Trial question: Insanity or hate
| |
A frustrated Richard S. Baumhammers found his hate-filled views of aliens in 'his America' falling on deaf ears, so he took action - murdering five people and paralyzing a sixth in a shooting spree, an Allegheny County prosecutor told jurors during opening arguments Friday.
Deputy District Attorney Edward Borkowski said that Baumhammers was 'thinking clearly, logically, selectively and methodically' in choosing his victims in a 90-minute odyssey of death that stretched across five communities one year ago today.
But defense attorney William Difenderfer, who is seeking a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, told the jury Baumhammers was in the grip of a mental illness that prevented him from knowing that what he was doing was wrong.
Opening arguments yesterday morning in the trial of Baumhammers, 35, of Mt. Lebanon, before a jury of seven men and five women painted a diametrically opposite view of the events on April 28, 2000.
About 20 witnesses testified for the prosecution before court adjourned at 7 p.m., as prosecutors presented their witnesses to recount the day of the murders through the testimony of emergency workers, police officers, witnesses from the first three shootings, and one of the victim's daughters.
The trial will resume at 10 this morning in Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Manning's courtroom on the third floor of the Allegheny County Courthouse.
'We're moving along very rapidly,' Manning assured the jury. 'You're getting everything you need to know to make a decision in this case.'
The prosecution is seeking first-degree murder verdicts and the death penalty against Baumhammers, a suspended immigration attorney.
Difenderfer said Baumhammers was diagnosed in 1993 as suffering from a delusional disorder of the persectory type, causing him to believe that 'the government was harassing him,' and that his eyes and testicles were being bombarded with lasers.
When the trial began, court observers noted a sort of poetic justice in the fact that Baumhammers was led into court by county sheriff's Sgt. Jim Nelson, who is black, and Deputy Gim Yee, a Chinese American.
In the courtroom, the first two rows of 18 seats were filled with the victims' families, as Baumhammers' parents, Drs. Andrejs and Inese Baumhammers, and other relatives occupied four seats at the other side of the courtroom.
| |
Prosecution: Baumhammers admired Hitler
Borkowski told the jury that Baumhammers admired Timothy McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City bomber who will be executed next month, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski because they were 'doers' who acted alone.
He also said that Baumhammers believed Adolf Hitler was 'a genius.'
'He thought Third World immigration was eroding America,' Borkowski said, but there were no other 'doers' around to take action.
'He decided to step into history,' the prosecutor said, taking a .357 Magnum revolver, boxes of ammunition and Molotov cocktails to several scenes of death, ethnic intimidation and vandalism of two synagogues.
After outlining the expected insanity defense, which he said will be 'seriously contested,' Borkowski wrote on a chalkboard behind the defendant, saying: 'At the end of this case, none of that will equal legal insanity,' drawing a line though the equal sign.
Through the day's testimony, the words 'legal insanity' hung like a question mark over the head of Baumhammers, who sat stoically and showed no reaction.
The victims of the shootings a Jewish woman, two Asian men, two Indian men and a black man.
The victims were Anita Gordon, 63, of Mt. Lebanon, who was Jewish; Anil Thakur, 31, a customer at India Grocers; manager Ji-Ye 'Jerry' Sun, 34, who was Chinese, and Thao 'Tony' Pham, 27, a Vietnamese delivery man at the Ya Fei Chinese restaurant; and Garry Lee, 22, of Aliquippa, Beaver County.
The only survivor is Sandip Patel, 26, who worked at India Grocers. Two bullets pierced Patel's neck and back, leaving him unable to move from the neck down.
Baumhammers also is accused of firing shots at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Carnegie and at Beth El Synagogue in Scott Township, where a swastika and the word 'Jew' were painted outside.
Borkowski asked the jury to force Baumhammers to 'step into the world of justice and accountability through the means of this trial.'
Defense: 'A pure crazy man'
Although not disputing his client committed the crimes, defense attorney Difenderfer said Baumhammers' actions were 'acts of a pure crazy man who was hearing voices and acting on it.'
Difenderfer said Baumhammers, who had a psychiatric evaluation when he was 5, exhibited mental problems in 1990.
He said those mental problems built up until he was hospitalized in 1993 at St. Clair Hospital in Mt. Lebanon and at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Oakland, now UPMC Western Psych.
By March 2000, Difenderfer said, Baumhammers wouldn't come out of his bedroom as his frantic mother kept a diary and stayed in constant contact with Dr. Matcheri Keshavan, a psychiatrist.
Difenderfer read from a list of 19 medications that had been used to treat Baumhammers' disorder, which he contended the jury will hear through testimony is 'unique and incurable.'
Although medication can maintain a patient's stability, Difenderfer said, 'the dreadful thing is people don't think they need it.'
Difenderfer said Baumhammers' views of Third World immigration were fueled by the book, 'Alien Nation,' written by Peter Brimelow, which received some critical acclaim.
Baumhammers' paranoia also pushed him to seek out attorney Patricia Henry to 'sue the government for destroying his life,' to buy into the 'quack Aryan nation' ideas and to write lengthy letters to U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher seeking their help.
Difenderfer said Baumhammers was lucid at times - able to pass the bar examination in Pennsylvania and Georgia - and that his serious girlfriend was of Japanese descent and another girlfriend was Jewish.
He asked the jury to look into Baumhammers' mind, through his 'very disturbed, crazy eyes.'
| The victims |
 Ji-Ye Sun, 34, of Churchill, managed Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine in Robinson Town Centre, who was married and had two stepchildren. Sun was a native of China.  Anita 'Nicki' Gordon, 63, of Mt. Lebanon, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, worked as an interior designer and helped decorate part of the synagogue, Beth El Congregation.  Anil Thakur, 31, an electrical engineer and father of two who had just days left on his visa when he was shot. Thakur was a native of India.  Garry Lee, 22, of Beaver County, a 1996 graduate of Aliquippa High School, was planning to attend business school.  Thao Pham, 27, of Castle Shannon, a father of one, who survived a shipwreck that killed his father and others when they fled Vietnam in 1979. He worked at Ya-Fei Chinese Restaurant, where he was killed. Sandip Patel, 26, of Plum Borough, co-owner of India Grocery Store. In the last year, he has been in and out of the hospital. He was shot twice and today is a parapeligic. Patel was the only survivor. Source: Police reports, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review research
|
1:30 p.m.: Richard S. Baumhammers (right) leaves his Mt. Lebanon home then shoots his neighbor, Anita 'Nikki' Gordon, 63, then fired shots into the window of the Beth El Synagogue on Conchran Road. The first victim
Borkowski presented the testimony of Mt. Lebanon firefighters and police who answered a fire alarm at the home of Baumhammers' neighbor, Anita Gordon - the first shooting victim.
They found her shot to death, her body riddled with seven bullets.
Testimony from fire department platoon Chief Glenn Wallace, firefighters Steven Lane and Roger Riciutti, and police officers Edward Krappweis, William Lawrence and Mary Susan Joyce said they found a smoke-filled home and the victim's body face down on the living-room floor.
Lane, who smelled gunpowder in the house, said he 'quickly decided it was not a good environment' for him and the other firefighters - not knowing if there was a danger of a fire, an explosion or an unknown armed third person still on the premises.
In quick succession, they said, calls were coming on the police radio that shots were fired at the nearby Beth El synagogue, the India Grocers in Scott Township, a Carnegie synagogue, and a Chinese restaurant in Robinson Town Centre. The final shooting was at a C.S. Kim Karate studio in Center Township, Beaver County.
One of the first witnesses, Gordon's daughter - Annette Gordon of Amity, Washington County - said her mother, an Orthodox Jew, was in integral part of the Beth El congregation. The synagogue is within walking distance of Anita Gordon's home where she arranged art and did the layout for publications.
Borkowski described Gordon as 'an accomplished designer ... and one of the kindest and gentlest people you'd ever meet.'
While at the Gordon home, Krappweis testified, he heard a description of the Jeep Cherokee vehicle registered to Baumhammers. The defendant lived next door to the Gordons on Elm Springs Road in the Virginia Manor section.
Krappweis said he was concerned when he realized that Officer Joyce had just gone there to conduct a neighbor canvas to gain information.
Krappweis said he went to the Baumhammers' home and talked with Inese Baumhammers, who told him that her son had 'a psychiatric problem' but had no weapons to her knowledge.
Deputy County Fire Marshal Thomas Hitchings testified that a gasoline-filled olive jar with a wick in it had been used to set the fire in a spare room in the Gordon home.
He said if the Molotov cocktail hadn't landed on a metal roasting pan and ceramic crockpot, the fire would have spread beyond a surrounding carpet, possibly destroying the home.
Photos of the crime scene, displayed to jurors on a television near the witness stand, showed Gordon lying face down between a glass coffee table and a couch.
Her neatly kept living room included a baby grand piano and a transparent cube-shaped table containing a plaster statue of a seal sprawled on its back.
The next victims
John McCluskey said he was on his way to get coffee at a Subway sandwich shop when he heard gunshots and saw Baumhammers pointing a gun at an Indian man - Anil Thakur - outside India Grocers.
McCluskey, a railcar leasing manager from Mt. Lebanon, works in a strip mall near the grocery store, where Baumhammers is accused of shooting two more people.
After the shooting, Baumhammers put a gun into a bag resembling a soft-sided briefcase and drove away calmly in a black Jeep Cherokee.
'I was looking at (Baumhammers') eyes,' McCluskey said. 'We looked at each other for several seconds as he walked away ... He was calm and collected; there was no urgency.'
McCluskey said he asked a man in a nearby delivery truck 'if that was real what we just saw, and he said: 'Yeah, it was.''
McCluskey said he entered the store after the shooting and saw an employee - Sandip Patel - lying behind the counter in a pool of blood. Thakur was lying on the floor, conscious and bleeding.
'He was trying to speak, but without success,' said McCluskey, who stayed at the store until medics arrived.
Three witnesses at Tomatoes Bar & Grill, formerly located next door to the grocery store, said they watched Baumhammers briefly pursue an Indian man, then fire two bullets into him as he tried to hide behind a red pillar in front of the restaurant.
Joanne Asher, of Scott, said she saw Baumhammers put his left hand on Thakur's shoulder, then saw the flash from a pistol as he shot him.
'I wasn't sure what I'd seen, I thought it was like a movie,' she said. 'I ran into a closet at that point because I wasn't sure if he was going to run into the bar and shoot all of us.'
Patel is expected to testify on Monday.
Robert Baird can be reached at (412) 391-8650.
Christopher Zurawsky can be reached at czurawsky@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7840.
| Trial notebook |
NAACP to monitor, compare court trials
The Pittsburgh branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will have observers in the courtroom for the trials of Richard S. Baumhammers and Ronald Taylor.
Taylor, who is black, also is charged in a racially motivated shooting rampage in Wilkinsburg.
Branch President Tim Stevens, citing a recent audit of the Pittsburgh Magistrate Courts that shows a difference in how black and white men were adjudicated, called Friday for an immediate end to the disparity.
'We remind the public that Mr. Baumhammers is an unemployed attorney from an affluent suburb and Mr. Taylor is an unemployed nonprofessional with a background of poverty. These cases provide our Allegheny County justice system with a clear opportunity to rise above both race and class.'
Members of the group will be in the courtrooms and will report back to the NAACP branch, Stevens said.
They also will be present at the retrial of John Charmo, a former Pittsburgh Housing Authority police officer charged in the shooting death of Jerry Jackson, an unarmed motorist who was black.
Stevens said the NAACP remains opposed to the death penalty.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in both cases.
Witnesses unable to testify first day
Late yesterday, Allegheny County deputy prosecutor Edward Borkowski informed Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Manning that witnesses from the Beth El Synagogue, scheduled to testify on the trial's first day, would be unavailable until Monday because they would be observing the Sabbath.
Jurors guarded on break outside
During an hourlong break early in the evening, nine jurors, accompanied by a sheriff and a court officer, convened in the courtyard of the Allegheny County Courthouse for cigarettes and fresh air.
While maintenance workers emptied blue-and-gray 40-gallon plastic garbage cans into nearby Dumpsters, some jurors watched County Executive Jim Roddey as he left the courthouse, stopped to speak briefly with an aide, then disappeared through a pedestrian portal leading to Forbes Avenue.
The jurors are sequestered at a local hotel during the trial.
Before dismissing them for the evening, Manning promised jurors dinner at a fancy restaurant.
