Russ Riley: A life of dreams, delusions

They held the memorial on a Wednesday, under two fat maple trees in the day yard.

The wind blew from the north, too cold for late summer, but the sun shone and people slowly found their places in the semi-circle of plastic chairs surrounded by an electrified fence.

"I'm glad to have you all here as we gather to remember the life of Russ Riley," the minister began.

"The eternal God is your dwelling place... In my Father's mansion are many rooms."

And later: "We see in a mirror darkly ... for in every life there are plans that will not happen and dreams that will remain just dreams."

At the end the bereaved sang "Jesus Loves Me" and recited the Lord's Prayer, heads bowed, voices strong in the late afternoon sun.

The Saturday before 300 had attended the funeral of the 36-year-old who died in his sleep of heart failure early on Sept. 13.

They came to grieve the popular high school athlete who once dreamed of playing professional baseball, who scored 26 on the ACT, drove a fast car, dated the prettiest girls at Milford High. They came to say good-bye to a man who loved the Pittsburgh Steelers, flannel shirts and cowboy boots. Little King's sandwiches, cold winter days and Nebraska football.

They came to mourn an uncle, brother, son, friend.

Thirteen autumns had passed since Russell James Riley arrived in shackles and handcuffs at this place: Forensic Mental Health Services at the Lincoln RegionalCenter.

This is the building, doctors here are fond of saying, that houses "the most dangerously mentally ill men in the state of Nebraska."

It is the place Russ Riley lived the last years of his life. A life that began with such promise, such hope and then split apart. And this is the place, Lancaster County attorneys always believed, Russ Riley belonged, for the safety of the public.

Among those who sang at his memorial service were men who had murdered, or attempted murder. Raped, or attempted rape. Attacked strangers. Shot police officers. Harmed themselves -- slit their wrists, swallowed poisons, walked barefoot in the snow until their feet froze.

Men committed by mental health boards, by courts who found them not responsible for their crimes by reason of insanity. Sick men who came to this place to get well.

"You may have lost a son," one wrote to his mother, Jean Riley-Schultz, "but many of us have lost a friend and we will not forget him."

Wrote another: "To fight for one's life takes courage, of course. But to fight for one's mind, for one's reason, takes a different, a very special kind of courage."

Russ Riley was psychotic and delusional when he came to this two-story brick building on the west edge of town from a Lancaster County Jail cell on Sept. 4, 1987. Doctors who examined the 23-year-old determined he did not understand his actions when he aimed a Winchester shotgun at 51-year-old Gilbert Lee Daniels as he slept on Riley's living room sofa.

The 911 call came at 6:29 a.m.

"Yeah, my name is Russell J. Riley," the voice said. "I just shot a man in the head and killed him with a 20-gauge, single-shell shotgun."

When police came for the stocky, gruffly handsome young man outside his apartment on West Cornhusker Highway, he went willingly.

The cruiser crested the Interstate 180 viaduct, heading south toward the jail. Inside, the man who had not slept for three days looked out his window.

"Sure looks like it's going to be a beautiful day," he said.

* * *

He was the baby grandmothers fussed over at the grocery store. Smiling a wide toothless grin, flirting with round hazel eyes.

The lanky, brown-haired boy grew up on an acreage on a hill near Pleasant Dale. Fished and hunted. Played baseball in the pasture with his Uncle John, older by just a handful of years. They'd compete to see who could throw the most strikes out of 100 pitches. Who could put the most miles on their bicycle odometers. Who could eat the most Valentino's pizza at family gatherings.

He was one of those curious kids. In third grade his class studied biology. "Nobody was interested in molecules except for Russ," his teacher told his mother.

He excelled in football, basketball, baseball. He had hustle, drive, talent, and his coaches figured he had what it took to make it big.

He teased his little sister, Rebecca. Loved to wear cowboy boots like his dad, Rex. Did dumb stuff and got caught.

"He was just like anybody else's son," said his mother, a certified public accountant with short, silvery white hair and her son's smile.

This is what she wants the world to know: He was just like anybody else's son.

And then, in the fall of 1981 he wasn't anymore. The high school senior felt his world tilting. He had a hard time finishing a thought. Starting a sentence and then, then, forgetting.

And then on a Thursday night, after a football team supper, he collapsed on the living room couch, crying. When cars drove up in the yard, the 18-year-old was certain of one thing: They were coming to get him.

His parents took him to Lincoln General Hospital. The doctor sat on one side of his desk, the parents on the other.

"Your son has schizophrenia," he told them, eating M&M's one by one from a small brown bag.

Schizophrenia. A mental disorder that steals young men's minds. A biochemical betrayal that preys on women, too, but waits until they are in their late 20s.

One in a hundred are the odds of developing the disease. Full recovery rarely occurs, but medication can put it in remission, can silence the voices and deflate the delusions.

That was the beginning.

"We were just devastated," said his mother, looking through a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings from long-ago high school ball games. "To have your whole world ahead of you, with all your hopes and dreams and plans, and to have someone pull the rug out from under you ..."

Doctors started the teen-ager on anti-psychotic medication. And it helped. He returned to school. Graduated in the top fourth of his class. Enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Stayed a semester.

The next fall he got an apartment in Lincoln with some buddies. Even played semi-pro baseball for four summers.

He didn't believe strangers were coming for him anymore, but he wasn't quite the old Russ. The medication made him put on weight and he hated that. Sometimes he was tired and sluggish, sometimes he couldn't sleep and would vacuum the apartment for hours in the middle of the night.

"I remember having a battle all my life inside my head, alone, you know?" he would tell detectives five years later. "Just imagine yourself being drug around town for a long time, for a long time -- years -- but you, all you ever wanted to be was like everybody else, you know, and get along."

* * *

In the fall of 1987 he was working for a Milford trucking company. A good employee, his boss remembered. Prompt. Responsible. Smart.

But that August he visited a new doctor and received a new diagnosis -- manic-depression -- and a new medication, Lithium. A drug that didn't treat the delusions and hallucinations that are the signposts of schizophrenia.

On Thursday, Sept. 8, he had a couple beers at the Top Hat, a bar down the street from his apartment, before work. He shot some pool. Talked about going fishing on Saturday. He drove to Milford and worked second shift at L & K Services.

When he got home, Gilbert Lee Daniels, a neighbor in the apartment complex, a retired Air Force man from Kansas, was asleep on the living room couch.

He had offered the 51-year-old a place to crash a few days earlier, hearing Daniels had been evicted from his own apartment.

Russ Riley hadn't slept much in days. Couldn't eat. At some point that night he came to believe the man in the blue sweatshirt with the POW bracelet on his right wrist and the grown kids back home in Wichita, this man snoring softly on his couch, was the cause of all his problems. Of all the world's problems.

For two hours he sat with the shotgun. 1 a.m. 2 a.m.

Struggling. Praying he wouldn't have to do what he needed to do ...

As night crept toward dawn, the troubled man longed for quiet, unplugging the air conditioner, the coffee maker, the stove, the clock, the refrigerator, shutting off fuses, ripping out all the electrical cords, all the lamps, all but the one next to the plaid couch.

The clock stopped at 6:07.

"It's him or me," Riley told detectives the next day. "I just did what I thought was right. I thought he was the devil himself. Satan. Lucifer. The fallen angel."

His mother and sister arrived that afternoon at the Forensic Building at the Lincoln Regional Center. A psychiatrist had already examined him in jail, determined he'd suffered a mental break, gave him a strong shot of anti-psychotic medication.

The young man who befriended a neighbor only to end his life hours later began to realize the horror of what he'd done.

"We just held each other and cried," his mother said. "We cried and cried and cried."

She brought him a new shirt that day, a Michael Jordan T-shirt.

A week later it was gone.

He'd given it to one of the other patients.

"You just don't understand, Mom," he said. "These guys don't have anything."

* * *

If someone on the ward wanted to bum a smoke, they'd look for him. If someone needed a couple of quarters for a Pepsi, they'd ask him.

If someone was feeling down, if the voices were talking through the TV again, Russ would sit beside them, quietly telling them things would be OK.

He wrote letters for the other patients, read to them.

"I don't think there was anybody who didn't respect Russ," said his social worker, John Morton.

When one of the nurses lost a son to cancer, he called her at home. "All the guys on S2 are thinking about you," he told her. "Maybe it's God's plan for you to be out at the Regional Center," his mother would tell him, "because you do so much for the men out there."

But sometimes he couldn't do as much for himself.

He'd sit in therapy groups and cry. "Oh, what have I done ..." What have I done?

* * *

Once on the proper medication he got well fast.

The 6-foot-3, 230-pound man -- christened the gentle giant by his attorney -- approached middle age as a patient on Security Ward 2.

Room 20 with a view of the day yard and the strawberry patch. A bed. A dresser. A desk. A radio. His Bible.

Russ Riley started his journey upstairs in the ward that houses the sickest of all the building's patients, but he quickly came downstairs, working his way through the system, living in other buildings on the Lincoln campus, even at the Hastings Regional Center for a time.

Over the years he earned some freedom.

He went home for holidays and then entire weekends in his mother's care, miles from electric fences and locked doors. He loved to answer the phone, bring in the mail. Ordinary things.

He played with his nephews and helped his step-sister with homework and his Uncle John on the farm. He went to church, golfed, played in alumni basketball tournaments with the old gang in Milford.

Russ held lots of jobs at the Regional Center, his last delivering laundry two days a week to Beatrice, accompanied by staff.

When he filled out his tax return he always paused at the blank for occupation.

"What should I write, Mom?" he'd joke. "Nut?"

He was as normal as anybody, his friends on the outside said. He had a quiet dignity. And integrity.

"It's not a word you'd associate with someone in his position," his mother said. "But he had it."

In some ways he was still the All-American boy, said Jo Maciejewski, a nurse who watched him grow for 13 years. "He was just a unique, unique patient."

"He was the one a lot of us thought would be the first one out the door," said Frank Fowler, a technician who worked with Russ on the ward. "If you met him on the outside you would never know."

Every autumn the patient went to court for a hearing. A person found not responsible by reason of insanity for a crime doesn't serve a set number of years. The commitment is indeterminate. A year. Ten years. Forever.

Each year the Regional Center treatment team made recommendations. County attorneys offered opinions. A judge ruled. Russ walked into the courtroom for his first hearing in the fall of 1989, feet in iron chains, hands shackled at his waist.

"Take little steps Russ," a kind deputy told the scared young man. "I'll watch out for you."

One year Daniels' family was there.

"I could see it on the son's face," Russ would remember in a tape recording to his mother years later. "I think it hurt too much, he never came back."

Seventeen people wrote letters to Judge Steven Burns last year supporting Russ' release. The woman who cut his hair in the security building. His minister. Family friends.

Those last years, as doctors recommended his release to a less-restrictive setting, the county attorney took another stand, citing two 1992 incidents when he left center grounds without permission.

"It is our position that Mr. Riley remains a mentally ill, dangerous individual in need of inpatient hospitalization ... ," wrote Gary Lacey. "Although the symptoms of his illness may appear to be in check for the most part; it must be remembered that this is the controlled and supervised setting of the security unit of the Regional Center ..."

One year his mother wrote her own letter, defending her son: "I've heard it said in arguing Russ's case that 'Mr. Riley is still mentally ill.' For the record Russ will always be mentally ill. Gerry Schultz (my husband) will always be bald. ... I'll probably always talk too much ... and Russ Riley will always be mentally ill."

Nurse Jo Maciejewski saw him the day he came to the Regional Center. Confused. Disoriented. So very sick.

She watched him get well.

"I thought he would make it," she said. "I really thought he would."

* * *

He realized what was happening.

He'd learned a lot about his illness since 1987. Signs. Symptoms. When to ask for help.

In August 2000 Russ Riley needed help.

Doctors had started him on a new medication earlier in the summer. His Prolixin had worked great for years, keeping his illness at bay, but the side effects -- twitching, drooling -- were irreversible. He didn't suffer them yet, but he could.

He began having trouble sleeping. Smelled something that wasn't there -- a strong, burning smell.

"They're trying to set me up," he told his mom. "If I go to sleep, I'll die."

He couldn't sit still, his mind raced. He had "hyper-amnesia" the ability to recall details of long-ago events, a symptom of active schizophrenia.

"This is the worst relapse I've ever had," he told his mom.

"I know Russ, I know," she said.

As his mind became muddled the big man grew frightened.

He wrote a note to his doctor. "We need to talk."

He called home. Left a message on the answering machine. "Mom, I need help. I love you. Good-bye."

He knew.

She wrote him a letter. Relax, so the medication can work. Rest. We love you.

He slipped it in his shoe.

"Just remember, Jo, I'm not hopeless," he reminded his old nurse. "I'm not hopeless."

Every night that last week his mom took him food from the outside. McDonald's burgers. Taco Inn burritos. His favorite: a 12-inch Royal Treat from Little King.

He forced some of it down to please her. The rest he gave away. To the guys.

The call came at 5:50 a.m. on a Wednesday. Russ died peacefully, the doctor told his mother, in his sleep.

The news of his death has yet to reach the Daniels family. Prosecutors have lost touch with relatives. Newspaper efforts to reach them were unsuccessful.

Russ Riley's autopsy showed blocked arteries, the cause of death a fatal irregular heartbeat.

A few days later they picked up his things. Mother and sister together passed through the heavy electronic doors, down the tan tile hall with the green epoxy walls, past the day hall with its plaid curtains and lighthouse pictures, to Room 20.

They packed up his flannel shirts, cowboy boots, Bible.

"Heaven or the Regional Center?" his sister said, weighing the options in her outstretched palms, as summer turned to fall in the day yard outside.

Cindy Lange-Kubick is a reporter and columnist for the Lincoln Journal Star in Lincoln, Ne. The mother of three holds the dubious distinction of once being the state's only vegetarian restaurant reviewer. (Nebraska is commonly known as "The Beef State.") Today she writes a twice weekly metro column and enjoys spending time on projects like the one that resulted in the Russ Riley story.