ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601290039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEWTOWN SQUARE, PA.
SOURCE: JERE LONGMAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
JOHN E. DU PONT, the man police say killed an Olympic wrestler Friday, was deemed to be charitable, but increasingly unstable in recent years.
As an heir to a chemical company fortune, John Eleuthere du Pont was rich enough, determined enough and eccentric enough to invest his extravagant dreams with lavish reality.
He built the Delaware Museum of Natural History to house his world-renowned collections of 66,000 birds and 2 million seashells. On his 800-acre estate here in suburban Philadelphia, he erected a $600,000 training center for wrestlers whose Olympic vision matched his own. Two decades ago, he even became an unpaid member of the local police department, wore a badge and a uniform, and built a pistol range so that young officers could learn to fire their guns properly.
Saturday, officers from the same Newtown Township police department had surrounded his estate, attempting to get the armed du Pont to surrender in connection with the shooting death on Friday of a former Olympic wrestling champion.
Seventy-five police officers, including 30 SWAT team members from the area, surrounded the Greek-revival mansion where du Pont, 57, remained holed up after police said he shot and killed Dave Schultz, 36, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist, about 3 p.m. on Friday. The police said Schultz was shot three times in a driveway outside the home where he lived on du Pont's sprawling estate in rural Delaware County.
Schultz lived on the estate, known as Foxcatcher Farms, with his wife, Nancy, and two children; he was coaching and training for the upcoming Summer Games in Atlanta.
The police spoke to du Pont by telephone several times Saturday, they said, adding that they were also monitoring tunnels located on the property.
``We are employing patience,'' said Lt. Lee Hunter of the Newtown Township Police Department. ``Our primary concern is the safety of the officers, as well as the safety of Mr. du Pont. We are optimistic, based on the fact that we are starting to talk.''
Friday's shooting brought a shocking turn to a privileged if peculiar existence that du Pont had lived as part of the family's sixth generation. He is the great-great-grandson of Eleuthere Irenee du Pont, who constructed the powder mills in Delaware in 1802 that would evolve into the family's giant chemical corporation. John E. du Pont is one of more than 1,000 living descendants of E.I. du Pont.
Du Pont's sister-in-law, Martha du Pont, said that he was a stockholder in the du Pont company.
``But he is one of many,'' she said. ``No one in the du Pont family has controlling stock.''
She said that when she first met him, about three decades ago, ``he was a very eccentric young man.''
``But he also dealt with a lot of bad friends and drugs,'' she said. ``He is a lot like Howard Hughes in that he has turned his back on his family and has isolated himself on his estate.''
Wrestlers, coaches and neighbors described him as a man whose generous, philanthropic nature included eccentricities. Some said his personality had been overtaken in recent years by an increasingly erratic, delusional and distrustful side. Dan Mayo, who wrestles for du Pont's team at Foxcatcher, said the heir lately began carrying a pistol with him on the estate.Greg Strobel, a wrestling coach at Lehigh University who coached at Foxcatcher for four years until last June, said he knew that du Pont had mood swings. But he added: ``I classified him as an eccentric, but I never saw him as dangerous. I never thought he'd hurt anybody.''
(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS)
Dan Chaid, who coached and trained at du Pont's training center on du Pont's estatefor eight years until last October, recalled du Pont as a troubled man. He said that du Pont became convinced in 1993 that someone was crawling around in the walls of his home, trying to spy on him.
Chaid said du Pont had admitted using cocaine and pain pills and had grown increasingly delusional, adding that he had urged him to get clean and sober.
Their relationship came to a harrowing end Oct. 12, after Chaid said he had been asked to leave the Foxcatcher estate. While he was lifting weights, Chaid said, du Pont approached him, pointed an automatic rifle at his chest, uttered an obscenity, and added: ``I want you off this farm.''
Chaid said that he backed off, left the gym and called police, telling them that du Pont was ``sick'' and needed help. The officers discounted his story, Chaid said, contending that du Pont was just a ``little eccentric.'' Five days later, Chaid said, he moved to California.
``We're talking about a sick guy here,'' Chaid said.
In Palo Alto, Calif., Phil Schultz, Schultz's father, said he had told his son two years ago to leave the du Pont compound.
``I really do think the man was paranoid and deeply in need of medical help,'' he said. ``David felt the same thing, but he was able to be helpful to him. He was a calming influence.'' Schultz said du Pont demanded several times that Dave Schultz leave the estate.
``David had a way of just sloughing it off, like he could handle it,'' his father said.(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)Schultz's relationship with du Pont was ``strong,'' Chaid said, even if many wrestlers felt uncomfortable around him. However, in two long talks with the Olympic champion, Chaid said he recommended to Schultz that he and his family leave the estate because du Pont's mental state appeared to be deteriorating. Many wrestlers had remained at the Foxcatcher estate, Chaid said, because the training facilities and financial support were too attractive to relinquish.
Elite wrestlers received $1,000 a month or more in training expenses, they said. Eight to 12 wrestlers lived and trained on the estate at any given time.
``I tried to tell him, but I think everyone was trying to hang until after the Olympic year,'' Chaid said of Schultz. ``A lot of it was just based on money.''
At one point, du Pont had envisioned a 1996 Olympic team roster stocked exclusively with wrestlers from the club he founded and sponsored, Team Foxcatcher.
Among the coaches he hired was Schultz, a gold medalist in the 163-pound weight category at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. A consummate, fiercely aggressive technician, Schultz was so devoted to his sport that he learned to speak Russian to gain a more thorough knowledge of his opponents from the former Soviet Union. He even named his son Alexander as a tribute to Aleksandr Medved, the Soviet super heavyweight who won Olympic gold medals in 1968 and 1972.
``David was a genius in wrestling,'' said Stan Abel, who coached Schultz to a national collegiate title at the University of Oklahoma in 1982. ``He was dyslexic, and I read once that many great people in history, because of inner feelings about their handicaps, had become overachievers in other areas. I often wondered that, because of David's dyslexia, if he had become one of those geniuses.''
When Abel retired from Oklahoma in 1993, he recommended that Schultz succeed him. Instead, Schultz decided to remain with du Pont at Team Foxcatcher, where he could coach and train for the Atlanta Olympics. That dream of winning a second gold medal ended tragically Friday afternoon. ``Dave was a great guy, the best on and off the mat,'' said Mayo, his teammate at Foxcatcher and an assistant wrestling coach at Rider University. ``At 36, he was a little old for a wrestler, but he wanted to go back to the Olympics because he loved what he was doing. Technically, he's the best in the world. He's like a black belt in karate. He could put you out anytime he wanted.''
After a successful high school career in Palo Alto, Schultz attended Oklahoma State and UCLA before settling on Oklahoma, said Abel.
He went on to win the national collegiate title in 1982, the world title at 163 pounds in 1983 and the Olympic title in 1984.
``He was a master,'' Abel said. ``A couple years after he graduated, he came back to work out and I made him teach my guys. It was like reciting the Gettysburg Address, down to the last word. He had total recall of almost everything I had taught him.''
Opponents from such wrestling powers as the former Soviet Union and Bulgaria would approach Schultz for wrestling tips, Abel said, and he was quick to oblige.
``Even the people he beat liked him,'' said Bob Dellinger, a longtime official with the national wrestling federation. Schultz's brother, Mark, also won an Olympic gold medal in 1984, in the 180-pound category. After Mark had broken the elbow of one opponent and Dave had injured the knee of one of his competitors, the brothers were accused of ``excessive brutality'' during those Summer Games in Los Angeles. Dave Schultz shrugged off the criticism, saying, ``What are they trying to do, turn this into a sissy sport?''
He lost in the Olympic trials before the 1988 and 1992 Summer Olympics, but had made a renewed commitment to try to make the team for Atlanta. Schultz was again ranked No. 1 in the country in his weight class after having finished fifth at the world championships last August.
``That was his goal, to be an Olympian, to be the best in the world,'' Abel said.
Du Pont also held a special ardor for wrestling. His family disapproved, calling it a sport for ``ruffians,'' he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1991. Nevertheless, du Pont established a wrestling program at Villanova University in 1986. The program folded two years later after a series of disagreements involving du Pont, his coaches and Villanova officials. Du Pont then became a prominent sponsor of the national free-style wrestling federation in 1989, donating up to $500,000 a year.
His passion for natural history, which du Pont pursued as an author, filmmaker, adventurer and collector, was perhaps rivaled only by his reverence for sports. He was not a devoted student at the private Haverford School outside Philadelphia, where he was voted both ``laziest'' and ``most likely to succeed,'' but he developed an interest in swimming that carried to his days on the varsity team at the University of Miami.
In the early 1960s, du Pont became fascinated with the Olympic pentathlon, which is based on a fictive military mission to deliver a message and involves the disciplines of horseback riding, fencing, shooting, swimming and running. George S. Patton, when he was an Army lieutenant, participated for the United States in the 1912 Summer Olympics. It became du Pont's goal as well; he built a 50-meter indoor pool on his estate and hosted the 1968 national pentathlon championships in his back yard.
He never qualified for the Olympics as an athlete, although he was the manager of the pentathlon team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but du Pont's support through his Foxcatcher National Training Center allowed many others to compete in the Summer Games in the sports of swimming, modern pentathlon and wrestling.
``He treated our athletes fairly and wonderfully,'' said Dick Shoulberg, a swimming coach whose athletes have trained at Foxcatcher for 10 years. ``It's a tragic shock.''
Though he was a generous benefactor of sports programs at Villanova, where he sometimes trained during his competitive days and built a $15 million basketball arena that bears his name, wrestling was du Pont's ``first love,'' said Greg Strobel, a wrestling coach at Lehigh University who formerly coached at Foxcatcher.
On his estate, du Pont built a 14,000-square-foot training facility that included four wrestling mats, an Olympic-size pool, weight training rooms, a kitchen and offices for coaches.
If wrestlers found him eccentric, so did neighbors.
Vicki Welch, who lived on the Foxcatcher Estate with her husband, Tim, for a year in the early 1980s, said that du Pont appeared at her house on Christmas Eve, having driven a tank down the driveway. His face was bloody, apparently after smacking into tree branches, Welch said. He asked if her husband could ``come out to play,'' she said, to which she replied, ``No.''
More alarming incidents occurred in recent years, according to wrestlers who lived on the estate. Chaid and Mayo both told of incidents where du Pont drove his car into a pond on the estate; Chaid described a 1995 incident in which du Pont left the car and swam expertly to shore while an international swimming official nearly drowned before he was pulled from the submerged vehicle.
``If you wrestled for Foxcatcher, the best thing to do was work hard, keep your distance and win,'' Mayo said. ``John helped out a lot of people, but he wasn't the most stable human. You knew it was going to end in some crazy fashion. But I never thought it would be like this.''
LENGTH: Long : 216 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Crime scene. 1. Police say John E. du Pontby CNBbarricaded himself inside his mansion (above) after killing
gold-medal wrestler Dave Schultz, who was training at the estate for
the Olympics in Atlanta. 2. At left, police sealed off entry to
Schultz's home on du Pont's property. Many athletes lived at the
training center owned by du Pont, who dreamed of an Olympic
wrestling team dominated by his club members. KEYWORDS: PROFILE