Mentally ill man's bout of violence leaves him with no place to go

David and Sandra Croyle have worked for the past two months to try to get their son out of Cape Girardeau County Jail.

One of the problems, though, is he has been turned down by locked-care facilities -- in part because he is in jail.

After Michael Croyle, 26, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, Judge Scott Thomsen on March 10 sentenced him to five years of supervised probation with a key condition: Michael needed to go to a locked mental-health facility, and he needed to stay in the county jail until he was evaluated and approved for such a facility.

Michael suffers from schizo-affective disorder.

Sandra described it as a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The main symptom is Michael hears voices. The voices almost always are negative, and sometimes they tell him to do things, Sandra said.

On New Year's Eve, those malevolent voices convinced Michael to attack his parents, and he stabbed David several times.

He originally was charged with first-degree assault because of the attack.

"It's this constant struggle," Sandra said of the voices. "It's as real to him as me talking to you."

David said he has called about 40 mental-health facilities, trying to find a place for Michael. Most have locked-care wings, but they are meant for Alzheimer's and dementia patients.

"Nobody in their right mind would put Michael with Alzheimer's patients," Sandra said.

Other facilities that could admit Michael have long waiting lists. Community Counseling Center liaison Warren Skinner said there are only about 40 private mental-health facilities in the state with locked wings.

There are state psychiatric hospitals, the closest being Southeast Missouri Mental Health in Farmington, but Sandra said she feels the patients in those hospitals are too violent.

Missouri Department of Mental Health public information officer Debra Walker said the majority of the adult patients in psychiatric hospitals in Missouri are court-ordered to be there.

"There's just not a lot of these places," David said.

One example of a facility with a locked mental-health wing is St. Francois Manor in Farmington.

St. Francois Manor has two locked-care wings, segregated by gender, for 18 patients apiece.

Before any patients are admitted, St. Francois takes into account whether the patient has been hospitalized for a psychological stay or has been in jail.

If so, as in Michael's case, the patient must undergo a Level 2 screening, which is sent to Jefferson City.

A Level 2 screening takes into account Michael's criminal history and behavior at other mental-health facilities.

This second screening is on top of an initial screening that can be done at the jail.

David said Michael was taken to a facility in the St. Louis area, only to be turned back because it would not complete the Level 1 screening.

Once the screenings are finished, St. Francois still will consider how the patient fits with other patients living at the facility.

Administrator Sheila Stacy said patients with schizophrenia usually are fine, but they cannot have too many patients with personality disorders or multiple personalities in the same area.

"We're pretty selective," Stacy said.

Facilities have turned Michael down because of the stabbing, Sandra and David said.

"I fully understand that, because they want somebody that won't be violent," David said.

David and Sandra have argued on behalf of their son Michael that he has been violent only toward them.

Sandra said Michael has been in five boarding homes as an adult and never has been violent with other patients or staff, they said.

Before the attack on New Year's Eve, Michael had been staying at the Lou Masterman Center, run by the Community Counseling Center, and he never had been violent with patients or staff there, either, Sandra and David said.

Skinner and other members of CCC would not comment about Michael's case or his history there.

David said Michael has been attacked in jail several times, but he did not retaliate, Sandra and David said.

"More often than not, it's him who becomes the victim," Sandra said.

David also said a couple of facilities have not liked that Michael is coming from jail because he has not received the treatment he has needed.

"They know when people are in jail, they're not getting their medication, and they're not as stable as they should be," David said.

David said Michael, while in jail, has received two of four medicines for which he has been prescribed by psychiatrists: Abilify, which helps Michael ignore the voices, and a seizure medication to stabilize mood.

Staff members at the jail said Michael could not receive the other two medications because they were mind-altering, David said.

"It's mind-stabilizing medication," David said.

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Capt. J.P. Mulcahy said Michael is receiving the medication he needs, although he would not discuss other specifics of Michael's treatment in jail.

Mulcahy would not allow the Southeast Missourian to interview Michael in jail.

David said Michael was put into solitary confinement when he told jail staff members his symptoms were particularly bad.

"That was the worst thing of all," David said. "There was no distraction, no TV."

Talking about cases in which inmates threaten suicide, Mulcahy said it is common to segregate inmates.

He said that style of confinement, however, is not the same as solitary confinement, because nurses and other personnel check in on the inmate regularly.

David said keeping Michael in jail might be deteriorating his mental state. He compared it to a diabetic who is not receiving insulin.

"I don't think people like him belong in jail," Sandra said. "I just want him to have a safe place to live where he can get his medication and be happy."

Cape Girardeau police officer Brett Hellmann went to the Croyles' residence on New Year's. He was surprised to hear Michael still was in jail.

"We need to find a place for him," Hellmann said. "Maybe jail is not the place for him, but with violent outbursts like that, he needs to be in a place where they can take care of him. It's one of these cases that's a sad story."

Mulcahy said jail is not where Michael should be, and he said David and Sandra Croyle are doing everything they can.

"They don't have the training with these type of inmates," Mulcahy said of his staff.

Sandra and David want what is best for Michael, but they also cannot allow him back in their home. His actions on New Year's Eve sealed that fate.

While Michael has not been aggressive to other people, he has pushed Sandra several times in the past.

Events never had escalated before like they did New Year's Eve.

It had started over a shirt -- a demonic-looking joker T-shirt Michael was wearing.

When David picked Michael up about 4 p.m. at the Lou Masterman Center, everything seemed fine.

In the car, they talked a bit about how Michael had walked away from the center two days before and had decided to gamble.

David and Sandra had given Michael a bit of an ultimatum about this activity; Michael liked being at Lou Masterman in part because he had a girlfriend. There were other places he could be that would not allow him this type of freedom.

Michael had seemed to get the message.

When David and Michael arrived home in the 2500 block of Saddlegate Court, Michael and David went to the kitchen.

Sandra came downstairs and noticed Michale was wearing the joker shirt and asked him to remove it.

Sandra said shirts such as this fuel Michael's voices, and she had warned him about this before.

"I did say if he would not change the shirt, he would have to go back to Lou Masterman instead of out to dinner," Sandra said in a statement to Cape Girardeau police.

At this point, Michael rushed at Sandra and knocked her into the wall. David stepped between Michael and Sandra; he then saw Michael had grabbed a knife from the kitchen, holding it against his hip.

"Really?" David said with incredulous surprise.

According to a statement to police, David remained calm during the attack. Although Michael stabbed him four times -- three times in the upper back and fourth in the side through a winter coat -- he yelled to Sandra to call the police. He got up close to Michael and gained control of the knife, pushing it away. He pushed Michael backward and tackled him to the ground. Michael continued to punch and kick, and at one point stuck his fingers in David's mouth.

"Anyone else, I would have bitten, but because I know Michael has mental problems, my goal was just to subdue him until the police arrived," David said.

Michael grabbed a tree ornament and smashed it into David's head. While Sandra was talking to police, Michael tried to roll to his stomach, but David pulled his right arm under his chest and held him face-down on the ground until police arrived.

Michael told Hellmann he did not mean to attack his parents, but the voices told him to take them out.

David said the wounds he received were superficial, but painful.

"I've been hurt worse," he said.

Sandra and David believe Michael has tried to hurt only them, and they know the origin of this animosity. Michael blames them for allowing him to be sexually abused by a priest when he was a child. He said the priest told him to blame Sandra.

In 1998, the family was stationed in Hawaii and attended services in Tipler Army Medical Center chapel.

One of the chaplains who worked there later was convicted of sexually abusing another child.

Michael said the priest raped him in the chapel. The priest's voice became one of the voices in Michael's head.

He was about 7 years old when it happened, which was when his parents noticed his behavior changed.

Sandra believes the sexual assault was the source of Michael's schizo-affective disorder.

David thinks the trauma made Michael's schizo-affective disorder debilitating.

Sandra said she would have done anything to have stopped the abuse, but she did not know.

"He's been angry at us for years," she said.

Sandra said Michael had repressed this memory, and the facts came out when the allegations of sexual assault arose over former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

"I often think if that had not happened, Michael would be a different person," David said.

One of the other effects of that trauma was it stunted Michael's emotional growth.

In many ways, he approaches many problems as if he were a child.

Sandra said she spent a lot of time trying to fix Michael. Now she sees that way of thinking as impossible.

"I don't think any amount of treatment will fix him; at least he can manage things," Sandra said. "It doesn't mean he can't be happy."

bkleine@semissourian.com

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