Martin F. Abernathy
Maryland Mind Control Mayhem?
Thu Jun 26 12:18:16 2003
216.19.126.133

http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/howard/bal-md.ho.overby31may31,0,1819183.story?coll=bal-local-howard


The Baltimore Sun
May 31, 2003 Saturday FINAL Edition

SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 3B

HEADLINE: Schizophrenic city man who killed stepfather sent to mental hospital; Judge finds 25-year-old not criminally responsible

BYLINE: Lisa Goldberg

SOURCE: SUN STAFF

BODY:

A 25-year-old Baltimore man who told investigators he heard voices through a transmitter that he believed had been planted in his mouth was found not criminally responsible yesterday in the fatal shooting of his stepfather - a shooting he said he believed would end his "pain."

Gordon N. Overby's guilty plea to murder and handgun charges yesterday came on the heels of a report from state mental health officials, who noted that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and he told them he "didn't know it was real" when he shot Rodry Webb, 56, six times at Webb's Marriottsville home.

Overby's condition made him unable to understand and appreciate that what he was doing was criminal, Howard Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure ruled. Attorneys said that Overby, who was being held in the Howard County Detention Center without bond, will be sent Monday to Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, the state's maximum-security psychiatric hospital in Jessup.

A graduate of Mount Hebron High School who served in the Air Force, Overby has suffered from mental illness for several years and sought treatment at the VA Medical Center in Baltimore as recently as a few days before the Dec. 18 shooting, according to his lawyer and family.

"Unfortunately, what was provided was not enough," Overby and Webb's family said in a statement after the hearing. "This court proceeding today is just one part of a long process for us. We hurt for Rodry. We hurt for Gordy. And, we hurt for each other."

Deputy Public Defender Louis P. Willemin, Overby's lawyer, said his client, whose birth father also suffers from schizophrenia, was hospitalized for mental illness a few times while he was on active duty. But once he was discharged from the Air Force in October 2001, there was nothing to ensure that he followed up on his care, Willemin told Leasure.

"The result was the tragedy that ensued in this case," he said.

Prosecutors, who did not contest the mental health experts' findings, said yesterday that after the shooting, investigators found the .38-caliber revolver used to kill Webb and shoes that matched bloody footprints near Webb's body in Overby's apartment in the 900 block of Cooks Lane.

Webb's wife, Pattie, who discovered her husband's body on the kitchen floor of their house in the 1300 block of Driver Road, told detectives that there had been "recent conflict" between her son and her husband, prosecutors said. Overby's erratic behavior had also resulted in calls to police in the months before the shooting. He was accused of waving a gun and threatening a nightclub bouncer and of banging on doors in his apartment building and yelling, prosecutors said.

He told investigators that the day of the killing, he had bought a bottle of rum and planned to drive to Florida but couldn't remember anything after he reached Route 100, prosecutors said.

Later, Overby told a mental health evaluator that he believed a transmitter had been placed secretly in his mouth when his wisdom teeth were taken out and that he blamed his stepfather for his "torment," prosecutors said.

He told the evaluator that when Webb opened the door, he shot him - then went home and fell asleep.

A medical examiner determined that Webb, a math teacher at Milford Mill Academy in Baltimore County, had been hit six times: twice in the head and in the chest, once in the neck and once in the side.

 

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