THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 1, 1995 TAG: 9506010419
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CARROLLTON LENGTH: Long : 216 lines
A sign.
Not $500,000. Not new laws. Or a refund on five years of her life or even an apology. Certainly not a second life for her dead husband.
A sign. On the side of the road, with her husband's name on it, next to one of the bridges he built.
Barbara Jacobs says she wants one as a commemoration from the state government, which she blames for her husband's murder and his killer's escape.
``There are a lot of things I wish I could get, that I feel like I should get,'' said Jacobs, legs crossed and hands folded, leaning on the arm of a living room chair.
``That would be nice, though - maybe just a sign. Something that would last, to acknowledge what happened. Something people won't forget.''
Jacobs has been trying to forget what happened Feb. 2, 1990, off a gravel road in rural Chesapeake. Her husband, Mike Jacobs, was murdered while working as a construction foreman.
But the family's grief only started with Mike's death. Next came a bumbled trial, a medical decision that let the killer escape, a nationwide manhunt. The family jinked around the state - television cameras at the heel - terror-stricken the killer might come for them next.
It was a tortuous misadventure that ended a year ago today, only because the governor, the head of the state police and more than 50 special agents got involved.
``Am I asking too much? That the state admit what it's done?'' said Jacobs, 47, speaking at her Isle of Wight County home. ``I don't want much. I just blame the state government for Mike's death.''
The murderer was John Thomas Midgette, a deranged co-worker suffering from paranoid delusions. State officials knew Midgette was trying to kill Jacobs two weeks before the slaying. They never intervened.
Police quickly captured Midgette and charged him with murder. His trial, though, was another blunder.
Prosecutors didn't bring evidence because they expected Midgette to plead insanity. When he refused, they tried to get a mistrial, but the judge said no. Midgette committed the crime, he ruled, but was not guilty, by reason of insanity.
So Midgette went to the maximum security ward at Central State Hospital in Petersburg instead of prison. And for no specific time - just until the doctors said he could leave.
Every doctor who examined him agreed Midgette was certifiably insane. He claimed his infant child was actually the illegitimate child of a black man - that his wife took the man's sperm to a doctor and had herself impregnated. When a friend commented that the baby was white and looked just like him, Midgette said: ``The doctor did a heck of a job.''
For a time, Midgette refused to eat, thinking the hospital food was poisoned. He lost some 50 pounds in the first few months. Once, when he tried to shake hands before an interview with a court psychologist, his pants fell to the floor.
Midgette showed all the signs of delusional disorder: a stark change in behavior in middle age, bizarre fantasies masked by an otherwise normal lifestyle. The illness is generally considered incurable.
But two years after the trial, Midgette's psychological reviews started to improve. He was adjusting well to the hospital setting, doctors said, his tales of conspiracy reduced to just a flicker.
After two years, Midgette got a job on the hospital grounds and permission to go outside by himself. Only two other criminally insane patients at the hospital had such privileges. Midgette was the only murderer.
On April 23, 1994, at 11 a.m., he left his job at the patient canteen and didn't come back.
Security guards searched the grounds for two hours before calling police, who said that by then the trail was too cold for dogs or helicopters. A dispatch was sent to police departments throughout Hampton Roads. Some tacked it on bulletin boards or read it at meetings. .
Jacobs learned of Midgette's escape at 9 that night when her attorney called. Police had told him. Hospital officials have a policy of notifying relatives of victims when patients escape or are to be released. But Jacobs' case was different: Midgette was coming after her.
Or so she feared. During Midgette's trial, prosecutors said the killer had prepared a six-person hit list, with Mike Jacobs at the top. Barbara Jacobs, Midgette's mother and other co-workers were also targets, each part of Midgette's delusional theory that acquaintances were trying to fire or kill him.
Jacobs left home, staying with her daughter, Lisa Noel, in Smithfield, or with friends.
``They said my name was on the list. My name,'' Jacobs stammered. ``I didn't even know the man until he was charged with killing Mike.
``But I had to assume he was on his way to get me, and I wasn't going to sit around waiting.''
She, Lisa and Lisa's husband, Greg, called police every few hours. They watched the news and read the papers for some word on the search.
After seeing nothing for three days, Lisa called the television stations and talked to a newspaper reporter. When a state police spokeswoman was asked why the media had not been notified about Midgette's escape, she said: ``They told us he wasn't dangerous.'' When asked who ``they'' were, she wouldn't say.
When Midgette's picture appeared on the news that night and in the paper the next morning, one of Jacobs' co-workers said she had seen him at her office. State police told Jacobs to leave town and keep moving. And keep in touch. She got paid leave from work and went to Clarksville to stay with relatives.
By then the story of the deranged killer with a hit list had made national headlines. Syndicated television shows like ``Inside Edition,'' ``American Journal,'' ``America's Most Wanted'' and ``48 Hours'' aired reports.
Jacobs and her family talked with the press at first, often getting more information from them than from police. But the relationship quickly soured.
``They called all the time, followed us. There were so many,'' said Lisa Noel, 28, a paramedic. Reporters called family members or showed up at their doors, many making brash attempts to get in.
When the press started reporting where the family was hiding, they became part of the problem. The Jacobses again had to keep moving.
``We were so terrified all the time, and then that. It's like they wanted him to find us,'' Jacobs said. ``I kept wondering: `Isn't anybody on my side?' ''
After about two weeks, the furor died down. Barbara and Lisa had to go back to work. The press lost interest. For four weeks, Jacobs lived at home with her fiance and a gun, pleading with police not to stop their regular patrols.
State police, meanwhile, widened their search. It cost some $75,000 in overtime before it ended. More than 400 sightings came in.
Midgette was captured June 1 near Washington, N.C., a few miles from where he grew up, after a passer-by spotted him walking a stretch of rural highway. He carried a small bag with toiletries and gave up without a struggle. ``I just needed a vacation,'' he said. He said he'd been to Washington, D.C.
``I can't tell you what it felt like running like that, and I can't tell you what it felt like to finally feel safe,'' Jacobs said.
People in the state government sure didn't know, she said. She decided they should pay.
Two weeks before Mike Jacobs' murder, two men reported to the state police that Midgette was trying to get Jacobs killed - a detail the Jacobs family didn't learn until after Midgette's escape.
Central State Hospital was guilty of ``major, systemic deficiencies in security,'' according to Gov. George F. Allen.
Jacobs wanted to sue the state. But no lawyer would take the case. The statute of limitations had probably expired, and no one thought the state would allow itself to be sued.
Allen, who met with Jacobs, recommended she seek compensation through the General Assembly. So she took a bill before the legislature asking for $500,000. A House committee killed it 9-0.
One criticism was that she asked for too much money, but Jacobs says the money never mattered. She turned down offers from studios and television shows because ``I just couldn't do that,'' she said.
During the hearing, the state police offered evidence that Barbara Jacobs was never actually on Midgette's hit list. The prosecutor who had said so in court was wrong.
``If they knew that then, why did they tell us to run?'' she asked. ``That hearing was almost as Mickey Mouse as that courtroom in Chesapeake,'' she said of her meeting before the House Claims Committee. ``They just talked and laughed and walked around like we weren't even there - like they didn't want to be there.''
Jacobs lobbied for changes in the law governing mentally ill criminals, hoping for a new ``guilty but insane'' classification, or making insanity acquittees serve sentences once they're cured.
But after consideration by Allen and Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, the state's policy remained the same: criminals need punishment, but mentally ill criminals need help.
Jacobs' case was difficult for state officials. Most felt sympathy but said bad luck was as much to blame as anything.
For instance, when the state police got the tip from Midgette's friends, they tapped one of the friends' phones. They never investigated Midgette's mental problems - stories about 7-Elevens poisoning his coffee or thugs injecting him with serum - because they thought he was trying to hire a killer, not kill someone himself.
They didn't warn Mike Jacobs because they weren't convinced he was in danger. And state police procedures never said they should.
Also, Central State Hospital is a mental health facility, not a prison. State law says criminally insane patients shall be confined only if they pose a threat to others.
The decision by doctors to lift some of his restrictions was a medical decision, not a security decision.
Still, some things have changed.
Patients in Central State's maximum security ward are no longer allowed outside, even if doctors think their condition has improved.
The hospital has added 70 employees to the 150-patient forensic unit, bringing employment there to 202. Of the new positions, 30 were for clinical work, 40 for security.
And the new procedures in the hospital's forensics unit are overseen by a new director. The old one was replaced shortly after Midgette's capture.
``I think it indeed served as our wakeup call,'' said Dr. Timothy A. Kelly, state director of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services. ``The forensic unit right now is very, very secure. If you're not supposed to get out, you won't.''
The state police now require that any potential crime victim be warned immediately, even if it interferes with an investigation. Superintendent Col. M. Wayne Huggins said: ``We knew we couldn't let this happen again.''
And the governor's office, which ordered three investigations into the Midgette case, is trying to help Jacobs name a bridge in Chesterfield County - one that her husband built - in his memory.
Like most other things she has encountered in government, it will be a process: going before the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors and the Commonwealth Transportation Board. The family will wait.
``A lot of people came to Clarksville when we buried daddy,'' said Lisa. ``They came to the funeral, they came to the viewing and from all over the state.''
``He had a lot of friends - a lot of people who cared about him,'' added Barbara.
``I don't care how ludicrous it sounded, somebody should have warned him when they knew he was in danger. And now that he's gone, they should do something about it.
``A sign on the road. That's not too much to ask, is it?'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
ASKING FOR A SIGN
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN
Staff
Barbara Jacobs' husband was murdered four years ago by John Thomas
Midgette. After Midgette was found not guilty by reason of insanity,
he escaped from Central State Hospital allegedly with a hit list
containing her name. Jacobs went into hiding while he was loose.
Feb. 2, 1990: John Thomas Midgette, above, kills his co-worker, Mike
Jacobs. He is committed to a mental hospital.
April 23, 1994: Midgette escapes and launches nationwide manhunt.
Jacobs' widow goes into hiding.
June 1, 1994: He is captured near Washington, N.C.
by CNB