himself. He was
Speaker 7: diagnosed with organic mental disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder, and
Speaker 7: most notably was a paranoid personality disorder and psychosis. Pretty
Speaker 7: much all the doctors there agreed that he should be
Speaker 7: discharged from the military, but about that time, his mother
Speaker 7: flew down to San Antonio and began spending a lot
Speaker 7: of time on the ward during visiting hours and began
Speaker 7: to interfere with his treatment. About the time that he
Speaker 7: had accepted the fact that yes, he should get out
Speaker 7: of the Air Force, when she showed up, he began
Speaker 7: to fight his discharge again, and they enlisted the help
Speaker 7: of their congressman from Michigan, and when he made a
Speaker 7: congressional inquiry. Congressional inquiries in the military really get people
Speaker 7: spun up, and there's a lot of speculation that just
Speaker 7: the inquiry made by the congressman made the people in
Speaker 7: the Air Force problem go away by allowing him to
Speaker 7: stay in the military. So he was discharged from that
Speaker 7: inpatient psychiatric ward and allowed to be stationed at another
Speaker 7: Air Force base in New Mexico.
Speaker 3: You in this book, sorry, you include in this book
Speaker 3: the journals from Dean Melberg. And so every time he
Speaker 3: has a mental health meeting with the doctor, and the doctor,
Speaker 3: as you write, reinforces that again they kept with striking
Speaker 3: about this, is that how many times he complains and
Speaker 3: tries to go over the head of someone else again
Speaker 3: fixated on that the roommate threatened to break his alarm
Speaker 3: clock and the roommate and he saw this as akin
Speaker 3: to the atrocities of the Holocaust. So these people were
Speaker 3: stunned that this reasonably intelligent guy exhibited this kind of disturbance,
Speaker 3: and they tried. It seems amazing how many people tried
Speaker 3: to talk him out of this, and then each time
Speaker 3: that they realized that there was this person had a
Speaker 3: serious mental illness that could not be abated. He refused meds,
Speaker 3: he refused any kind of therapy, so they wanted to
Speaker 3: discharge them. So it's amazing all the efforts and all
Speaker 3: the people you talk about, specifically the doctors that make
Speaker 3: reports that he is especially concerned with, and as you
Speaker 3: put in the book, he writes in his journal afterwards
Speaker 3: about his interpretation or his feelings about that meeting with
Speaker 3: those doctors. So can you tell us about doctor Brigham
Speaker 3: and his meeting with Melburgh.
Speaker 7: Sure? Yeah, it's pretty amazing to get one person side
Speaker 7: of it, like the doctors or his roommate, where they
Speaker 7: have a benign conversation with him, and then you go
Speaker 7: and read Milburgh's journal entries about that same conversation and
Speaker 7: how threatening he perceived that benign conversation to be. It's
Speaker 7: disturbing and pretty frightening. Doctor Brigham, he was a very
Speaker 7: gifted psychiatrist, and he was the loudest voice as far
Speaker 7: as determining that Melburgh was a danger. He specifically put
Speaker 7: in the medical records that followed him to the psychiatric
Speaker 7: ward that they consider this patient dangerous, But not too
Speaker 7: many of the other doctors seemed to pick up on
Speaker 7: that as much as doctor Brigham did. He Doctor Brigham
Speaker 7: could see that that he was a threat and did
Speaker 7: all he could to make the other doctors realize that
Speaker 7: so that they could get him discharged from the Air Force.
Speaker 7: But it didn't didn't seem to happen.
Speaker 3: What was his what was his interaction with doctor London
Speaker 3: and what was his diagnosis?
Speaker 5: HM.
Speaker 7: They were both both doctor London and doctor Brigham. They
Speaker 7: worked as a team. Doctor London was a psychologist and
Speaker 7: doctor Brigham was the psychiatrist there at Fairchild, and I
Speaker 7: think they were both pretty much in agreement to the
Speaker 7: two doctors about Melbourg being needing to be discharged from
Speaker 7: the military. They they felt that he was maybe having
Speaker 7: an episode of brief reactive psychosis, but they weren't couldn't
Speaker 7: really pursue that very thoroughly there at Fairchild because they
Speaker 7: didn't have an impatient psychiatry section or award there.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: Is there a specific instance you're referencing or asking about
Speaker 7: with London or Brigham.
Speaker 3: No, And I just know that there is journal entries
Speaker 3: where he specifically, I mean, he has problems with many people,
Speaker 3: but he especially the roommate Rayner. But then he singles
Speaker 3: out certain doctors and obviously as we progress in the story,
Speaker 3: doctor London and doctor Brigham are two of those people.
Speaker 3: You also talk about this effort. Do you write about
Speaker 3: this effort for people to wash their hands of them
Speaker 3: at Fairchild. Tell us a little bit about those efforts
Speaker 3: to try to get him sent somewhere else and as
Speaker 3: a result what happens.
Speaker 7: Yes, the commander and the leadership there at Melburg Squadron
Speaker 7: where he worked at the the precision measurement laboratory. By
Speaker 7: the time doctor Brigham had sent him to the psychiatric
Speaker 7: ward in Texas, they had finally realized that he was
Speaker 7: beyond hope and was untrainable and that they should get
Speaker 7: him kicked out and if he ever returned to Fairchild,
Speaker 7: they would have initiated some discharge paperwork. But instead of
Speaker 7: being returned to Fairchild from that psychiatric board, he was
Speaker 7: given orders first to Mountain Home Air Force Base, which
Speaker 7: was my first dutious climate. But people got word that
Speaker 7: that they were sending him there, and somebody from Mountain
Speaker 7: Home happened to be visiting Fairchild and stopped by the
Speaker 7: the laboratory and got the first hand scoop of of
Speaker 7: what they were going to be dealing with if they
Speaker 7: did get if Melburgh was assigned to their station. So
Speaker 7: they pulled some strings and got his orders changed, and
Speaker 7: that's how he ended up at the base in New
Speaker 7: Mexico and Dean Mehlberg. One of the things that he
Speaker 7: one of the things that he had a problem with
Speaker 7: with doctor Brigham and doctor London. He's he because he
Speaker 7: realized that his orders got changed. He was under the
Speaker 7: impression that they were the two doctors were calling around
Speaker 7: and spreading rumors about him and ruining his career at
Speaker 7: the base that he was going to be stationed at.
Speaker 7: He felt like he was going to be showing up
Speaker 7: there and people were going to be aware that he
Speaker 7: was a problem, and he specific he blamed those two
Speaker 7: doctors for that. He wrote in his journal entry that
Speaker 7: they were that basically, these doctors are conspiring against him
Speaker 7: to destroy his military career, when it wasn't the doctors
Speaker 7: at all. It was individual from Mountain Homes Laboratory happened
Speaker 7: to know somebody at Fairchild's lab and just got the
Speaker 7: the inside scoop from them directly.
Speaker 3: What was his mental state at that time in terms
Speaker 3: of a particular deterioration in terms of some of his
Speaker 3: character that would be noticeable by someone. Was there any
Speaker 3: noticeable mental deterioration at this time from previous.
Speaker 7: He had It seemed from the moment he joined the
Speaker 7: Air Force his mental state was on a pretty progressive decline,
Speaker 7: and by the time he had spent the thirty or
Speaker 7: the ninety days in a psychiatric war, it had slipped
Speaker 7: quite a bit. When he was discharged from the psychiatric ward,
Speaker 7: he spent some time there at Lackland Air Force Base
Speaker 7: while he was waiting to get his new orders, and
Speaker 7: he met a girl who he considered his girlfriend and
Speaker 7: they did have a relationship, but he was would make
Speaker 7: comments to her like somebody had had done him wrong
Speaker 7: and he was going to pay them back, and that
Speaker 7: the police would have to be called, and that the
Speaker 7: police would would have to take him down, and that
Speaker 7: he was going to go out with a bang. He
Speaker 7: basically was already laying out his plans to seek revenge
Speaker 7: and it seemed like violence was was the method that
Speaker 7: he was going to take. There was also an instance, yeah,
Speaker 7: when he was stationed in the new base in New
Speaker 7: Mexico after the psychiatric ward. He was in Cannon Air
Speaker 7: Force based New Mexico and pretty quickly ran into some
Speaker 7: trouble there that led to an encounter with the security police,
Speaker 7: the law enforcement and he basically as soon as he
Speaker 7: was brought into an interview room to be questioned about
Speaker 7: a denign incident. He shut down and was in a
Speaker 7: basically a catatonic state, just staring at the wall. Prior
Speaker 7: to that, he seemed to be already practicing an act
Speaker 7: of workplace violence. It seemed like he was doing a
Speaker 7: dry run of walking through his laboratory with a large
Speaker 7: equipment case that was about the size and shape of
Speaker 7: a rifle, and he walked through the laboratory there holding
Speaker 7: that case at hip level like it was a rifle,
Speaker 7: and acted out a workplace shooting. There was an individual
Speaker 7: there who had already been warning his co workers and
Speaker 7: leadership that he felt that Melburg was going to commit
Speaker 7: an active workplace violence and even went so far as
Speaker 7: to get permission to not allow him to practice any
Speaker 7: further with them sixteen rifle. They canceled his weapons qualification
Speaker 7: because he felt he was such a threat. Wow, And
Speaker 7: shortly after that incident he was referred to mental health
Speaker 7: and they pretty quickly got him discharged from the Air Force.
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Speaker 3: Now you talk about what happens with this discharge, you
Speaker 3: tell he talk. You write about how they keep talking
Speaker 3: about a possible discharge and his plans and what are
Speaker 3: his plans if any.
Speaker 7: What are his plans after the Air Force. Yes, he
Speaker 7: seemed to to really not have any any options open
Speaker 7: to him. He didn't seem to want to go back
Speaker 7: to his hometown and be with his mom or his parents.
Speaker 7: He h they in the Air Force, and he seemed
Speaker 7: like he was going to I was hanging on to
Speaker 7: that idea. He tried to enlist the help of his congressmen. Again,
Speaker 7: he refused a plane ticket home. It was almost like
Speaker 7: he didn't think that he was going to be discharged.
Speaker 7: It seemed like he thought his career was going to
Speaker 7: be saved again, so he didn't really have any backup plans.
Speaker 7: So then when he was discharged, it was quite a
Speaker 7: shock to him. And he hung around there in the
Speaker 7: small town of Cannon or Clovis, New Mexico for a
Speaker 7: few days, and he'd saved up quite a chunk of money.
Speaker 7: He didn't spend his money on anything, so he just
Speaker 7: had a large savings account and he withdrew all that
Speaker 7: cash and went on a bit of a spending spree.
Speaker 7: He bought new sets of clothing and rented a limousine
Speaker 7: and tried to go out to some night clubs and such,
Speaker 7: but nobody would go with him. He was just by himself.
Speaker 7: He was such an odd person though, that he didn't
Speaker 7: even take the price tags off of his new clothes.
Speaker 7: But eventually he ended up going back to the hospital
Speaker 7: at Lackland Air Force Base where he was in the
Speaker 7: psychiatric ward, and he went and spoke to a psychologist
Speaker 7: that he seemed to have a good relationship with and
Speaker 7: was on a bit of a fact finding mission. He
Speaker 7: was specifically asking whether or not anybody at Fairchild Air
Speaker 7: Force Base had requested any copies of his records and
Speaker 7: whether or not Wilfrid Hall Medical Center had released any
Speaker 7: of his medical records. And he was basically trying to
Speaker 7: see if the doctors at Fairchild were spreading any rumors
Speaker 7: about him. And it seemed from there, based on the
Speaker 7: answers that he got, he determined that there's that Fairchild
Speaker 7: were still spreading rumors. It was unfounded, but it appears
Speaker 7: that that's where he determined that he needed to go
Speaker 7: back to fair Child to seek revenge.
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Speaker 3: com slash murder No Andy. We talked about all the
Speaker 3: circumstances and the confluence of events and his deteriorating mental
Speaker 3: health of Dean Mehlberg. It's interesting you write about how
Speaker 3: he spends a lot of this money on some dancers
Speaker 3: in a strip club, and he goes into a private
Speaker 3: room and tells us dancer is story of his life.
Speaker 3: And then, as you we mentioned just before this break
Speaker 3: that he's heading for vengeance to Fairchild Force base tell
Speaker 3: us what happens next.
Speaker 7: So after he left the hospital in San Antonio, where
Speaker 7: he was speaking to one of his psychologists, he flew
Speaker 7: to Alaska, and based on the research, doctor London had
Speaker 7: orders to Alaska, and it's quite possible that Milburgh knew
Speaker 7: about that and was going up there to confront him.
Speaker 7: But he spent about a week there up in Alaska,
Speaker 7: staying in a billeting on Elmendorf Air Force Base. Builleting
Speaker 7: is like the hotel of the military, and then it
Speaker 7: Nobody really knows what he did up there, but we
Speaker 7: do know that right before he flew back to Spokane, Washington,
Speaker 7: the mental health clinic at Fairchild got a phone call
Speaker 7: all from somebody asking if doctor London was still stationed there,
Speaker 7: and when they answered an affirmative. Later that evening, Melbourne
Speaker 7: caught a plane back to Spokane and he was spotted
Speaker 7: on the base and a lot of people were afraid
Speaker 7: of him and were alarmed that they did see him,
Speaker 7: that people were seeing him on the base, that he
Speaker 7: had returned there. But a lot of people also didn't
Speaker 7: believe the people who were reporting that they had seen him.
Speaker 7: They thought that they must have been mistaken because why
Speaker 7: would he come back to Fairchild Air Force Base. He's
Speaker 7: kicked out, but military has no business being back there.
Speaker 7: But there's some evidence that shows that he went out
Speaker 7: to the hospital and was in the mental health facility,
Speaker 7: almost like he was planning and preparing his attack. He
Speaker 7: also purchased a rifle while he was there in Spokane.
Speaker 7: He spent about a week in Spokane, and like you said,
Speaker 7: he was blowing large chunks of money at a strip
Speaker 7: club downtown, and he bought a mac ninety rifle, which
Speaker 7: is a type of an AK forty seven, and he
Speaker 7: also purchased a seventy five round drum magazine. Also, when
Speaker 7: doctor Brigham had sent Melburgh down to the psychiatric ward
Speaker 7: in Texas, he was so alarmed about his behavior and
Speaker 7: about what he believed he could do that he warned
Speaker 7: his wife and he loaded an heirloom rifle and a
Speaker 7: shotgun and started keeping loaded guns around his house. He
Speaker 7: definitely knew that that Melburgh was a threat. He just
Speaker 7: couldn't communicate that to the other doctors and the other
Speaker 7: leadership in the Air Force. So Albert spent about a
Speaker 7: week there in Spokane, and on a Monday, he took
Speaker 7: a cab out to fair Child Air Force Base, and
Speaker 7: like I said, the hospital was located outside of the
Speaker 7: perimeter fence, so he didn't need to pass through any
Speaker 7: entry control to get to the hospital. Even if he did,
Speaker 7: though he had been given a Transition Assistants ID card,
Speaker 7: he could have slipped right through the entry control the gate,
Speaker 7: but as it turned out, he didn't need to. He
Speaker 7: just took a cab up to the hospital, and he
Speaker 7: had his rifle and the magazine in a large gym bag,
Speaker 7: and he got out of the cab and walked through
Speaker 7: the main hospital, went through the lobby there and then
Speaker 7: exited and walked across the parking lot to the annex
Speaker 7: building and it went into a bathroom inside the hospital annex,
Speaker 7: not too far from the mental health facility, and he
Speaker 7: went inside of a bathroom stall and assembled the rifle
Speaker 7: and magazine. He then emerged from the bathroom there and
Speaker 7: began walking down a hall with the loaded rifle and
Speaker 7: came upon doctor London's office and pushed open the door
Speaker 7: and shot the doctor in the chest. He then immediately
Speaker 7: stepped back out in the hallway and walked two doors
Speaker 7: down to doctor Brigham's office and again kicked his door
Speaker 7: open and shot that doctor in the chest. He then
Speaker 7: fired a shot down the hallway at people who had
Speaker 7: begun fleeing at this time, and then exited the annex
Speaker 7: out into the parking lot and pretty much anybody he
Speaker 7: could see as he made his way over to the
Speaker 7: main hospital. He entered the hospital and into the lobby,
Speaker 7: which also doubled as the pharmacy waiting room, where there's
Speaker 7: quite a few men, women and children waiting for prescriptions.
Speaker 7: And he just continued firing and pretty much fired NonStop,
Speaker 7: indiscriminately as he was moving through the hospital. It moved
Speaker 7: down the hallways and passed the er and into a
Speaker 7: shot clinic, and there were some people who Nobody was
Speaker 7: allowed to carry firearms on the military base other than
Speaker 7: on duty law enforcement officers. There were quite a few
Speaker 7: off duty policemen and other hospital personnel who wished they
Speaker 7: had been carrying firearms, but even though they were unarmed,
Speaker 7: they did put up right. One individual in the shot
Speaker 7: clinic heard the gunfire coming down the hallway and he
Speaker 7: tucked his daughter underneath a chair and stood on that
Speaker 7: chair near the door, and as the gunman entered, the
Speaker 7: pushed through the threshold of that door. This sergeant jumped
Speaker 7: down and grabbed the barrel of the rifle and began
Speaker 7: struggling for control of it. But by then the gunman
Speaker 7: had fired so many rounds that the barrel was quite
Speaker 7: hot and it burned that sergeant's hands as he struggled
Speaker 7: with him, and pushed him out into the hallway and
Speaker 7: then shut the door. And as happens quite often, when
Speaker 7: these active killers are confronted, they usually seek easier targets,
Speaker 7: and that's what Melbert did. As soon as he encountered
Speaker 7: some resistance, he turned and moved down the hallway and
Speaker 7: left the shot clinic pretty much unscathed, and pretty much
Speaker 7: everybody in the shot clinic there was able to escape
Speaker 7: out windows and seek safety and shelter in the housing area.
Speaker 7: Melbourgh moved down the hallway, retracing his steps, and continued
Speaker 7: firing and wounded several people. He went back out to
Speaker 7: the hospital lobby and shot several people second a second time.
Speaker 7: It happened so quickly that some people fled and jumped
Speaker 7: out windows, and some people locked themselves in offices, but
Speaker 7: some people just dropped where they were, hoping to make
Speaker 7: themselves a less easy target, but some of the women
Speaker 7: who were shot in the lobby when he entered the
Speaker 7: first time were shot a second time as he passed
Speaker 7: through the lobby again. He moved down a hallway to
Speaker 7: his family practice, continuing to fire, and by that time
Speaker 7: several people had run through the halls alerting people what
Speaker 7: was going on, so the hospital was pretty much was
Speaker 7: under an evacuation just from verbal warnings that had gone
Speaker 7: through the halls. As he approached the pediatric clinic, another
Speaker 7: individual put up a fight. Sergeant Root heard the gun
Speaker 7: fire and ran to a set of fire doors and
Speaker 7: pulled them closed and put his shoulder against him to
Speaker 7: hold them closed. As the gunman was banging on the
Speaker 7: doors trying to gain entry to the pediatric clinic, Sergeant
Speaker 7: Root was yelling to his coworkers to evacuate, to take
Speaker 7: the parents and the children and get out of the
Speaker 7: pediatrics clinic, and so nobody was injured in that in
Speaker 7: the pediatric clinic thanks to Sergeant Roots actions. The gunman
Speaker 7: gave up trying to gain entry into the pediatrics clinic
Speaker 7: and moved down another hallway, pursuing people as they fled
Speaker 7: out into the parking lot, and once outside Once he
Speaker 7: was in the parking lot, he fired at people as
Speaker 7: they were hiding behind cars and scrambling into ditches. He
Speaker 7: then made his way out to the road that ran
Speaker 7: in front of the hospital, and he pretty much was
Speaker 7: firing at anything that drew his attention, and as a
Speaker 7: car drove by, he fired upon that vehicle and then
Speaker 7: started walking down the road back toward the hospital annex.
Speaker 7: I had been on a swing shift. I was still
Speaker 7: a patrolman, but I was in a kind of a
Speaker 7: newly implemented program that we had was bike patrol, So
Speaker 7: instead of being in a motorized patrol car, I was
Speaker 7: riding a bicycle that day. And my shift had started
Speaker 7: at two o'clock and the incident the shooting started at
Speaker 7: about three o'clock, and I had already patrolled most of
Speaker 7: the housing areas on the base the back gate to
Speaker 7: patrol the housing areas that were on either side of
Speaker 7: the hospital. I had made it out to the back
Speaker 7: gate and was taking advantage of the air conditioning that
Speaker 7: was in the gate shack and visiting for a moment
Speaker 7: with the gate guard there when the call came over
Speaker 7: the radio. When the shooting began, there was quite a
Speaker 7: few people that made it to telephones. This was back
Speaker 7: in nineteen ninety four that cell phones were not a
Speaker 7: very prevalent thing, so most of the calls to the
Speaker 7: law enforcement desk and to nine point one came from
Speaker 7: landline telephones. But within about a minute there were several
Speaker 7: calls that had come into the law enforcement desk, and
Speaker 7: the desk sergeant imediately put out a call that there
Speaker 7: was an individual at the hospital with a shotgun. The
Speaker 7: people who had initially called in misidentified the weapon as
Speaker 7: a shotgun, but it still got the patrols headed that way.
Speaker 7: So when I heard that there was an individual firing
Speaker 7: off rounds at the hospital, I'd jumped on my bike
Speaker 7: and began riding toward the hospital. It was about three
Speaker 7: tenths of a mile away on a straight two lane
Speaker 7: road that led right to the hospital from the back gate.
Speaker 7: I remember seeing several vehicles driving toward me as I
Speaker 7: made my way toward the hospital. There quite a few
Speaker 7: of them had rolled their windows down and were yelling
Speaker 7: at me, trying to get my attention and let me
Speaker 7: know what was happening at the hospital. But I remember
Speaker 7: there was a sense of calm that came over me
Speaker 7: as I'd got the call, and also I began to
Speaker 7: experience some auditory excluie usion where my mind was so
Speaker 7: focused on the response and what I might do when
Speaker 7: I get there, that the world kind of went quiet
Speaker 7: around me. I couldn't understand what these people were saying
Speaker 7: when they were driving past me, but I knew that
Speaker 7: there was trouble ahead, so I just kept writing. I
Speaker 7: didn't stop to try to figure out what they were saying.
Speaker 7: There was also a military dump truck that had stopped
Speaker 7: at the hospital and allowed several people to climb aboard,
Speaker 7: and as it rode past me, there were several people
Speaker 7: in the dump bed and hanging off the sides of
Speaker 7: the passenger door, and they were all screaming down at
Speaker 7: me and waving and yelling at me, trying to get
Speaker 7: my attention. But again I couldn't understand what they were saying,
Speaker 7: so I just kept writing. The first building that you
Speaker 7: come to as you reached the hospital compound is the
Speaker 7: medical annex with a health clinic was located. And as
Speaker 7: I approached that building, as I neared it and it
Speaker 7: came into view, there was a large crowd of people
Speaker 7: that were moving toward me. In the street. They were
Speaker 7: all wearing some were wearing military uniforms, some were in
Speaker 7: hospital whites, and some were in civilian clothes. And at
Speaker 7: that time there wasn't a description of the gunman. I
Speaker 7: didn't know who exactly I was looking for, so I
Speaker 7: scanned that crowd for a threat, and when I didn't
Speaker 7: see when I rode through the crowd. And as I
Speaker 7: was driving through the crowd, I yelled out, where is he?
Speaker 7: And several people pointed behind themselves and they collectively yelled,
Speaker 7: there's a man over there. He's got a gun and
Speaker 7: he's shooting people. So I rode through the crowd, and
Speaker 7: about that time I began to hear gunfire, but I
Speaker 7: couldn't see exactly where it was coming from. The sound
Speaker 7: was revertading off of the hospital buildings to my right
Speaker 7: in the military housing areas to my left, which was
Speaker 7: behind the perimeter fence. I rode further, and by that
Speaker 7: time I saw the gunman in the street. He was
Speaker 7: dressed in dark clothing and was holding a long gun
Speaker 7: at his hip, and he was firing to his left
Speaker 7: and to his right. So I immediately veered to my
Speaker 7: right and rode up onto a sidewalk and dumped my
Speaker 7: bike and drew my bretta and went into a kneeling
Speaker 7: position and yelled at him to drop his weapon. I
Speaker 7: remember seeing people behind him in my line of fire.
Speaker 7: They were scrambling to try to get behind cars and
Speaker 7: behind cover and into the ditches. And I didn't feel
Speaker 7: very comfortable making that a shot. Right at that time,
Speaker 7: I was worried that some of my rhymes might endanger
Speaker 7: other lives. I know now that if you responded to
Speaker 7: an active shooter that there's no need to give him
Speaker 7: a verbal warning. But I didn't know one hundred percent
Speaker 7: that he had already killed or shot so many people.
Speaker 7: And I also was, like I say, concerned about firing
Speaker 7: when there were people behind him. My command to drop
Speaker 7: the weapon was ignored, and he continued to fire. He
Speaker 7: was left and right. I yelled again, and he swung
Speaker 7: his rifle in my direction and began to fire. So
Speaker 7: I returned fire. I fired in succession as quickly as
Speaker 7: I could develop a site picture and pull the trigger
Speaker 7: and reacquire that site picture. I'd pulled the trigger again.
Speaker 7: It was four rounds in controlled secession. The first three
Speaker 7: rounds didn't have any effect on him. And I was
Speaker 7: concerned that I was missing him. I didn't know how
Speaker 7: far away he was at the time, but I know
Speaker 7: that I had a hard time seeing him behind the
Speaker 7: front post sight of my pistol. His upper body was
Speaker 7: nearly obscured behind the steel front sight. But on the
Speaker 7: fourth round he jumped up in the air and spun
Speaker 7: around and landed flat on his back. There was witnesses
Speaker 7: in the area. They were hiding under cars and some
Speaker 7: were in the hospital. Anex looking out the window that
Speaker 7: say that he fired repeatedly in my direction and that
Speaker 7: he seemed to react to it. If not my first round,
Speaker 7: one of my first three rounds, he seemed to react
Speaker 7: as if he was struck in the shoulder, but it
Speaker 7: didn't stop his behavior at all. But that fourth round
Speaker 7: hit him on the bridge of the nose and passed
Speaker 7: through his brain and caused him to leap up into
Speaker 7: the air and land flat on his back, and he
Speaker 7: didn't move after that. As soon as he was down,
Speaker 7: I stood up and started moving towards cover. The last
Speaker 7: position of cover between me and the gunman was a
Speaker 7: pickup truck, a civilian pickup that was parked alongside the road,
Speaker 7: and I reached that pick up and covered him with
Speaker 7: my weapon as I waited for backup.
Speaker 3: The police response here, you didn't call in before this,
Speaker 3: so you do this shooting, you call in. But there
Speaker 3: is reports that there's a second gunman, so the hospital
Speaker 3: is not in total communication for various reasons. What happens?
Speaker 3: You described this chaotic situation. Why is it even more
Speaker 3: chaotic than it should be?
Speaker 7: He was very chaotic because there was He moved through
Speaker 7: the hospital so quickly, and the eyewitnesses had different They
Speaker 7: perceived differently due to the stress of it that they
Speaker 7: were calling in different descriptions of him. Some people thought
Speaker 7: he was wearing a military uniform, some people thought he
Speaker 7: was wearing shorts. And the calls continued to come in
Speaker 7: even after he had been even after I stopped him,
Speaker 7: so it got confused. People thought that there was more
Speaker 7: than one gunman and of shots being fired. He continued
Speaker 7: to come into the to the law enforcement desks several
Speaker 7: minutes after he had already been shot. In that the
Speaker 7: and the hospital was swarmed with law enforcement officers. Where
Speaker 7: who would have heard gunshots if they're in the area,
Speaker 7: But still they Some of the people on the scene
Speaker 7: were reporting that shots have been fired in the housing area,
Speaker 7: and shots have been fired here, and that there was
Speaker 7: a sniper on the third floor of the annex, just
Speaker 7: because of so many different reports and descriptions of the
Speaker 7: gunman that came in to the radio, to the law
Speaker 7: enforcement desk.
Speaker 3: Right when the toll is counted, you talk about Kristen
Speaker 3: McCarron six years old, and Anita Lindner of course, doctor Brigham,
Speaker 3: Thomas Brigham, doctor Allen London, and would be born Taylor Sigmund,
Speaker 3: Shechell's unborn baby. And how many wounded, twenty two wounded.
Speaker 3: Tell us about a little bit about these deaths as
Speaker 3: you do, as you write in a book, and also
Speaker 3: some of the wounded.
Speaker 7: Yes, there was twenty two people were wounded, and there
Speaker 7: were four lives lost at the hospital. And a forty
Speaker 7: year old wife of a a retired military member was
Speaker 7: also shot and killed out on the street in front
Speaker 7: of the hospital, and an eight year old girl, Kristin McCarran,
Speaker 7: was shot in the chest as she was hiding in
Speaker 7: the cafeteria area of the hospital. One of the wounded,
Speaker 7: Michelle Siegmund, lost her unborn baby shortly after the incident.
Speaker 7: She recovered from her wounds, but the baby didn't make it,
Speaker 7: so there was a total of five lives lost and
Speaker 7: twenty two seriously wounded. The The death toll would have
Speaker 7: been quite a bit higher if it weren't for the
Speaker 7: actions of the men and women at the ninety second
Speaker 7: Medical Group. The only people who lost their lives suffered
Speaker 7: from what's been deemed as the unsurvivable wounds, but due
Speaker 7: to the quick actions and medical care, the first aid
Speaker 7: that was rendered by several of the members of the
Speaker 7: hospital and civilians kept the death toll down. It would
Speaker 7: have been a lot higher had it not happened at
Speaker 7: the hospital, and a lot of those people risked their
Speaker 7: lives that they began rendering medical aid even as the
Speaker 7: gunman was still walking around firing.
Speaker 3: You talk about the media response and their depiction of
Speaker 3: the event, questioning that they couldn't understand why this person,
Speaker 3: Dean Mehlberg, had gone on this rampage contrary to all
Speaker 3: the information that you discovered and was available to them
Speaker 3: to a great degree as well. But despite that, that
Speaker 3: was a narrative that was done. You describe what happens
Speaker 3: right after you are briefed about this event and your
Speaker 3: feelings about that tell us about that briefing and your
Speaker 3: feelings after you've made this, you've shot this perpetrator.
Speaker 7: Sure, Yet it's frustrating when you see in the media
Speaker 7: they are so quick to try to report the story,
Speaker 7: and when they get on the TV screen, they sometimes
Speaker 7: run out of things to say, so they just say
Speaker 7: the first thing that comes to their mind, and quite
Speaker 7: often it's nobody saw this coming, and nobody could have
Speaker 7: predicted that this choir boy in high school would one
Speaker 7: day become a a killer. But when you read the
Speaker 7: book and you see so many warning signs after warning sign,
Speaker 7: and then you get to the first media reports say
Speaker 7: that nobody could have predicted it, nobody could have seen
Speaker 7: it coming. It's very frustrating. But as far as as
Speaker 7: my reaction to the incidents, I suffered quite a bit
Speaker 7: of guilt.
Speaker 3: I know it.
Speaker 7: It's not something that's easily understood because I responded there
Speaker 7: and most people say, oh, how many lives he saved,
Speaker 7: that it was quite a heroic response. But at the time,
Speaker 7: the only thing I could see is that so many
Speaker 7: people had been killed and wounded on my watch, that
Speaker 7: what could I have done to have gotten there sooner?
Speaker 7: And I second guessed myself quite a bit, and it
Speaker 7: ate away at me For quite a while. I didn't
Speaker 7: have an opportunity to talk to anybody and to seek
Speaker 7: mental health counseling so that I could process the incident
Speaker 7: and work through it and then eventually come to realize
Speaker 7: that I did do all that I could and that
Speaker 7: I there's no reason to be second guessing myself. I
Speaker 7: did eventually come to that conclusion, but it took several
Speaker 7: years because whenever I would seek mental health counseling, I'd
Speaker 7: be relieved of duty and would no longer be able
Speaker 7: to carry my weapon and work patrol, which was a
Speaker 7: job that I loved, so discouraged me from seeking any
Speaker 7: mental health help until years later after I'd gotten out
Speaker 7: of the Air Force. But yeah, I had never did
Speaker 7: experience any guilt from taking the gunman's life, because it's
Speaker 7: something that I had practiced for and prepared for, and
Speaker 7: it's pretty easy to justify taking a man's life when
Speaker 7: he's in the midst of ruining so many other people's lives.
Speaker 7: So thankfully I never experienced any guilt for that, and
Speaker 7: I did eventually finally come to terms with the fact
Speaker 7: that so many people were killed and wounded. But I
Speaker 7: did do everything that I could, and I do realize
Speaker 7: now that I did save lives.
Speaker 3: And you get confirmation on top of that as well,
Speaker 3: in terms in addition to the therapy that you did
Speaker 3: receive and the progress you did have in your mental
Speaker 3: health and dealing with the PTSD, you also got the
Speaker 3: freedom of information and realized that you couldn't have got
Speaker 3: to that hospital any faster. So any kind of guilt
Speaker 3: you should have had about your response time was gone.
Speaker 3: At least you had dealt with it in two different ways.
Speaker 7: Really, Yeah, there were several different steps that helped me
Speaker 7: come to terms with it. It was a long process,
Speaker 7: but yeah, for quite a while, I beat myself up
Speaker 7: because one of the physiological effects of responding or experiencing
Speaker 7: such a traumatic event like that is time distortion, and
Speaker 7: it felt like it took me forever to buy that
Speaker 7: three tenths of a mile to get there to stop
Speaker 7: the killing. And I always that's one of the reasons
Speaker 7: why I beat myself up, because it felt like I
Speaker 7: took so long to get there, And I made several
Speaker 7: requests to get a copy of the audio tape from
Speaker 7: the law enforcement radio so that I could kind of
Speaker 7: get a timeline of how much time elapsed from the
Speaker 7: radio call that dispatched me there to my call that
Speaker 7: shots were fired and that the gunman was down. And
Speaker 7: it took me, I think probably fourteen years to finally
Speaker 7: get a copy of that, which is there's no excuse
Speaker 7: for that, because it was readily available. It just people
Speaker 7: were dropping the ball and not allowing me access to it.
Speaker 7: But when I did finally get that audio tape, it
Speaker 7: was determined that it was less than two minutes from
Speaker 7: the first call for help to me radioing that the
Speaker 7: gunman was down. It's a two minute or less than
Speaker 7: two minute response time is pretty remarkable. So I began
Speaker 7: to forgive myself quite a bit for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talk about you talk and write about Fairchild
Speaker 3: Air Force Base, and we missed a whole part of
Speaker 3: this book because it is in a very detailed book,
Speaker 3: and you chronicle the story of the air shows and
Speaker 3: this rogue pilot named Bud Holland who's respected but then
Speaker 3: as a daredevil and does things that are dangerous, and
Speaker 3: there are numerous reports very much paralleling what happens with
Speaker 3: Dean Mehlberg in that many people of authority are set
Speaker 3: saying listen, this is dangerous. This guy should be reprimanded.
Speaker 3: Tell us what happens after this disaster at the hospital
Speaker 3: and then the idea of air shows and Bud Holland,
Speaker 3: tell us what happened.
Speaker 7: Sure, I know we're under a bit of a time constraint,
Speaker 7: so I'll make it brief. There was a pilot at
Speaker 7: Fairchild that was very skilled and talented. He was a
Speaker 7: veteran B fifty two pilot. He had more than five
Speaker 7: thousand hours in the aircraft, and some of it was
Speaker 7: combat time in Vietnam. He was very talented, but he
Speaker 7: had also grown very increasingly reckless over the years and
Speaker 7: coming upon his retirement. He was about to retire a
Speaker 7: few months after the shooting occurred at the hospital, and
Speaker 7: he had grown so reckless that a lot of vhrmen
Speaker 7: refused to fly with him. His crews didn't want to
Speaker 7: fly with him anymore because they risked They were afraid
Speaker 7: that he was going to end up killing them. And
Speaker 7: he was selected to perform in the air shows at
Speaker 7: least three years in a row, and his stunts. He
Speaker 7: would fly that huge jet fighter and eight engine aircraft
Speaker 7: the size of an airliner. He would fly it like
Speaker 7: a single engine fighter. He would fly low and slow
Speaker 7: and do like turning around the control tower and bank
Speaker 7: the ring the wings ninety degrees when it was only
Speaker 7: a couple hundred feet off the ground and where I
Speaker 7: had zero lift. He would also rocket the airplane down
Speaker 7: the flight line at a low altitude and then pull
Speaker 7: up and gain several thousand feet of altitude in just
Speaker 7: a few seconds as he pitched the aircraft up eighty
Speaker 7: degrees or more. That reckless flying that he did eventually
Speaker 7: caught up with him, and although several people were warning
Speaker 7: that he was going to kill somebody someday and that
Speaker 7: it would probably be at an air show where he
Speaker 7: might endanger the lives of all the spectators, they had
Speaker 7: warned about that, but the leadership failed to heed those
Speaker 7: warnings and allowed him to continue flying, and several people
Speaker 7: thought that the air show should be canceled after the
Speaker 7: hospital shooting, but it was allowed to continue, and four
Speaker 7: days after the shooting, during an air show practice flight,
Speaker 7: Bud Holland banked the aircraft around the control tower and
Speaker 7: banked the wings ninety degrees and plummeted the plane into
Speaker 7: the ground and killed all four of the airmen on board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, incredible, and you talk about two that horrifically. The
Speaker 3: wife of the aviator and his son or his sons
Speaker 3: were there to witness this.
Speaker 7: Yes. Yeah, one of the few commanders who took some
Speaker 7: steps to try to get Bud Holland grounded. When he
Speaker 7: was unsuccessful in that, he told his men that they
Speaker 7: would no longer fly with Bud Holland, that if anybody
Speaker 7: had to be his co pilot, he would do it.
Speaker 7: So he was a true hero, and he ended up
Speaker 7: going down in that aircraft with Holland as he was
Speaker 7: trying to save the lives of his men, and his
Speaker 7: whole family witnessed that crash as they were watching the
Speaker 7: practice flight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was talk of a lawsuit over negligence or
Speaker 3: at first it would just again damages against the Air Force,
Speaker 3: tell us about the attempt or the effort to do
Speaker 3: that and if that was successful or not.
Speaker 7: For the shooting, there was a lawsuit brought. The individuals
Speaker 7: who were in the military were prohibited from bring in
Speaker 7: a lawsuit against the Air Force due to the Fair's doctrine,
Speaker 7: but the civilians who were in the hospital lodged several
Speaker 7: a lawsuit with with several if they found several instances
Speaker 7: where the air Force was liable and but the air
Speaker 7: Force uh drug the law lawsuit out and kept putting
Speaker 7: it off. They were just waiting for it to go away,
Speaker 7: for the for the victims to pass away, because there
Speaker 7: were quite a few elderly people that were involved in
Speaker 7: the lawsuit. But so it took several years, but eventually
Speaker 7: they did come to a kind of like a plea
Speaker 7: deal where they awarded the victims several million dollars. But
Speaker 7: when after the legal fees and having to split the
Speaker 7: settlement up between so many people, I'm sure it did
Speaker 7: little to make things right with the victims who are
Speaker 7: still living with life altering injuries to this day.
Speaker 3: Were there any changes made as a result of these
Speaker 3: two disasters in terms of regulations or policy.
Speaker 7: There were some changes that were made, but unfortunately they
Speaker 7: were just very specific changes that might have prevented this
Speaker 7: very specific incident from occurring again, didn't stop similar instances
Speaker 7: from occurring, and there's been one fairly recently. The shooting
Speaker 7: in the church in Texas was another airman who had
Speaker 7: been diagnosed or identified as a threat, and he was
Speaker 7: allowed to slip through the cracks and ended up committing
Speaker 7: an other act of public mass murder. So there's still
Speaker 7: a lot that can be learned from this instant and others.
Speaker 7: But yeah, they did make some changes, like the hospital
Speaker 7: is now surrounded by a perimeter fence, but like I said,
Speaker 7: that wouldn't have stopped Melburg from getting on the base
Speaker 7: anyway because he had a temporary ID card.
Speaker 3: You talk about the book being an opportunity for lessons
Speaker 3: to be learned, and as you just mentioned, maybe not
Speaker 3: too many lessons were learned. At least there wasn't any
Speaker 3: moves to make any radical changes, it seems. But for you,
Speaker 3: with your therapy and changes in your life, You've got married,
Speaker 3: had children, I believe, and now you're working for the
Speaker 3: Department of Homeland Security. So you came through this difficult
Speaker 3: time and you're doing something you really enjoy. And so
Speaker 3: at least in changes that were necessary for you after
Speaker 3: this incredible traumatic event, those changes have been made in
Speaker 3: your life, all positive changes, haven't they.
Speaker 7: Yes. Yeah, I struggled for quite a while with mental
Speaker 7: health and anxiety and irritability and such, but I did persevere,
Speaker 7: and thanks a lot to my wife who was very
Speaker 7: persistent and supportive. I've continued to seek counseling until I
Speaker 7: found something that worked for me, and I've pretty much
Speaker 7: made a full recovery and I'm able to enjoy life
Speaker 7: and function in society. In order to you got to
Speaker 7: try to find the positive in all things. If my
Speaker 7: struggles with mental health led me to get out of
Speaker 7: the Air Force early, which was a very difficult decision
Speaker 7: because I loved my career, But if I hadn't gotten
Speaker 7: out of the Air Force, I wouldn't have met my
Speaker 7: wife and I wouldn't have the two kids that I
Speaker 7: do now, So I wouldn't have had the same life,
Speaker 7: and it may not have been as good of the
Speaker 7: life as I have now. So there are some good,
Speaker 7: good positives for the individuals in this if you seek,
Speaker 7: if you look for it. But yeah, one lesson I
Speaker 7: would would pass on is if anybody is struggling with
Speaker 7: mental health is to never give up seeking help a
Speaker 7: lot of I've tried quite a few things that didn't
Speaker 7: help me or didn't help me very much, and just
Speaker 7: kept looking until finally I did find things that treatments
Speaker 7: and programs that that did work for me. Even though
Speaker 7: there was a time that I didn't think anything was
Speaker 7: going to help. Just got to keep keep looking and
Speaker 7: keep fighting for a greater mental health.
Speaker 3: Part of that, I think maybe it's overused cliche of catharsis.
Speaker 3: You wrote this book twenty sixteen, I believe it came
Speaker 3: out twenty seventeen. Was this book part of that part
Speaker 3: of catharsis for you? Was it good for you to
Speaker 3: write this book and get it out?
Speaker 7: It was definitely, not only doing the research and answering
Speaker 7: all the unanswered questions that I had, but just confronting
Speaker 7: the incident and the trauma so deeply and repetitively. When
Speaker 7: you write a book, you write it several times over.
Speaker 7: But each time I confronted an incident or just confronted
Speaker 7: the subject in general, the less effect it had on
Speaker 7: me as far as physical and psychological reaction. So it
Speaker 7: was a very cathartic process. And also having all the
Speaker 7: details and facts of the incidents in the book has
Speaker 7: helped others come to deal with it. I interviewed quite
Speaker 7: a few people who were involved in the incidents, and
Speaker 7: they've contacted me afterward and told me how helpful it
Speaker 7: was to know the whole story and to be able
Speaker 7: to read through it and re experience it in a
Speaker 7: safe environment to where it's kind of it's helpful to
Speaker 7: confront it and process it and work through it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, and congratulations on this ad. It's a marvelous
Speaker 3: journey you take us on to be able to see
Speaker 3: that the preparedness you had to be able to do
Speaker 3: this heroic be able to involve in this heroic takedown
Speaker 3: this perpetrator that who knows how many more victims you
Speaker 3: would have got to if you hadn't had the presence
Speaker 3: of mind at that time that day. I want to
Speaker 3: thank you very much for coming on and talking about
Speaker 3: Warnings Unheeded twin tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base. For
Speaker 3: those that might want to take a look at and
Speaker 3: maybe contact you. Do you have a Facebook page your website?
Speaker 3: How can I find out more about this book?
Speaker 7: Sure? You could search Warnings Unheeded on Facebook. There is
Speaker 7: a Facebook page for the book. There's also a website
Speaker 7: Fairchild Hospital Shooting. And as far as the book, you
Speaker 7: could request it at your library or your bookstores. You
Speaker 7: can find it on Amazon. It's in print, audiobook and
Speaker 7: ebook for your Canadian listeners. It's available on Cobo also
Speaker 7: Barnes and Noble's pretty much anywhere that books are sold
Speaker 7: if you can find it. Warning is unheeded.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Andy Brown, it's been fascinating. You
Speaker 3: have a great evening. Thank you very much.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Dan, you too. Good Night, good night,