CRIME & PUNISHMENT

Illinois Psych Prof Outed As Teen Triple Murderer

HERE’S A HORRIFYING FLASHBACK AIMED AT simultaneously propelling two careers forward while destroying a third.

Ann Marie Gardner and Cathy Payne are reporters working for the Georgetown Gazette, a small paper in Texas who revisited the notorious murders of three members of the Wolcott family killed inside their Texas home 46 years ago. Hours after the crime, 15-year-old James Wolcott confessed that he had shot his father, mother and sister with a gun that he then hid in his attic.

The murders horrified the community of 5,000 residents. Wolcott had sniffed glue shortly before shooting his family. Later, he complained to a psychiatrist that his mother chewed too loudly and that his sister had a bad accent.

The suspect “by all accounts…was brilliant,” “an accomplished musician” with a “voracious appetite for reading.” A local lawyer represented him during his subsequent trial, during which he argued Wolcott was a paranoid schizophrenic. The boy was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to Rusk State Hospital until he became “sane.”

It was six short years later that Wolcott was released from the state facility. Because he was innocent, he collected on his family’s estate and his father’s pension. Two years after his release, he changed his name and then disappeared from Georgetown.

Wolcott’s crimes were such a flashpoint in the small town’s history that it’s not surprising that someone ended up asking “What happened to Jim Wolcott?” And here’s where the story takes another tragic turn: Reporters Gardner and Payne tracked down that 15-year-old boy to the Millikin University in
Decatur, Illinois, where he teaches and heads up the psychology department.

James St. James, now 61 years old, has been quietly teaching at the university for about 20 years. And it’s at this point in this story where the reporters’ voice takes on a creepy, self-righteous tone.

“Dr. St. James has spent
decades sharing his vast
knowledge of and affection
for his studies and hasn’t
had so much as a parking ticket as far as anyone
knows. While there are students who may be better off
that he went to Rusk instead
of prison, the world would
also have been a better place
if his father’s wisdom and
mother’s generosity had
not died with them, and if
his sister’s brilliance hadn’t
been snuffed out before it
had a chance to blossom.
In the end, there remain
things that continue to
confound. One is the irony
of a person who hated his
father enough to pull the
trigger, yet his adult life and
occupation are an uncanny
mirror of his father’s. Second, although the murders
of Gordon, Elizabeth and
Libby Wolcott had a profound and lasting effect on
the people of Georgetown,
they don’t appear to have
altered James’ path, and it
doesn’t seem to bother him
any more now than it did in
1967 — which is the most
unsettling part of all. I think
most people want to believe
that the man responsible, or
at least the son left behind,
would be the most affected
– maybe there’s a good
psychologist out there who
can help.

Now the fallout begins from the public revelations.

“I’d hope the character of this gentleman has been such … that he in fact will do the right thing — which, for the sake of the university, would be to resign,” Decatur Mayor Mike McElroy told the Chicago Sun-Times
.
“If I had done something where I worked, I’d resign because I wouldn’t want to bring any more publicity or potential shame on the company I work for,” he said.

Good work, ladies.