Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992 TAG: 9203290200
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But Cunningham's family isn't so convinced.
"There's just a lot of questions we are asking ourselves that haven't been answered," said Cunningham's sister, Vera Tabb of Lynchburg.
"It doesn't add up."
Cunningham, 44, had a history of psychological problems since his return from four years in the Vietnam War, but he was not suicidal, Tabb insisted.
"This is completely out of character."
Tabb's husband, Clyde, added: "After Vietnam, he was scared to death of death."
Cunningham was one of two patients missing from the VA who were found dead last week on the hospital grounds. Cunningham, who weighed more than 250 pounds, was found hanged from a tree.
He had been missing since Feb. 22.
Dr. Del Short, the chief of psychiatric services at the VA, said Friday that foul play had been ruled out in Cunningham's death. Police have said he died of an apparent suicide.
Still, Cunningham's sister said she isn't satisfied with that conclusion - or the reception she and her husband have had from the VA since her brother's disappearance.
Clyde Tabb said that after they were called by the VA in February about Cunningham's disappearance, they never heard from the hospital again.
"We were keeping in contact with them," he said. "They weren't keeping in touch with us. It was like they really were not concerned."
Tabb said that when he called for information in the weeks that Cunningham was missing, he usually got the runaround and was often treated rudely.
Family members of the other patient found dead last week, Carl Otis McKenzie, also reported problems in dealings with the VA.
Both families expressed how upsetting it was to learn from news reports, before being contacted by the VA, that the bodies had been identified as their loved ones.
After hearing the news reports Thursday, the Tabbs drove Friday to the VA, where, they said, they met with further difficulties finding out any information.
They asked for meetings Friday morning with Clark Graninger, the director, and Pat Clark, his public information officer.
The couple was told that Graninger and Clark were too busy to see them. They said they were asked to come back in the afternoon.
When they did, Graninger and Clark still didn't see them.
"We were treated with total disregard as family members of the victim. It was awful, just totally awful," Vera Tabb said.
Clark said Saturday that she felt "very badly" about not being able to meet with them.
"I would have been more than happy to speak with them, but what they did not know was that I was trying to work out details of releasing that information to them at that time to honor their wishes."
Clark said when she learned the family was at the center Friday, she asked the Salem Police Department - the agency that was authorized to release medical examiner's autopsy reports - for permission to give them the information.
The premature releasing of the names of the patients found dead "concerned me," Clark said. "We had gone to great length to make sure that did not happen. If in any way it has hurt the family, it was never intended. I apologize."
Despite the news reports, it took several hours at the hospital before anyone would confirm for her that one of the patients found was her brother, Vera Tabb said.
But she added: "During the time we were there, he was talked about in the past tense."
The Tabbs did finally meet with Short, the chief of psychiatry who oversees the unit where Cunningham had been a patient, and he confirmed the news reports. But they described his answers as "ambiguous" and "evasive."
They said they asked Short if he thought Cunningham was suicidal and that he replied no. Cunningham had been improving since his arrival at the hospital Dec. 30, they said Short told them.
And when the couple pressed for a theory on what could have triggered a suicide, they said none was offered.
In an interview Friday, Short said Cunningham was admitted first to a locked, acute psychiatric care ward when he came to the VA. The ward generally is reserved for patients thought to be either suicidal or homicidal, or incapable of taking care of themselves.
Short would not say how Cunningham was classified, nor did he discuss any details of his condition, other than to say he was "very ill."
The Tabbs said Cunningham had been committed to the VA several times, and that he suffered from flashbacks from his time in Vietnam. But they insisted he was not suicidal, and had never tried to kill himself before or even talked about it.
"We can't imagine what he saw over there. Some of the things he told us were mind-blowing just to listen to," said Vera Tabb. She recalled one story in which soldiers who shared a tent with her brother were left headless after a bomb landed in their camp.
Yet, she said: "He was more normal than you and me."
He was married, but going through a separation that contributed to his emotional problems, she said. He had been honorably discharged from the Army and was on disability.
He had a 12-year-old son, who the Tabbs said Cunningham called every day no matter where he was. "Does that sound like a crazy man to you?" Clyde Tabb said.
"He loved that boy, there's no way he'd leave him."
They said the last people to see Cunningham were his mother and another sister who visited him two days before he disappeared. They reported that he was in good spirits and excited because he expected to come home the following week.
"That don't sound . . . to me like a man who wants to kill himself," Clyde Tabb said.
However, Cunningham's flashbacks often came suddenly, the couple said. They said he didn't get violent, but acted as if he was reliving what he saw in Vietnam.
At the VA, Short said, Cunningham responded well to medication and had been improving under his care.
Gradually, Cunningham was granted freedom to leave the locked ward on his own and walk to the hospital cafeteria or library or elsewhere on the VA grounds, Short said. Allowing such independence is therapeutic for psychiatric patients, he said, and is considered standard practice.
"From all indications, he seemed to be doing well and was denying being suicidal," Short said.
Cunningham had been transferred from the acute ward to an intermediate ward Feb. 18, four days before he disappeared, and had been given "full privileges" to come and go as he wanted with few restrictions, Short said.
Still, the doctor added, such a ward move doesn't always ensure a patient against having a relapse. Psychiatric patients often are unpredictable, he said.
He said Cunningham's treatment at the VA would be reviewed by the VA's administrator, Graninger, and likely would include the opinion of an outside doctor not connected to the VA. The case also could be reviewed at the regional VA level or by the central VA office in Washington, D.C., Short said.
Vera and Clyde Tabb, meanwhile, still have questions.
"If he was suicidal, then why was he given so much freedom?" Clyde Tabb said. "And if he was doing so well, then why did he kill himself?"
The Tabbs also don't understand why it took so long to find Cunningham. His body was found Wednesday slumped against a tree in a wooded area a few hundred yards from the psychiatric wards.
VA officials have said the thicket was considered too overgrown and too far down a steep ravine for security officers to search - a statement the Tabbs find puzzling. "It ain't no deep hole," said Clyde Tabb after visiting the site on Friday. "I ran down and ran back."
He said the hospital should take patient disappearances and searches more seriously, and suggested bringing in local police or trained search dogs to assist.
Short said: "It's not the FBI. We take it seriously, but we have so few of these, we don't send out large search parties every time."
The Salem VA treats more than 2,000 psychiatric patients a year, Short said. Of those, he estimated about 60 will wind up missing. "There are people who leave against medical advice," he said.
Most are found. Often they take the bus into Roanoke or return to their homes. Few end as suicides, he said. "We have remarkably few incidents like this."
Over the past 15 years there have been about a half-dozen reported suicides at the VA in which the victims were found outside the hospital wards.
His sister finds it hard to believe that her brother could have hanged himself when his feet were close enough to touch the ground, or that the branch was able to support his weight.
Tabb stopped short of suggesting that foul play was involved. But she said it strikes her as odd that her brother's body was found when a review team from the central VA office in Washington was at the hospital looking into allegations of poor patient care.
"All of a sudden when the federal investigators showed up, these two bodies show up. You draw your own conclusions," she said.
She offered no theories.
"I guess only God and Leonard know for sure."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB