THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602290317
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: DEDHAM, MASS. LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
The father of the man accused of killing two abortion clinic workers said Wednesday that he regrets not seeking help for his son after years of bizarre and destructive behavior.
John C. Salvi Jr. said he decided not to get psychiatric help because he thought the boy was just going through a phase, and he didn't want damaging information in his son's medical records.
``I have no excuse,'' said Salvi, 50. ``I thought maybe he'd grow out of it somehow.''
His 23-year-old son stared blankly and smiled slightly while his father testified.
Defense lawyers contend John C. Salvi III was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia when he killed two abortion clinic workers and wounded five others in back-to-back rifle attacks in Brookline in 1994.
Salvi was captured in Norfolk the next day, after he shot up the Hillcrest Clinic. No one was hurt in that shooting.
Prosecutors have said he was sane during the shootings at the Planned Parenthood and Preterm Health Services clinics in Brookline, a Boston suburb. Salvi faces life without parole if convicted of murder. If acquitted by reason of insanity, he will be sent to a prison mental hospital until he is determined to be sane.
Salvi's father recalled a series of strange behaviors: the boy told him he saw his girlfriend turn into a vampire, a Bible jump off a bookshelf and the shadow of a black, bird-like creature inside the family home. Later, he said, his son compared himself to St. John the Baptist. The father also told how his son disrupted a Christmas Eve Mass in Seabrook, N.H., just days before the shootings. He said the younger Salvi stood at the front of church and called the worshipers ``yellow-bellied.''
Three witnesses to the church outburst told Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara on Wednesday that they were reluctant to testify for the defense. The judge warned them they would be arrested if they did not show up.
Salvi said he was concerned about his son's behavior, but figured, ``If you're going to be a fanatic about something, religion isn't a bad thing to be a fanatic about.''
In June 1993, Salvi's parents visited him at an apartment he had moved into - and found him unwashed and living in rooms infested with maggots.
``St. John the Baptist never bathed,'' Salvi said his son told them. ``He lived in the desert and ate grasshoppers and he was one of the finest men who ever lived.''
Salvi said he confronted his son after he refused to finish the final stage of a rigorous firefighter's test - a relatively simple one-mile run. He even made an appointment for him at a hospital that specialized in substance abuse and mental illness.
``I asked him if he was taking any kind of dope and he said `No, how could you even think that I could do that.' I believed him,'' Salvi said.
Salvi said he canceled the appointment because he was concerned that if his son reapplied for a position as a firefighter, he would be handicapped by a medical record from a mental hospital.
Under cross-examination, the senior Salvi admitted that he told the FBI his son had never had anything more lethal than a BB gun, even though his son owned a .22-caliber rifle. Prosecutor John Kivlan complained that the father has a well-documented history of protecting his son when the boy got in trouble, but the judge refused to allow testimony on that subject.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL ABORTION SHOOTINGS by CNB