ASSOCIATED PRESS: Former suburban Philadelphia multimillionaire John du Pont has lost a bid for parole. A jury in 1997 found the heir to his family’s chemical company fortune guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill in the 1996 shooting death of Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler David Schultz. Du Pont was sentenced to 13 to 30 years in prison, but first was treated for three months at Norristown State Hospital. His attorney, Tara Wochok, said the 70-year-old du Pont is now at the state prison at Mercer in western Pennsylvania. Wochok said du Pont’s parole petition was turned down last month. Delaware County District Attorney Michael Green said that was because of the brutal way in which Schultz died, and because du Pont has not taken responsibility or shown remorse. MORE
WIKIPEDIA: John Eleuthère du Pont (born November 22, 1938) is a member of the prominent American Du Pont family who in 1996 was convicted of murdering Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz and sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. Experts at the trial testified that du Pont suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.[1]
Du Pont was born in Marseille, France and is the son of William du Pont, Jr. and Jean Liseter Austin (1897–1988) and is one of four children. At a young age, du Pont and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in North Philadelphia, where he attended preparatory schools and graduated from Haverford School in 1957. du Pont attended college in Miami, Florida and graduated from the University of Miami in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology. An ornithologist, du Pont is credited with the discovery of two dozen species of birds. He is also a philatelist, and during a 1980 auction anonymously paid $935,000 for one of the rarest stamps in the world, the British Guiana 1856 1c black on magenta.[2]
On September 3, 1983, he married a therapist named Gale Wenk but emotional instability was already evident and the
difficult marriage ended in a divorce two years later in 1985. du Pont largely funded a new basketball arena at Villanova University which opened in 1986. Originally, the venue was called du Pont Pavilion, but his name was removed from the facility after his conviction. Today, it is called simply The Pavilion. Shortly after du Pont was arrested for sexually harassing Andre Metzger, his mother died on August 9, 1988 at the age of 91. After the death of his mother, du Pont turned his 800 acre estate in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, into a wrestling facility for amateur wrestlers. du Pont’s wrestling team was called “Team Foxcatcher” and the team’s trainer was David Schultz, and members included Kurt Angle. MORE
On January 26, 1996 he shot Schultz dead at the wrestling facility without apparent provocation and with Schultz’s wife among several witnesses. After the shooting, the multimillionaire locked himself in his mansion for two days, while he negotiated with police on the telephone. Police turned off his power, and were able to capture him when he went outside to fix his heater. Expert psychiatric testimony described du Pont as a paranoid schizophrenic who believed Schultz was part of an international conspiracy to kill him. He also was paranoid that people were going to break into his house and kill him, which is why he put razor wires in his attic. On February 26, 1997 a jury found him guilty of third degree murder but mentally ill. He was sentenced to 13-30 years incarceration and is currently housed at State Correctional Institute-Mercer, a minimum-security institution in the Pennsylvania prison system. MORE