Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [98]
However, after closer inspection of his suicide attempt, Susan learned that Felix’s claim was untrue. Horowitz had located Felix’s old girlfriend and gleaned from their conversation that there had been no break up. Felix, it seemed, had lied to his wife about the circumstances surrounding his suicide attempt. Worse, he had failed to mention his serious medical diagnosis or that this suicide attempt was the result of a “schizophrenic reaction.”
“Psych records describe him as being hostile, as being in the lock-down ward.” Susan explained. “They describe when he got transported to the hospital he got bruises along the way because apparently he got restrained. That’s a picture of someone who was extremely disturbed, who was apparently almost mute. He didn’t talk, you know.”
Susan told me of the journals that Felix kept. And for a moment, she considered my request to turn them over to Court TV. But in the end, she shared little of their content. “He [Felix] described himself in words that he used to describe me and projected all of it because I wasn’t really like that. I didn’t feel that way.”
After our interview, I reviewed the naval records carefully. According to the reports, Felix was taken to a military hospital after his suicide attempt. He was “confused” and “depressed” and claimed “amnesia” for the events prior to his arrival, medical records stated. He grew “excited” upon awakening. In response to questions, he told doctors he had no recollection of his suicide attempt, or of writing the note that police found in a typewriter inside the family home.
Felix was transferred to the U.S. Naval Hospital at St. Alban’s, New York. Records show that he had to be restrained during the transport. Doctors at St. Albans diagnosed Felix’s condition as “Psychotic Depressive Reaction with Suicidal Tendencies.” Further studies revealed evidence of “a schizophrenic process with much philosophical, abstract preoccupation with his lack of accomplishment, his emotional distance from people, and some concomitant disturbance in the psycho-sexual area.”
Under observation at the hospital, Felix talked of feeling apart in “all relationships with others” and having the sensation that he was “standing apart listening to an echo” when he spoke. “His speech was at all times coherent and relevant, and no actual delusions or hallucinations were elicited during his hospitalization at the naval hospital,” the records stated.
By all indications from the doctors there, Felix showed little sign of change or improvement during his lengthy stay at St. Alban’s, where he was confined to a locked ward because of his “depression” and “hostility.” In fact, he remained depressed and talked of his confusion for much of the time he was confined. While doctors noted that Felix was not experiencing hallucinations or delusions during his hospitalization, Felix described his thoughts as “abstract” and spoke of “dreams of glory.” He complained that he felt in a “daze” and did things “mechanically.”
On January 18, 1956, Felix was transferred to an open ward of the hospital on “restricted” status, the records stated. The change had no appreciable effect on his condition. Three months later, he was placed on the Temporary Disability Retired list by reason of “schizophrenic reaction,” and later released from the hospital with a diagnosis of “in remission.”
According to the naval records, Felix reported to the Naval Command at St. Alban’s Hospital on July 25, 1957 for a “trial visit” from the Montrose Veteran’s Administration Hospital. Based on the visit, a three-man counsel listed its findings as a schizophrenic reaction. “In remission.” The Clinical Board’s findings noted that Felix was “unfit to perform the duties of his rank—schizophrenic reaction.”
It was decided that the physical disability “was not due to misconduct or willful neglect,” and that it was the proximate result of “dementia, mixed type, in partial remission, slight impairment of social and industrial adaptability.”
At my request, several well-known psychiatrists reviewed the U.S. Naval records