JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME-David B. Savitz

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the personalities, his criminal defense lawyer, David Sabots. It is a book about what happens when a mental disease far outpaces the understanding of the courts, the psychiatric community, and the public. The book that we're featuring this evening is just in the nick of time with my special guest, author and attorney David B. Sabots. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. David B. Sabots, Thank you for having me, Dan, thank you very much,

and congratulations on this extraordinary book. It's very unique. And congratulations on bringing this story to the public.

suspected of having committed their murders. He's been arrested. The parents left a will included a trust funded by assets including life insurance left by them. Ross wants to hire me, David, but I can't get on the case unless we can get the money from that trust. So I need you to go into the probate court in Denver and argue the entitlement and discretion of the trustee to take money from that trust and pay me to defend Ross in his case. And if you succeed, David, then I'll get

you on the case as well. So with that carrot man and with the challenge ahead of me, I learned about the case fel of the motion in the probate court to have the probate court order the trustee to make the distribution from the trust, and that was the beginning of the relationship between me and Walter and Ross.

The contingent beneficiaries would then the people who would receive the trust assets if the primary beneficiary, namely Ross, was not allowed to take a trust assets in Colorado, there was a law which exists in many states that does not allow the recipient of trust funds who may have been the perpetrator of the deaths of the people who left the trust to receive those funds. Essentially, the law doesn't want the killer to benefit from mondis left by

the people whom he killed. So explain that to the parents. I got them an attorney to represent them, told them that under Colorado law, we were going to advance the defense that Ross wasn't responsible for the murders of their children, bringing the grandparents' children because he suffered from a mental illness and wasn't sane at the time the accused crime.

Once the grandparents understood the dynamics of the defense and were able to speak with their own attorney, whom I had retained for them, and they eventually agreed that they would consent to the distribution of the trust proceeds to Ross. That gave the probate court the green light to order a trustee to make the distribution without an object action from the grandparents.

had been in treatment with doctor Willitts. The year before these homicides of the parents, Ross was arrested for having posed as an individual who wanted to buy dynamite from

a representative of a soldier of Fortune magazine. Undercover officers learned of Ross's intent to buy the dynamite, pos as representatives of that magazine to distribute the dynamite to him, arrested him at the scene and learned that the reason he wanted to buy the dynamite, in part was to blow up the house that he and his parents lived in, because he Ross believed that he was a burden to his parents and one way he could alleviate them of their burden, namely him, was for him to die, and

he thought by blowing himself up in a house and that would accomplish that purpose. Ross was placed on probation in that dynamite case, with the condition that he undergoes psychiatric treatment, and he did that with doctor Willis, so he Doctor Billets was someone whom we wanted to speak to to get an idea of what Ross's mental condition of mental health was for the year before the homicides.

At the time we met with doctor Wilberts, he was anxious and fearful that we might be using that meeting as an opportunity to obtain evidence against him for his failure to make a diagnosis that put the Carlson's and harms Way, namely at the death of their son. So we assure doctor Bilarts that that was the last thing that we had in mind. We gave him a release we would not sue him, and that gave him the green light to discuss Ross's treatment with us in detail.

At the time of our discussion, we had some information from investigation that we had done before we met with doctor Willets, which suggested that Ross thought of himself as being more than one person. We didn't know exactly what that meant. What the investigation showed was that Ross would mention to friends that he Ross had a twin brother who lived in Arizona, whose name was Justin. We knew that Ross was an only child, so we didn't know

what Ross's reference to Justin meant. But as we met with doctor Willarts and began discussing with him some of the investigation that we had done, including the mention of this other individual named Justin, a light bulb went off in doctor Willarts's mind. He slammed his fist on the conference table around which he sat and said, to the words of the effect instead of a bee, I missed it.

This guy may have suffered from multiple personality to disorder, and that provoked a very lengthy discussion then during our meeting with Dr Bolts as to exactly what he was talking about, and the more he discussed multiple personality disorder, which he abbreviated as MPD, the more we refer to investigation that we had done which seemed to be consistent with some of the features the illness that Dr Woltz

was discussing with us. That was the first time that we had heard about this potential diagnosis, which obviously would form the basis of a defense of ours, an eventual plea to this recurt of not guilty by reason of insanity.

in treatment with Doctor Bullets. Ross's parents were still living and Doctor Bullets from time to time, what had families had family psychiastic sessions with them and learned information from them. The key information about the suspected abuse of Ross by his parents and or others would not have been revealed by the parents, of course, because that kind of behavior

is typically kept secret from anybody. So we had to go through other sources that included, but were not limited to Ross being a historian, Doctor Billets and also being a historian, to experts whom we hired, actually Walter hired them to do their forensic evaluation of Ross. It is those doctors with whom we met after we spoke to Doctor Billets again. Those doctors views as to their diagnoses of Ross. One of our doctors diagnosed Ross as having

a narcissistic personality and being insane. Another doctor diagnosed Ross as having a mixed personality disorder with features of MPD. A third doctor, who was our psychologists, actually dinoses Fross as suffering from MPD based upon both clinical diagnosis and testing that these psychologists had done with Ross. It was that psychologist, doctor Ralph Fish, with whom I relied on for the most part, because he was the most knowledgeable of all of our experts regarding the diagnosis. He had

made it years before in a previous case. He had an abundance of literature regarding the diagnosis. He discussed the reasons for his findings with us, and I dove into that information head first, with as many pieces of literature and data that I could in order to understand more fully the diagnosis.

thirty eight caliber Rossy pistol bullets for the weapon. All the kinds of things that would tie individual to the murder were in that suitcase the weapon and the bullets found in the suitcase matched the bullets uncovered from the

Carlson the students during their autopsy. So, after that review of evidence, which was at the police station where Ross was detained in jail, Walter and I went back to the jail to talk to Ross to let him know about the reasons, results of our interviews with our experts, as well as the evidence that we saw a masked

by the police. And Ross began discussing aspects of his mental state, and he began discussing other parts of him and included names that he discussed with us and revealed as Steve Justin and other personalities whom doctor Fish had told us about, but whom Ross never had revealed himself

to us. So the first time that Ross was providing us with informatory information to some degree of his illness, I took out a piece of paper and I said to him, you have an idea of how many different parts of you or personalities exist, And he said, yeah, I believe I do. I believe there are nine different personalities. And I said, can you write on the sheet of paper what the names of them are? And he drew a diagram, which had three levels of names on it.

There was the first level Justin Steve. There was a next level of Blue, Gray, Michael Stacy. There was a next level of Norman, and Black. And Ross described these levels of personalities as Ross, Justin and Steve as being the capable personalities or aspects of the some of his parts. Gray and Blue were the incapable parts of his persona, and Norman and Black well what Ross described as the Antichrist, or the bad persons of the some of his parts.

So he constructed this diagram described these various personalities. A half hour or forty minutes went by. I put the diagram in my suitcase. Before Walter and I left the jail, I said, by the way, Ross, just for my own purposes, I'm going to give you a second piece of paper. Can you again write the construct the construct of personalities that you had written to me before? He said sure, and he did it in exactly the same way as

he had drawn before. As we left the jail, my mentor looked at me with some look of disagreement and said, I know what you did, David. He said, the client may think that you didn't trust him by asking him to rewrite a configuration, and I said Walter, I needed, for my own purposes to believe that what he was telling us was credible. And now I'm convinced that it is.

chumbacasino dot com. Don were necessary daily where everybody lost in terms conditions eighteen plus.

insane at the time of the crime. So it dawned on me that the best way to do that was the videotape a conversation between Ross and our doctors to see if these personalities would emerge during the interview process. If they did, then we'd make a decision about whether or not to show them to a jury. If they didn't emerge, we didn't have to disclose to anyone that we had conducted this interview, so there was no fould,

no harm done if nothing positive emerged. So we had a session in jail where we had one of our doctors, Robert Fairburn, in whom Ross established a great report, sitting with Ross to interview him with a videographer there with me and Walter sitting in the room along with the doctor. Fairburn and Ross. Ross had been alerted by doctor Fairburn what the purpose of the interview would be, and he Doctor Fairburn began asking Ross questions, some of which were

to whom am I speaking? And Ross initially announced, you're talking to Justin. Now, that's the first time I ever heard Ross respond in that fashion by saying, in response to a question, so was everybody's responding to doctor Fairburn that you are talking to Ross? The client said, you're talking to Justin. Doctor Fairburn then asked Justin to discuss what Justin's features were as a sixteen year old social butterfly, bone vivant, someone who handles all the social aspects of

the various personalities. As the interview progressed, Ross then switched from Justin the personality called Steve, who described what his features were only a forty two year old who took care of the intellectual aspects, what the sum of the parts were all about. After Steve was talking to doctor Fairburn, eventually another personality, Norman emerged. Norman was a street punk, someone who took talked like a hoodlum on the street, someone whom you might see from a gangbanger or what

have you. And Norman was a foul mouth, cigarette smoking, rough talking kind of a guy, and the only one of the personalities who actually smoked. The other personalities, Ross, Steve, Justin, and Norman was the only personality who smoked. The other

ones did not. And the way some of the other personalities knew that Norman had been what we called out both quote, namely he was the one doing the acting was on another personality such as Steve rid Justin may have felt or tasted a cigarette taste in his mouth. So if Justin all of a sudden emerged after Norman and when Norman was out Norman was smoking, Justin would say I think Norman was out, and he'd be asked, how do you know that, and he would say, because

I feel like taste cigarette smoke. Also emerging during that session with doctor Fairburn was a weeping six year old who didn't talk. He just sat there and cowered and cried. And it was incredible to sit in the same room as this client, whom I had only known as Ross, and seeing him all of a sudden power and begin crying inconsolably. The last personality who emerged during that session

with doctor Fairburn was Black. Black was the demonic, ruthless protector of all the personalities and would be able to defend against any attack, an assault or otherwise against any of the other personalities and which and protect them and

fend off the attacker by his might. And Black emerged during that session with doctor Fairburn by ripping away restraints that doctor Fairburn had tied on Ross's arms and feets, knowing that he doctor Fairburn was going to try to get Black to emerge, and he doctor Fairburn wanted some protection with these restraints if Black in fact emerged with the restraints on, Black eventually emerged and freed himself with

his might from these restraints. After that, another personality emerged from Black's presence and realized that Black had been out because that new personality had a metallic taste in his mouth, and that meant to the personality, who I believe was Steve, that Black had emerged.

of abuse. Oftentimes the perpetrator as a caregiver for someone whose responsibility is to care and love for that child, so as the recipient of the abuse and the anger and sadness that befalls that individual. What happens is that the child, psychologically, to avoid experiencing the continual pain of anger and sadness from the abuse, develops another side of him which is a happy side. As a happy side because he doesn't want the caregiver to know that he

the child is suffering and is angry. And the only way the good and the bad side can coexist is if both sides or either side does not know what has happened to the other. So psychologically, the brain develops a wall of amnesia between the happy between the two different parts of the individual, and that phenomenon, that psychological phenomenon where the wall of amnesia is constructed happens with

each successive ecostate might be formed within the individual. Now the way that I see them, or the way that I saw them was. After a while, we learned that the way these different ego states or personalities emerged or came out was that Ross would suddenly pause and he would stare, and his eyes would spasmodically rotate back and forth, and all of a sudden, while his eyes are rotating spasmatically for maybe fifteen seconds or so, a new personality

would emerge. So, for example, let's say Justin is out when he's talking to me, and it becomes a parent to Justin that I need to talk to someone who understands what's happening in courtroom and can talk intelligently about proceedings that are occurring in court. All of a sudden, Justin will stop talking, they'll pause, they'll stare, his eyes will rotate spismatically back and forth, and then Steve will emerge and he will say hi, David, and I would

say Steve and he would say yeah. If that would happen frequently, and it would be the clue to me that Ross was about to switch. It was the kind of dynamic that appeared on these videotape sessions that our doctors did of Ross, including the one that I just previously talked about regarding doctor Fairbirgh.

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Women eighteen plus to your subscription today. Now, you believe that you have to get a nationally known expert to win the sanity case, and you believe that the priority for your team is to address this upcoming sanity trial after a competency trial. We were told something by doctor Wilbur I believe about the importance of the competency trial before the insanity trial. So could you explain that sure.

of what another personality may have known. I asked doctor Fairburn about the issue of competency, namely, well, based upon what we've just seen in your video tape session with Ross, doctor Fairburn, is a client competent to proceed because it's unpredictable in terms of how often he will switch, and whether he will have and whether the new personality will

have any memory just what happened in court. And doctor Fairburn eventually answered the question by saying, I agree, he is not competent, and you should file a motion to determine that he is incompetent. By then, we already had a sanity trial, I believe sept for some time. In June of nineteen eighty four, we filed our motion to the Claire Ross was incompetent, but we weren't confident that that motion for competency would prevail because frankly, we didn't

know enough about how important a determination of competency was. Plus, we believed that we needed to prepare more for the sanity case than the competency case. Even though the competency emotion was being heard first. So during a session with our doctors, we all agreed that we needed to probably find some national expert to help us address the issue

of sanity and to advance the notion of MPD. So I called Cornelia Wilberg, who was famous for having noticed the famous character that she wrote about in which a movie was written about, called Sybil, and I called her doctor Loliber. She was a professor emeritus in Kentucky, and introduced myself, told her what I was looking for and a only an expert an MPD to testify on our behalf at the Stanley trial, and because she had a

conflict and an illness, she couldn't come. But she referred me to other experts in the field of MPD, which eventually led me to what experts referred to as the foremost expert in the world on MPD, a critical and forensic psychologist in Santa Monica, California called Bernauer Newton, also

known excellently as Fig Newton. I called doctor Newton three days before the competency hearing was to begin, a few weeks before the sanity trial was to begin, with the objective of seeing if he would agree to be our witness at the sanity trial, and he was emphaetic by saying, well, wouldn't you want me or the competency hearing, because the competency hearing is probably just as important, if not more important,

than the sanity hearing. And he explained that if Frosts were deemed incompetent, that the hospital or other treatment providers would be required to treat him and to eventually successfully treat him, which would be to fuse or merge all the personalities into one hole, and by that treatment process, all the incidents of abuse would be uncovered by the

individual personalities who were abused by their perpetrator. If we hadn't succeeded in that kind of treatment process, we were not going to be able to uncover the full body and ocean of abusive acts that would have been committed against Ross, because they would have been encased in secretive charts of Ross's ego, only to be uncovered with extensive

and expert treatment. And since that hadn't occurred, we didn't have the full body of abusive behavior that we believed we needed to deem the illness of MPD credible in the face of a FactFinder. So when doctor Newton told us about the importance of the competency hearing, and to my surprise, said he could hop on a plane that night and come to Colorado evaluate Ross and be ready

to testify at the competency hearing. We accepted the invitation, and long story short, doctor Newton came here with his own video equipment, interviewed Ross, concluded that Ross was definitely suffering from MPD and was one of our star witnesses at competency hearing.

have continual memory or continuity of memory. Plus, because of his illness, we weren't able to discover the incidents of abuse, and all of that rendered Ross incompetent because he was incapable of assisting us and uncovering that information and making him whole to the point where he had continuity a memory.

So we presented evidence to show the barrent behavior of Ross's before the homicides, and for that we used friends of Ross's who talked about his unusual behavior before the homicides were consistent with the personalities of Justin, Stephen, and Norman. We had our expert witnesses who had diagnosed Ross with MPD testify to their conclusions. We had them talk about the information they uncovered in their videotape interviews of Ross.

We had doctor Newton testify as our last key expert, and then we cross examined vigorously the experts for the prosecution, who concluded, among other things, that Ross did not suffer from MPD and if anything, he was a malingerer and faker, that he suffered perhaps from mixed personality disorder, not MPD.

And after the prosecution's witnesses concluded, Walter and I knew that we had an ace in the hole, another late witness when we decided we would save for the end and rebuttal if we deemed it necessary.

behavior when Ross was fifteen years old. And the behavior was that Ross knocked on the door of the neighbor's home and yelled and pro tested to the young man that someone not Ross, but that someone else had cut the lawn. And the young man said, Ross, you cut the lawn. And Ross said, iding cut the lawn. The kids said, yeah, you cut the lawn. And Ross accused the family of trying to beat him out of the feet that he was entitled to for cutting the lawn.

That was dramatic evidence that two different personalities had been present at this neighborhood home, one of whom cut the lawn, the second of whom both tested that accused the neighbors of cutting it along themselves and not knowing that another personality had done it that evidence was along with our expert testimony, evidence of pre homicidal instances, evidence from me and Walter, who also testified its competency hearing and testified.

The difficulties we had in representing Ross because of his ability to cooperate and his frequence switching, persuaded the trialogue to conclude that Ross suffered from MPD and was incompetent and would have to be then housed at the State Hospital and they're treated until restore to competency, which would be the successful treatment and fusion of his personalities at the order, although something that we wanted in reality turned out to be a nightmare because of the failures and

excuses and neglect and refusals by the State Hospital and their incompetency with respect and the treatment of this illness.

of their failure to do that. Early on, within days after Ross was declared incompetent in June nineteen eighty four, and Ross being then admitted to the State Hospital in early July upon admission and the admissions director of the hospital goopooed the court finding, ridiculed the findings made by the judge, ridiculed the defense that Ross that Walter and I advanced, maligned Walter's lawyering ability, and in a sense undermined the court order, and suggested to Ross at the

hospital was not going to treat him. We found out about that exchange early on from Ross. It took copious notes and the exchange between this admissions director and Ross, and reported and we reported this to the hospital people and to the judge. The hospital quickly did about face, removed that omissions director and any other people who may have had previous contact with Ross from further treatment of him, and appointed their chief psychologist and chief psychiatrist as the

lead treatment caregivers or Ross. After their appointment. These individuals independent of one another and on the basis of their own clinical diagnosis and findings as well as testing. That the psychologists did both opine that Ross suffered from MPD and that in order for treatment to be successful you would have to undergo extensive treatment that might take years to accomplish. Before his personalities were refused, that was a good sign. It was a promising sign for successful treatment.

In accordance with the judges order, unbeknownst to us, the prosecution directed their principal investigator to go into the Carlson neighborhood in Littleton, Colorado, to go back to where the Carlsons came from in Minnesota and interviewed people to find out if anyone of the neighbors or people who knew the family saw any evidence of childhood abuse, and the reports came back that none of them had, which was not surprising because child abusers do not abuse kids publicly

or in front of others, So those findings and that

investigation was not unexpected. Notwithstanding, the prosecutors sent the body of that investigator information to the state hospital, to the chief psychiatrists, to the chief psychologists, who then began questioning Ross as to the history of abuse, which is a question that a skilled clinician would never ask a patient, for the patient to justify how he or she has been abused by human When with that sophomore, I'm of questioning the report that had been established between Ross and

the chief investigators, meaning the chief psychiatrists and chief psychologists, was demolished, destroyed in Ross's abandon and withdrew many further contact with these people and then was left to wallow in the state hospital without treatment.

they became levers. During the year or so that they dated, and a month or so before the homicides, this young girl had to move to Arizona with her family because her father's job required a transfer of him to Arizona. When Ross was arrested and accused of this crime, and this young woman found out what had happened to him, and eventually that in nineteen eighty four, he was found incompetent. By then, she had reached the age of seventeen eighteen years of age and wanted to visit him at the

State hospital. We agreed to that visit. Ross wanted to see her. The two visited sometime in nineteen eighty by or so, they were kindled their relationship and continued having an ongoing correspondence between the two Well, she was in Arizona and he was at the State hospital, keeping me in the loop about their continual communication, and they continued to do that throughout Ross's hospitalization, and she went from time to time come back to Colorado to visit with

him while he was at the hospital. And there was one time in particular when he was having a bad time at the State hospital and was switching from unpersonal to the next. We were in court having a hearing, Ross, me and Walter. Spectators, as often occurred, were seated in the courtroom, and one of whom was this former girlfriend. Ross looked back into the spectators section to see who was there. He looked at me and said, there's a young woman looking at me. I'm not don't know who

she is, and you tell me who she is. I told him who she was. After the court hearing was over, I informed Kelly what I call her in the book, that she had to forgive Ross because he was having a difficult time justing and going in and out from one personality to another, that he didn't recognize her and wasn't going to meet with her, and she was devastated by it.

It was still our judge, our retired Supreme Court Justice Edward Day, and judge they agreed that it was the hospital's responsibility to pay for Ross' treatment. The hospital balked at that. They appealed dutch Day's order to the Colorado

Supreme Court. After several months of a matter of pending before it, the Supreme Court reversed Judge Day and said sufficient findings of the hospitals inadequacy and negligence and treatment hadn't been established on the record, and therefore the hospital was relieved of the obligation that this juncture to pay for Ross's treatment. So doctor Quinn never got the opportunity to pursue the court order of treating Ross. The hospital prevailed and establishing a roadblock to that treatment.

I don't want to quibble with your diagnosis because you're the doctor I'm not, but I think there may have been a psychological dynamic for what he did because he does not like his birthday, because he does not believe his birth was a positive event in his life. Nevertheless, she said, well, I think he needs to be examined for a possible brain tumor, and would you agree to an order to have him sent to a hospital in Denver because the state hospital was located a few hours

from Denver in the city called Pueblo. And I said sure. So Ross was transferred to Denver Health examined there, and not surprisingly, it was determined that he did not suffer any kind of brain tumor of their brain invasion or problem, in that the event of his incontinence was probably psychologically based.

eighty seven. Judge Kingsley again found Ross incompetent, and the competency hearing was held in November nineteen eighty nine, by which time Ross had created another personality to make it appear as if he were competent because he wanted to get the heck out of the state hospital, and he knew the only way he could do that was to

make it appear he was competent. So a hearing in November of nineteen eighty nine, Judge Kingsley found Ross to be competent, which means which meant that Ross would now face a trial regarding was it not he was insane at the time the crime was committed. A virtue of the finding of competency by Judge Kingsley, Ross was then released from the state hospital and returned to the jail

in Douglas County where he was originally housed after his arrest. We, meaning Ross, me and Walter, appeared before the Prow judge who would then be in charge of the sanity case. We got a new date with a sanity trial. After the fantity trial, we met with Ross in the jail, and he complained of a nosebleed, and he said he never had had this kind of physical event before and didn't know what it was all about. The suspect it may have begame, It may have been because he felt

you had a cold and children, what have you. So we thought nothing of it and we left. A few days later, I received a phone call early in the morning, one or two in the morning from the jailers who said that Ross was rushed to a local hospital in Castle Rock because of his chronic nosebleeds, that that doctor recommended that Ross be immediately transferred to a more comprehensive hospital for a more comprehensive exam because he the doctor

feared that Ross might be suffering from leukemia. Ross was transferred to a hospital not too far from Denver in a city called Lyttleton, where a specialist in blood work, a hematologist and on college inducted some tests and made

a plminary diagnosis that Ross suffered from leukemia. And the call that I got at two o'clock in the morning from a chaff provided that history to me that I just described to you, and further asking that I come to the hospital in Littleton as soon as possible, because Ross was refusing treatment for they suspected leukemia unless I was there and approved of the treatment. I got in my car, rushed to the hospital, met with the treating

oncologist hematologist who provided me with the preliminary diagnosis. I met with Ross and persuaded him to undergo some of the tests enabled the doctor to make a more specific diagnosis that was made and Ross was eventually transferred from that hospital in Littleton to a more experts facility in the Denver area called the University of Colorado Health Hospital. Were he there treated for his leukemia.