Insane Killer Escapes During Mental Institution's Field Trip

[Torgo]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,551761,00.html?test=latestnews.

Who takes a psychotic killer to the local fair?!

[Psycho Circus]

In 1987, Paul slashed an elderly woman's throat in Sunnyside, soaked her body in gasoline to throw off search dogs and buried the remains in her flower garden.

He was later diagnosed as being criminally insane and suffering from schizophrenia, KXLY reported.

He's probably gone to play drums for Cannibal Corpse. 

[3mnkids]

WTF is wrong with people. sure, take him to the fair    

It's not the first time Paul has escaped.

In 1990 he walked away from custody and attacked a sheriff's deputy who apprehended him.

The people responsible for this should be fired. You dont take someone who is criminally insane to a freaking fair and then lose them.

[ghouck]

Who takes a psychotic killer to the local fair?!

Stuff like field trips happen all the time as part of treatment, and trying to reintegrate patients into society. Odd that they would do so for someone that is never going to be released though. Also, the original crime happened 20+ years ago, and likely he wasn't medicated, believe it or not, are often completely different people. The article say "IS mentally insane", but it very well can be that he "WAS", and is not while properly medicated. I have people that fall into that same category working for me right this minute. I am however, not surprised that it wasn't reported quicker, because the M.O. for many mental health professionals is the belief that what they are doing is GOOD, and they want to avoid any negative press because the stupid public isn't smart enough to understand what is really going on, and could call for them to stop this sort of thing. There's an arrogance there that is often quite sickening, them being willing to take risks for the public.

I do agree that people who are mentally sick deserve help, and deserve consideration for their crimes and such. If a person is nuts to a point they can't control themselves, they aren't responsible for their actions. They deserve treatment, and when/if they are stabilized, they deserve the freedoms we all enjoy. That doesn't mean the public shouldn't be protected from them. These people shouldn't be thrown away so to speak, but Mental Health Professionals seem to put more emphasis on treating them than protecting the public from them, and that is just wrong. I agree there may have been good reason to take this guy out as a part of treatment, but to do it in a way that he could be lost, and then wait that long to report it is just ludicrous. In addition, it's also worth noting that while this guy may be very stable due to medications, big changes in stimuli from being out in public, the noise and lights, etc, may aggravate his condition to a point that his meds are not enough for that situation, even if not immediately apparent, which is something that can be easily overlooked.

[lester1/2jr]

we have to make sure we don't tell the local people.  the state fair brings in alot of money and the people who run it also really run the town. scientists and sheriffs are just worry warts

[meQal]

First off, let me start by saying that people who are diagnosed as "criminally insane" are not like the average person with mental illness. This is a long misrepresentation which causes the stereotype that all persons with mental illness are dangerous. A person ruled not guilty by reason of insanity is basically ruled as being incompetent and there for can not be charged under existing laws since they can not be held accountable for their crimes. They must be so impaired by their illness that they can not tell the difference between right and wrong.
Second, most state mental health facilities fail to adequately provide quality treatment. Most are often used as a place to warehouse persons who have a debilitating disorder which can be treated with medication and therapy. This is because most states treat funding for the mentally ill as a low priority. Thus mental health facilities are often underfunded and poorly staffed. In fact the prison system of most states are far better funded than their mental health system.
Third, I have to ask why this person was not in a secure mental health facility? I have yet to know of any secure mental health facility to allow any sort of outside trips for their patients beyond hospitalization and in some cases, court hearings which could not be conducted inside the facility itself.
Fourth, lights, sounds, and such would not cause medication to be overwhelmed in a person with mental illness. Sure they can trigger a psychotic episode in a person who is in need of medication and has not received it for a lengthy period of time. However a person who has been on a regime of medication for a mental disorder for a period of 20 + years would not suddenly descend into a psychotic episode instantly by their surroundings. That would only happen in a movie, not reality. Granted the longer this patient is without medication the greater the chances are that he will suffer from symptoms of his disorder. However it would take about 2 weeks before the medication dropped below therapeutic levels in his system and symptoms to begin to return.
Fifth, state hospitals often preform day trips such as this for their patients. It is part of therapy. However only patients that are not considered a danger are allowed on such trips. Violently psychotic patients would not be allowed to go out of intrest to public safety. Apparently the staff felt this person was not a danger which is why they allowed him to attend the day trip from which he escaped.
Sixth, the news media likes to make boogiemen out of the mentally ill. This is a common practice to gain ratings. Rather than focusing on the truth which is 95% of persons with mental illness are not dangerous, they want to focus in on the 5% who are. They push this as being the norm and not the exception of a person who has mental illness. The public panics and accepts this as truth. Thus this is the main reason that mental illness carries a strong negative stigma with it even today.
So who failed in this process? First the State by failing to provide properfunding to hire adequate staff. Second, the state again for not placing this person in a secure mental health facility if he was considered a danger to others after committing a violent crime. Third, the staff at the mental health facility for not providing supervision.
Also I take great offense to the picture of Jason Vorhees being used with this story. Jason was an undead killing machine. It is a stereotypical image that causes fear and does not present even a person who may be criminally insane. It only fuels a negative stereotype of mental illness. Sorry for the soapbox rant but this is a topic that gets to me really quick. I worked for years as an advocate for persons with mental illness. I have seen the worst forms of discrimination brought onto people because they happen to have a disease which they did not ask for and treated in some of the worst ways imaginable. So when I see anything that perpetuates the negative stigma of mental illness, I become deeply offended.

[ghouck]

First off, let me start by saying that people who are diagnosed as "criminally insane" are not like the average person with mental illness. This is a long misrepresentation which causes the stereotype that all persons with mental illness are dangerous. A person ruled not guilty by reason of insanity is basically ruled as being incompetent and there for can not be charged under existing laws since they can not be held accountable for their crimes. They must be so impaired by their illness that they can not tell the difference between right and wrong.
Second, most state mental health facilities fail to adequately provide quality treatment. Most are often used as a place to warehouse persons who have a debilitating disorder which can be treated with medication and therapy. This is because most states treat funding for the mentally ill as a low priority. Thus mental health facilities are often underfunded and poorly staffed. In fact the prison system of most states are far better funded than their mental health system.

Third, I have to ask why this person was not in a secure mental health facility? I have yet to know of any secure mental health facility to allow any sort of outside trips for their patients beyond hospitalization and in some cases, court hearings which could not be conducted inside the facility itself.

It works just like a prison does: Your 'status' is based on many things and changes regularly. Yes, secure mental facilities do allow day trips, I see the Alaska Psychiatric Institute van full of patients in town often, and yes, some of the patients in them have been at one time on a heightened security status.

Fourth, lights, sounds, and such would not cause medication to be overwhelmed in a person with mental illness. Sure they can trigger a psychotic episode in a person who is in need of medication and has not received it for a lengthy period of time. However a person who has been on a regime of medication for a mental disorder for a period of 20 + years would not suddenly descend into a psychotic episode instantly by their surroundings. That would only happen in a movie, not reality. Granted the longer this patient is without medication the greater the chances are that he will suffer from symptoms of his disorder. However it would take about 2 weeks before the medication dropped below therapeutic levels in his system and symptoms to begin to return.

You are wrong, I see it often.

[meQal]

First off, let me start by saying that people who are diagnosed as "criminally insane" are not like the average person with mental illness. This is a long misrepresentation which causes the stereotype that all persons with mental illness are dangerous. A person ruled not guilty by reason of insanity is basically ruled as being incompetent and there for can not be charged under existing laws since they can not be held accountable for their crimes. They must be so impaired by their illness that they can not tell the difference between right and wrong.
Second, most state mental health facilities fail to adequately provide quality treatment. Most are often used as a place to warehouse persons who have a debilitating disorder which can be treated with medication and therapy. This is because most states treat funding for the mentally ill as a low priority. Thus mental health facilities are often underfunded and poorly staffed. In fact the prison system of most states are far better funded than their mental health system.

Third, I have to ask why this person was not in a secure mental health facility? I have yet to know of any secure mental health facility to allow any sort of outside trips for their patients beyond hospitalization and in some cases, court hearings which could not be conducted inside the facility itself.

It works just like a prison does: Your 'status' is based on many things and changes regularly. Yes, secure mental facilities do allow day trips, I see the Alaska Psychiatric Institute van full of patients in town often, and yes, some of the patients in them have been at one time on a heightened security status.

Fourth, lights, sounds, and such would not cause medication to be overwhelmed in a person with mental illness. Sure they can trigger a psychotic episode in a person who is in need of medication and has not received it for a lengthy period of time. However a person who has been on a regime of medication for a mental disorder for a period of 20 + years would not suddenly descend into a psychotic episode instantly by their surroundings. That would only happen in a movie, not reality. Granted the longer this patient is without medication the greater the chances are that he will suffer from symptoms of his disorder. However it would take about 2 weeks before the medication dropped below therapeutic levels in his system and symptoms to begin to return.

You are wrong, I see it often.

First, that is unusual to hear. Most states secure facilities don't allow day trips. I have to say that if a state hospital is working like a prison system that it needs to be severely overhauled in general. With he exception for those who are ruled Criminally insane, the rest are innocent citizens who are affected by a disease that is treatable. Any state which treats persons with mental illness as convicts needs to be sued for this is one of the worst forms of discrimination that the mentally ill face.
I was one of many who testified in a federal lawsuit against the State of Alabama over how they treated their patients inside their mental health facilities. They also had for years treated it as a you would a prison. This provides neither therapeutic care nor insures their civil rights and liberties. Treating innocent people in such a fashion simply on the basis that they suffer from a treatable disease is cruel and inhumane. Sadly most seem to think it is alright because it is not them who is being treated so and believe the stereotypes that are often portrayed of people with mental illness through films and bias news stories.
Second, I know all too well how state mental health facilities work. I have inspected them to insure they are meeting criteria for patient rights. The guidelines all hospitals and medical facilities through out the country for using restraints was written by a panel that I was a member of. So when it comes to how mental health facilities run, I think I know what I am looking at.
Third, I have yet to see that happen or even heard of that happening until now. I have seen it happen in cases where the person's meds were not at therapeutic levels in their system but never with a person who's medication was at a therapeutic level in their system. Chances are you either encountered someone who was not on a therapeutic level in their system.
Finding a therapeutic level for an individual is a tricky thing because what might work for one will not be enough for another and too much for yet another. Also not all medications can be tested to see if a therapeutic level is in one's blood. However if a patient has a long period without symptoms and incidents, it is often safe to assume that they are stable enough to go on a day trip.

[ghouck]

I think you're trying to look for error a bit too much. Nowhere did I say patients were being treated like prisoners. What I said was there was a method to determine what a person could and could not do, and that method is roughly similar to the way prisoner's level of security is determined. Some patients can come and go as they please, some are not, and well, quite a bit in between. That's the difference between being a totally free citizen, one that is committed to an institution, and one that is convicted and sentenced. You do not have to have committed a crime to be committed to a mental institution.

I am confused by your statement: "Finding a therapeutic level for an individual is a tricky thing because what might work for one will not be enough for another and too much for yet another. Also not all medications can be tested to see if a therapeutic level is in one's blood.", because so many of them have to be adjusted regularly, especially if multiple meds are needed for multiple symptoms. A perfect example is the guy in this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/22/us/new-law-on-insanity-plea-stirs-dispute-in-alaska.html?sec=health

He worked for me for a year or so in 2001-2002, and they had to adjust his meds a few times during that time. When I took over the shop, MH and I had long talks, and one of the things they told me was that they had to adjust his meds because of the anxiety he had over getting a new boss. Eventually he got mellowed out, but it took a while for him to talk to me without seeming scared.

I have had many CMI inmates work for me for varying lengths of time. I have had otherwise stable people come into my shop and the anxiety from the noise and activities set them off. The same thing has happened when a CMI inmate had to be put into segregation: The noise of all the seg idiots yelling and such wasn't something they could handle. In Seg, inmates normally get 1 hour a day for either a shower or yard rec, CMI inmates get 2-1 hour sessions of rec and a shower in seg, because they do not handle the stimuli of being let back into open population after being devoid of stimuli for long periods of time.

Some psychotropics (sp?) work just like other drugs: You have small pain, you take an aspirin, you have big pain, you need morphine. The same can be said about some drugs that inhibit adverse reactions to stress or anxiety; A little stress means X, a lot of stress means Y. Perhaps X and Y are different meds (in extreme cases), or they could be different levels of the same drug.

[meQal]

I misread that statement about the security level. Sorry, years of dealing with people who actually think that mental health facilities should be ran like a prison have left me a bit quick to jump soon as I see the words prison and treatment of the mentally ill in the same statement.
However medications used to treat mental illness are usually effective when at a proper therapeutic level. They do have to be adjusted for the individual and it is not an exact science. This is why Patient A needs a certain dose of a med to remove symptoms where patient B would need a higher dose and patient C would need a lower dose to treat similar symptoms. It is because the humans react differently to some degree to medications. You have to factor in many things of the individual to find what would be a therapeutic dose of any medication including psychiatric meds.
Also there are some psychiatric medications which can be tested via blood tests to see if they are present in the body at recommended therapeutic levels. Lithium is one such medication that can be tested this way. However there are just as many that can not be tested and only by observation can one determine if the meds are working as therapeutically intended.
And I must still disagree with you about psychotropic meds. These are not something you can really compare to aspirin, morphine maybe in some of their side effects. And a person who is schizophrenic would not have issues with exposure to anxiety beyond those of any other person if they are on proper medication. Nor does one need medication increased to deal with any situation.
As for the case you pointed out, alcohol played a huge part in what went wrong.  Alcohol can often impair the effects of psychotropic medications. It can even prevent the medication from working all together.
Also you point out you work with CMI inmates, this too is a factor on the behavior you have seen. They must posses some form of personality disorders and a tendency towards criminal behavior that would still exist without the mental illness. So they are prone to act out and then claim their behavior is cause of their mental illness to lessen possible punishment.
This leads me to a core belief I have about the whole not guilty by reason of insanity plea anyway. I feel it is often overused by lawyers in attempts to clear their clients of criminal charges. One thing I do know is seldom does a person become so detached from reality that they loose the ability to tell right from wrong in a psychotic state. Many know the difference but just don't care. This is why I support these cases where they would be found guilty but insane. This would state that the person has a mental illness and is in need of treatment but at the same time would need to spend it in a secure facility only to be followed in a penal facility for the competion of their sentence. Time served in the secure mental facility would count towards their sentence time however if the person is not stable, they would not be subject to release.

[Torgo]

I have never believed that all mentally ill people are a dangerous to the public. But what we're talking here is about a guy who viciously murdered a poor elderly lady in a most horrific manner. He's threatened to try to escape and has tried to do so in the past. WHY TAKE THIS KIND OF PERSON TO A FAIR WHERE THEY CAN LOSE HIM?!  Can you imagine the people who were at the fair at that point and how they feel? We're not just talking about a person with just some regular mental health issues. This guy is a cold blooded psychotic murderer no matter which way you look at it. 

[3mnkids]

I have never believed that all mentally ill people are a dangerous to the public. But what we're talking here is about a guy who viciously murdered a poor elderly lady in a most horrific manner. He's threatened to try to escape and has tried to do so in the past. WHY TAKE THIS KIND OF PERSON TO A FAIR WHERE THEY CAN LOSE HIM?!  Can you imagine the people who were at the fair at that point and how they feel? We're not just talking about a person with just some regular mental health issues. This guy is a cold blooded psychotic murderer no matter which way you look at it. 

My thoughts exactly. It was irresponsible to take this man to a fair and not have proper safeguards in place.  The whole thing is one big screw up. I hope no one dies because some idiot didnt do their job properly. I understand people make mistakes but when you are dealing with someone who has the potential to hurt or kill others there is no excuse.
http://www.kxly.com/Global/story.asp?S=11153916

Phillip Paul's brother Tom says his brother poses a threat to the public and law enforcement if he does not get his medication.

[meQal]

That is why I support removing the not guilty by reason of insanity plea and replacing it with guilty but insane. This way a criminal with mental illness can receive treatment to stabilize their disorder but at the same time it keep accountability for their actions. as I have said, even in the worst cases of psychosis, a person can still tell the basic difference between right and wrong. So the whole they didn't know hat they were doing is questionable.
In this very case, I don't feel the guy lost all ability to tell right form wrong. He might of had a mental illness but he was aware enough to know to cover the body in gasoline to throw off police dogs. That shows he somewhat knew what he was doing to me.
And this case also points out the need for funding for mental healthcare facilities and training of mental healthcare workers. The state and the workers are the ones who failed in this situation. Had the staff been properly trained and the state offered adequate pay for mental health professionals, odds are this guy would of been held out form making such a trip. A well trained staff and compentent mental health professionals would of noted such thing and weighted them heavily before even considering such.
As a retired advocate for the mentally ill, I know that there is a fine line between what is in the best intrest of the rights of the patient, the safety of the patient, and the best intrest of public safety. Often these run parallel but at times they do cross each other. In those cases you have to take a close look at which is going to do the greater harm, insuring the rights of the individual, the patient's personal safety or the public safety. In most cases you side with personal and public safety unless those lines are crossed because of only fears and no reasonable evidence indates that any real threat exist. Sadly, I have known advocates who fail to use that as a guideline and will forge ahead with the individual's rights in the face of known evidence that it is a issue of patient or public safety. At the same time I have also seen people claim issues of persoanl or public safety when none existed, just for punitive reasons. This is also the same thinking most mental health professionals try to take when making judgement calls on a patient's stability.
And while one may not believe that all mentally ill persons are dangerous, linking images of fictional monsters with a story about someone who is mentally ill, even one who is a criminal, can cause the wrong impression. It does lend to the all people who are mentally ill are dangerous myth despite an attempt at humor. I still find it distasteful and offensive.

[ghouck]

And I must still disagree with you about psychotropic meds. These are not something you can really compare to aspirin, morphine maybe in some of their side effects. And a person who is schizophrenic would not have issues with exposure to anxiety beyond those of any other person if they are on proper medication. Nor does one need medication increased to deal with any situation.

I never said this logic applied to every diagnosis and every drug, but it does at times. Some even have their meds altered according to winter/summer, especially since we get 24 hours of light in the summer and 4 hours of light in the winter. I'm surpised anyone would make blanket statements regarding schizophrenia, as it seems like it encompasses such a broad range of symptoms it seems like many similar yet separate diseases.

As for the case you pointed out, alcohol played a huge part in what went wrong.  Alcohol can often impair the effects of psychotropic medications. It can even prevent the medication from working all together.

Alcohol had nothing to do with what I was talking about, as he didn't have access to it at the time he was working for me.

[meQal]

Alcohol had nothing to do with what I was talking about, as he didn't have access to it at the time he was working for me.

In the news story you linked it stated in it:

In his confession, Mr. Meach said of the day of the killings: ''I'm a fool. I'll admit it. I had some drinks in a bar. I did all the things I wasn't supposed to do.''

So he did have access to it the very day of the murders he commited. So alcohol did have a lot to do with it.