My parents had no personal experience with schizophrenia.
I mean, could you imagine having a 20-something-year-old son
that just tried to murder somebody and commit suicide?
What would you do? Where would you turn?
Was there any place to turn?
Okay.
-You comfortable? -Mm-hmm.
Okay.
You're cold?
Do you want me to put it around your shoulders?
Where schizophrenia is diagnosed between age 17 and 24,
it's a tragic story.
To be part of the Gavin family is to be part of a tragedy.
This mutation was present in every person in that family
who had schizophrenia.
They might hear voices.
They can command them to do things.
Command them to do things.
Throwing a cat into a bonfire, dismembered a dog in the bathtub.
This family gave us hope
that there might be a chance to cure schizophrenia.
He shot her first, and then he shot himself.
Well, it started to fall apart.
My brothers were falling ill.
They were losing their minds.
There was no peace and quiet growing up with nine brothers,
and two sisters, in a very small house.
Some of the boys were just a little bit too edgy.
They got a little bit too rough, beyond just playfulness.
And that's when you knew something wasn't right.
It just was never talked about, nor did we know what was going on.
If you look at the first incident, which is really Donald,
it took years
before we really started to know something was really wrong.
10:20 am., Donald Kenyon Galvin, 24,
was booked for protective custody in connection
with an alleged suicide and possible homicide attempt.
He mixed acid and cyanide and held his wife, and himself, in the room.
He had little insight and gave little feeling
about the seriousness of his actions.
Here is records from Pueblo, from the State Mental Hospital,
from July 15th, 1970.
That is less than a month after the incident with Jean,
and it says, "Donald is being released to his father
who lives in Colorado Springs,
who plans to set up private psychiatric therapy
and continue medications for Donald."
(CAWING)
Don came home a mess.
So it really became apparent
that he had something severely wrong with him.
Donald's just been a complete nut-case for most of my life.
He came home from college ill when I was a 10 or 12-year-old boy.
Though he spent a good portion of
that time in his room reciting the Beatitudes to himself.
(BELL RINGING) (VOICES WHISPERING)
It's kind of hard to ignore his behaviour when you're a child.
I didn't know what schizophrenia was at the time
but, yeah, from age 11 or so on
I knew that there was a serious problem there.
Donald was difficult to live with.
My parents just had such a difficult time managing him and his illness.
(FIRE CRACKLING)
He would take all the pictures off the walls,
or break all the statues in the house,
or he would be burning photographs in the fireplace.
There was one time when we came home,
I remember going in the front door
and the whole house was empty of furniture.
Being, like, "What is going on here?"
And then it sort of started to dawn on you.
"Urgh, it's Donald again."
He had removed all the furniture from the living room and kitchen
and taken it outside up on the hill.
I don't think my parents were very good
at managing those situations without hysteria and anger.
They would be very angry at him,
and that that would cause him to be more agitated and more violent.
There was a lot of bad times for Mom,
and I don't know how she did it.
It was mostly that Donald would just be abusive to her.
You'd never know when he was gonna come out and do something stupid.
I like, hold up a knife to my mother's throat.
I do remember Donald coming after my mother,
physically a few times,
and other brothers would step in, Jim, probably Mark and Joe.
I never was personally threatened by him or physically harmed by him
but we were all afraid of him
and we had all witnessed his aggression.
And so Jim became my mother's go-to for babysitting the younger kids.
(CAWING)
(BIRD CHIRPING)
Jim was the brother that would pick us up
and take us home from the swimming pool.
He would take us skating to the skating rink in the winter time,
and things like that.
Jim, he was fun to be around.
He was cool.
He drove a little red convertible, and had a motorcycle,
and wore a leather jacket.
Everyone always called him James Dean,
compared him to that kind of persona,
that sort of "too cool for school," you know, bad boy.
Jim, he liked to party.
He took me out to a place when I was still under age
but, he's my older brother says, "Ah, you look old enough,
you look over 18."
I think I met Cathy
who became his wife one of those nights. (LAUGHS)
They were in a bar and drinking beer.
Cathy was a very, very lovely girl.
Very nice person.
I thought she was the best thing that had happened to Jim.
I was, I think, three when they got married
but Cathy and Jim were always taking the young children
off my parents' hands, which I think they appreciated.
I loved being with them.
They were great fun. I mean, they were always great fun.
But then there was this dark side to him that was horrible.
I don't know if Jim was giving Mom and Dad a break. (LAUGHS)
Because we spent a fair amount of time at his home on--
even on sleepovers.
And it seemed like, for a lot of years,
Jim and Cathy were a pretty happy couple.
But I, I don't know
inside that relationship how things were.
I don't know how much the others remember of those times,
but... Jim was
extremely abusive to Cathy.
He would come home at night drunk,
and he would cause some kind of ruckus with her
and there'd be yelling and screaming.
We would just be hearing it. We'd be in the other room.
Then sometimes Jim would then leave, you know, he'd go out in a rage
and Cathy would say, "Okay, come on, kids. Come on, kids.
Let's get in the car. Let's go, let's go.
We need to get out of here." Like for fear of our lives.
But it was either be there with that or be at home with Donald
which for some reason was scarier
because it involved things that weren't real
whereas I think Jim's was more concrete.
It was, like, domestic violence maybe more socially acceptable
perhaps than schizophrenia.
And, so, I don't know which was worse.
There are many causes of people arriving at the state of behaviour
and experience that we call schizophrenia,
but there are certain common characteristics.
Probably the most dramatic characteristic
are what we call hallucinations,
which can be very frequent, very disturbing,
and dominate the person's life.
(VOICES WHISPERING)
They hear things, and generally what they hear are voices,
usually multiple voices, often of people they don't know.
Rarely are the voices friendly.
They're usually voices that negatively comment
on their behaviour, on their appearance,
on their thinking.
They can command them to do things that can be very destructive
and they generate tremendous anxiety and discomfort.
And this is one of the most-- Really dramatic,
harrowing experiences of, of individuals with schizophrenia.
Don and I didn't get along very well
and Don was physically abusive.
Don and Jim were at each other's throats all the time.
(PLAYING PIANO)
I tried to avoid the family.
When it suited me to do so,
and not be part of the strife that was going on.
After I graduated from high school,
I didn't visit Colorado Springs very often
because I, I got a scholarship to go to music school.
I had piano as my major instrument while I was going to school,
and...
...that's where I met my wife.
After a couple of years at the University of Colorado.
Met in 1970.
And married January 9th, '71.
And that was 51 years ago.
When I first went to his family, it seemed a little off.
It was overly orderly,
and Mimi
would give instructions
and everybody followed it to the letter,
like they're little robots.
I didn't see individual personalities
of interest,
and I thought it was strange that each girl had their own little room,
and these boys were stacked two bunk beds in one room
so you had four in one room, four in another, and two in another.
Everything was in order,
and everybody had a job.
Somebody set the table, somebody washed, somebody dried.
Mimi would deliver orders and they would do it.
It just seemed like one bad apple spoilt the whole bunch.
Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day
to be thankful for a bountiful harvest,
and whatever you have in your life that is good.
My mother had prepared a beautiful meal for everybody.
You know, it was all prim and proper,
setting up the table, beautiful tables.
China and the whole thing.
It was-- They spared nothing there.
But we were one of those families that was to be seen and not heard.
I don't know what sparked
the argument between Donald and Jim that day.
I was the only sibling in the dining room when they came in.
They're chasing each other around the dining room table,
and Jim's faster.
Donald can't catch him.
They're on opposite sides of the table
and Donald just decides to pick the table up and throw it,
and then my mother comes in the room,
sees the wreck of her dining room,
takes the rolling pin, smashes the gingerbread house.
And I'm witness to this.
Like what the heck is going on? (LAUGHS)
Trying to get attention. I think that was part of it.
They wanted attention, they were losing their minds.
They needed help.
I think my parents knew that there was something going on with Jim.
It sort of all came crashing down within a matter of...
It felt like a very short time in my life.
I really didn't know that Jim was schizophrenic
while I was growing up.
Donald, you know, was the first obviously to become ill
and I didn't know about Jim's--
I know he had some issues as a young boy
being admitted in Denver, at Fitzsimons' Hospital,
but... then he came out and he seemed like he was okay.
I was unaware, as a child, that he was mentally ill.
I had no understanding or indication
that he had had, sought treatment,
and that my parents had helped him get treatment.
And, in retrospect, of course, you know, he was quite ill.
(VOICES WHISPERING)
God, you couldn't believe
what you were hearing that was happening.
Jimmy running around naked.
Donald in a monk robe. I mean, you're going,
"What is going on with these brothers of mine?"
And so I started,
I did a lot more time with my friends going out
and being with others, outside of the house,
and to partake in the experimental drugs.
Pretty much all of us experimented with recreational drugs.
I remember my elder brothers giving me marijuana
at a very young age.
By middle school, it was White Crosses,
which was a... a speed,
an upper and then on through college,
mushrooms, acid, cocaine.
Anything and everything and usually all at the same time
is how I put it. (LAUGHS)
When I was a kid
and my parents would go out of town on a business trip,
my older brothers always had a party at the house,
at, at Hidden Valley, and there was a lot of drug use.
I saw first hand my brother smoking pot
when we came home from college.
I couldn't believe it.
Of course, I was involved in athletics.
If you were caught smoking or something like that,
you were off the team. You were suspended.
You didn't play.
So I didn't do any of that stuff.
My brothers, Brian and Michael,
I considered both of those true old school hippies.
Michael went to Woodstock,
you know, he was definitely truly part of that culture as a young guy.
This is Michael right here.
And you can see, like, a little kid.
He's, like, so, like, just--
I don't know, he just had a...
A peacefulness about him from a very young age, I think.
My parents were frustrated
because they wanted him to, you know, find a, a career
and go about the normal things
you're supposed to go about in... in life.
He was much too interesting for a traditional career.
He's was an interesting guy. (LAUGHS)
My dad, I was a Daddy's girl. He was my Peter Pan.
Like my parents separated when I was three,
so he's always been sort of a nomad.
Like he... It took him a long time to kind of find some settlement
in his life, I think.
He always has loved his music.
That's been where he put his energy in
because it was probably his way of escape.
Michael and Mom did not get along well
when Michael was younger.
He was a rebellious type, you know?
Mom always wanted him to cut his hair and things,
things like that and...
I don't think my mom understood
the hippies at all. (LAUGHS)
He was counter culture.
He was...
He, he epitomised
what my parents feared was causing the schizophrenia.
To see whatever he saw as a kid and having to,
you know, process through and go through,
I can definitely imagine
that he would have had to kind of determine "Am I normal?
Am I okay? Do I have this? Do I don't?"
If I were him growing up in a household like that,
I probably would have been, like, wow,
you know, is this gonna happen to me?
Michael was in California and one day, I think he was 17,
and he thought, "Oh, we can't be that far from the beach,
I'm gonna go to the beach."
And he cut through a neighbourhood or a trailer park or something
and I think someone's hose was running,
and he took a drink of water from it,
and the person called the police
and had him arrested for trespassing.
He ended up in a maximum security state mental hospital in California
at the age of 18 years old for six months.
Can you imagine?
And so here my mom is at home with Donald, who was not well.
Jim was not well either.
And then this happens.
I don't think they knew what to make of it.
My brother Michael was originally, I think, taken to jail
and then transferred to the psychiatric hospital.
And I think, maybe my parents played a hand in that.
In saying, "Oh, he had a brother. This must be happening to him too."
There was some overcrowding, I think, issues, and he had a choice
and I guess he chose to go to a mental institution
instead of staying in the jail
which he said to me was a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
sort of experience. (LAUGHS)
I think he thought it was going to be easier.
I think he thought it was going to be a little bit light,
more laid back or something but mental institutions,
at that time in the '70s were not so much.
From my understanding, they were a little more scary
than probably just being in a jail cell probably would have been.
My parents wanted to have him committed,
and Michael was totally blown away,
the fact that they really didn't understand him.
Because when your brother has it,
everybody just looks at you and says, "Oh, are you next?"
(LAUGHS)
You know, "Is that gonna happen to you?"
I think my parents suspected schizophrenia in Michael,
but I don't know if that was
because they already had experienced it
with some of my other siblings,
and then think why not another one, you know?
Certainly with Michael that would have been a misdiagnosis.
(INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
My dad, I think he's always had to sort of present that he's not,
you know, ill like his brothers.
Because I think back in the '60s and '70s,
when a teenager had the long hair and the hippies,
they thought something was wrong with them,
that it was, you know, outside of that normal clean-cut boy,
and he don't think he's ever been that.
(CAWING)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
I remember many conversations with my mother on the phone
about what was going on.
I dealt with it on a...
As it comes take it, you know? You deal with one at a time.
I never thought of the overall big picture.
I mean, there were some moments that I've head about with her,
with Donald trying to strangle her at one point and kill her.
That had to be frightening.
It had to be.
"Donald Galvin is a 28-year-old, divorced male admitted
to Colorado State Hospital, September 1, 1973,
on a confine and treat order from El Paso County.
Just prior to admission,
he had been in an argument with his mother over medication
that he wished to take.
She had taken it from him, refused to give it to him,
and he reportedly grabbed her by the throat
and began to shake her.
She became quite frightened and the other children in the home
broke up the struggle."
The conflict was often over medication.
The conflict was often over my mother
having to orchestrate the medicines, to administer the medications
and prevent Donald from overdosing.
There were drugs for treating schizophrenia
that had emerged on the scene from the early '50s, and these drugs,
called anti-psychotic drugs, were used routinely.
The goal was to quiet people down,
was to stop them from looking agitated,
to stop them from having ideas that no one could make sense out of,
and the drugs did diminish those symptoms,
but they had a lot of side effects.
Patients were walking around looking like zombies.
I've seen people on medications and off medications chronically,
and I've developed the opinion that it's better to medicate
and to try to stay compliant with medications
but to be very sensitive to the side effects,
as they can be very disabling.
You or I would just be horrified if we were told
that we need to take a medication that can cause us to have seizures,
or diabetes, or extreme weight gain.
So it's a, it's a balancing act.
What typically happens is patients stop taking medicine.
The biggest reason patients get
have a recurrence of illness is they stop taking their medicine.
John's mother would often--
Every time we'd go,
she says "Oh, I have no sharp knives in the house."
Well, that speaks volumes. (LAUGHS)
John and I had travelled
with this old trailer with an ice box
because I didn't want to sleep in the house.
John's mother had made up these beds for the kids,
and we were invited to go to dinner
and so we left the kids at John's parents' house.
It took about, what, 20 minutes to get there?
-About? -Yeah. Mm-hmm.
For this dinner date
and we were greeted at the front door saying,
"Oh, there's an emergency at your home.
You've got to go, leave right now."
So we got in the car and, and booked, booked home.
And there were several cop cars there
with the lights blaring,
and, you know, twirling around and it was dark,
and I rushed up the stairs and we were stopped by the police.
"Oh, no, you can't go there."
And I said, "My children, my children."
And then, then they let us in.
John's mother had locked herself in their bedroom
and she called the cops.
That might have been a time that Jim was wandering around with a gun
or something.
It was very frightening.
(RADIO COMMUNICATION)
Doesn't take much imagination to, to realise what could happen.
You don't know if you're gonna find dead bodies.
(CAR APPROACHING)
They never stayed in that house again.
After that incident,
there's no problem with staying somewhere else.
So here you're seeing violence,
and it was pretty chronic.
It was a pretty chronic thing.
But my mother relied on Jim
to get the younger children out of the house.
Don't think my parents had anywhere else to turn.
Jim, of course,
was causing tremendous damage as well,
but he wasn't the only one.
Look at this. Here's the rock star, Brian.
It was before I was born, but I know that everyone always spoke about
his having created this band in high school
that went on to play all over the state.
Oh, here he is. That's a good one. That's how I remember him.
The long hair and the moustache at the piano, playing music.
Brian could listen to a piece of music on the radio,
and then he could transpose it to the piano, the guitar,
with one listen.
He just had that (UNSURE OF WORD) type ability.
He was really talented.
My first recollection of Brian is with his high school band,
Paxton's Back Street Carnival.
And then in college, during his college years,
he played with a pretty famous rock and roll band from time to time.
Rock and roll was the counter culture, right?
Mother and Father, of course, were part of the establishment.
They followed the rules.
But the culture at that time, you've got to remember,
we were in the '70s, so it was drugs, sex, and rock and roll and
the hell with our government because of the Vietnam War.
It was a different time and everything was anti-establishment.
It was a brave new world. (LAUGHS)
My parents described Brian as having taken a different path,
not the traditional academic go to college, get a job.
That he was reaching for the stars, that he somehow was gonna be famous.
I think, for some reason,
my family was convinced that Brian was gonna be some famous rock star.
And I was still going to school with Nancy in Bolder.
I encouraged Brian to come up there and join me at the music school,
and so he did for maybe a semester
and then he decided he wanted to go to California
and start a band out there.
He's very much a part of the hippy culture,
at that time in history.
But these two are definitely how I remember him.
You know, he had had such tremendous success
with his high school band
that I think they thought it was just a natural evolution
for him to go and become somehow a famous rock star in California.
No, he most certainly did not.
I do remember very clearly Brian's girlfriend, Noni,
coming and I remember them being very happy together
and they were having fun and so it was,
you know, probably first love, I would imagine.
The only time I met Noni was when she came to the house
to visit with Brian.
He was home before California for a trip to visit
and... I talked to her
for just a brief period of time when she came.
She seemed like a very quiet, shy kind of gal.
A little bit withdrawn maybe.
Noni was the youngest, the youngest child out of three.
My mother was her stepsister.
She was a beautiful girl.
Long blond hair, kind of that California tan look to her,
blue eyes, you know?
She was definitely a looker.
She went to school in Sacramento, and that's when she met Brian.
Brian was in a band
that they were performing on one of the campuses there.
I've never been closer to any of my other brothers or sisters as Brian,
and then he went to California,
seemingly living the good life with his girlfriend,
and he...
(SIGHS) I could never imagine, ever in my wildest dream,
Brian hurting any one.
(GLASS BREAKING)
(TRAIN HORN HONKING)
One morning I got a phone call from my father
and he was pretty short and direct about it,
and, and he used exactly these words.
He said, "Your brother's dead."
And I was stunned.
There wasn't much conversation after that.
Somehow he got into her apartment
and was basically laying in wait until she showed up.
At the time, I didn't realise the, the, the violence of it,
of what actually took place.
I wasn't told right away.
He shot her first, and then he shot himself.
Sheriff's deputies are investigating an apparent murder/suicide
involving 19-year-old Lorelei L. Smith of Lodi.
That's Noni.
And Brian Galvin, 22, of Sacramento.
(SIGHS)
Lorelei Smith, 19-year-old daughter of an El Soweto physician
was apparently murdered by her former boyfriend
who police said then turned a .22 calibre rifle on himself
committing suicide.
Police say there were no signs of a struggle.
I was shocked.
I never could imagine Brian doing that.
But I never knew he was on that psychotic drugs for schizophrenia.
He was already on prescribed drugs. I knew nothing about it.
My parents never told me anything about him being
medically being treated for schizophrenia.
I blame Brian for his actions,
but I can't... I can't sit there and say it's all his fault
because of his mental illness.
There's a lot of press and a lot of conversation about violence
and mental illness,
particularly psychosis and schizophrenia.
The facts are very clear on this.
The overwhelming majority of patients
that have the diagnosis schizophrenia are not violent
and not dangerous, but there's no question
that there are occasionally violent acts perpetrated by people
who are actively psychotic.
This is exceedingly uncommon, but it gets a lot of press
because it's very dramatic.
Suicide, in contrast, which is a form of self violence,
is much more common and large scale follow-up studies
have found that up to 20 percent of people
with the diagnosis schizophrenia will end their life
with suicide eventually.
It is a very serious outcome of, of this illness.
After Brian's death,
I think there was a lot more awareness and...
About what was going on in the family with mental illness.
Up until that time, it was just, it was kind of taken lightly
and then there was-- When Brian committed suicide...
...I think things in the family changed.
It was a lot more sombre.
I know for, especially for my parents.
Day had turned into night, and it was dark.
(CAR APPROACHING)
There was-- There were frightening moments, definitely.
Police would come to the house, you know, and,
and have to deal with one of the boys.
And my older brother, Jim,
I think the disease affected him differently than Don.
The violence, and the way he treated Cathy,
being violent with her,
and he was abusive to my sister, Mary. I know.
I think the general overall feeling in the household was that of...
...complete disbelief.
How could such tragedy happen?
My mom and dad were quite distressed obviously,
as anyone would be, with the death of Brian,
and my mother had her hands full with Donald.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
Being around schizophrenia is...
...very difficult.
And so I could either stay at Hidden Valley Road
with my schizophrenic brothers
or I could go hang out at my brother Jim's.
My perpetrator, my abuser.
My rapist.