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Administrators at a private university in Illinois are standing by a professor, despite revelations that he shot and killed his father, mother, and teenage sister in 1967.

A 16 year old St. James killed his entire family with a rifle in 1967.

In a statement issued Tuesday, officials at Millikin University said they would allow the Psychology professor, James St. James, to continue teaching despite having learned of his past.

On August 4, 1967, a 16-year old St. James reportedly walked into his family’s living room with a .22 caliber rifle, shot his father twice in the chest, walked to his teenage sister’s room and shot her in the chest. When she fell to the ground, he fired an additional round in her face. St. James then fired a round in his mother’s chest and shot her an additional two times in the head.

St. James admitted to the killings at the time, but was found “not guilty” by reason of insanity. He spent the following six years in a mental institution and was released, according to the Georgetown Advocate, a local newspaper based in Texas, where the killings occurred.

In the statement Tuesday, Millikin University officials said they would permit St. James to continue teaching despite the surprising revelations.

“Milikin University has only recently been made aware of Dr. St James’ past,” said the statement provided to Campus Reform. “Given the traumatic experiences of his childhood, Dr. St. James’ efforts to build his life and obtain a successful professional career have been remarkable.”

“The University expects Dr. St. James to teach at Milikin this fall,” it added.

After St. James emerged from the mental institution in 1974, he reportedly changed his name, and then earned a doctoral degree in psychology. He went on to become a professor of psychology at Milikin University in 1986.

His past was recently uncovered in a two-year investigation by the Georgetown Advocate in a story published late last month.

St. James has taught at Milikin University for 27 years and was the 1997 recipient of the Teaching Excellence and Leadership Award, the Presbyterian university added in their statement.

http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4949

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It’s less than two hours later and I’m still a bit wired.

I expected him to be different; perhaps not an ogre, since I had spoken to him on the telephone and he was quite friendly. Some part of me wanted him to be unpleasant because I wasn’t looking forward to this confrontation despite what I already knew about him. After all, he is a doctor of human behavior. It seemed reasonable to assume he’d be able to reveal only what he wanted. And here, he is not the 15-year-old paranoid schizophrenic; he’s a popular guy at a lovely little school in a nice town and I was about to change his carefully crafted world.

I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I’d be, comforted by the fact that our Decatur law enforcement friend Jeff Forrest* took a seat at a discrete distance from my table. I had asked what I should do if I felt threatened at any time. He said, “Just lean in and tell him you have ‘friends’... and they are very close.” I know I watch too many movies, but that was a pretty nice ace to have up my sleeve.

I walked in to the restaurant and made eye contact with Jeff. The hostess tried to put me at a small table in the wrong spot and, again, not my style to argue, but I managed to insist that she seat me where Jeff told me he could see me. Part of the job, I reminded myself. The next step was to establish a rapport with the professor. Because we knew nothing about Dr. St. James except his psych profile as a youth, and for my safety, I had a truthful backstory that would explain my writer’s interest in him. Law enforcement in Georgetown had given me some guidance in body language cues, providing me a safety net; should I have felt it unwise to move forward with the Texas part, I could easily come back to the circle of psychology and leave it at that.

Almost immediately I realized that he was a good conversationalist. He didn’t ask me a single question about myself but he wasn’t uninterested in the things I talked about. We even laughed a few times. I managed to ask him all of the basic questions about his psychology background and his current life. It is abundantly clear how much he loves his work and he spent a great deal of time talking about the strength of the program he’s built for his students. But, when he started talking about high-level psychology I knew I couldn’t continue to act like I was following along.

We reached a natural break in the conversation and I braced for his reaction when I revealed that I knew his “other name.” We all figured he would do one of three things; get up and walk out, stay and act like he didn’t know what I was talking about, or stay and talk about it. What he did was a mix.

Earlier in our conversation he mentioned how psychologists measure reaction time and that a difference of a millisecond is like a geologic age.

I told him I had a confession to make; that I had really come to town specifically to meet him. He laughed a little and said “Okay…?” I presume he may not have thought a veteran professor would generate that kind of interest. I said “I want to write a book and I want you to be in it.” I told him about my interest in atypical psychology and said “I came across some information in Central Texas...” His fork stopped—for a geologic age.

He never denied who he was, in fact he did answer a few questions that only James Wolcott could. And I never asked him any questions about his past until I had mentioned being a writer so he knew from that point he was relatively on the record. I didn’t use any words like Wolcott, killing, or glue—no reason to be dramatic about it—and the conversation went on pretty much as it had before. We talked about 90 minutes and he gave me absolutely nothing new about the crime, but I was not surprised given the fact that probably didn’t say more than a dozen words publicly even during the trial. I asked question after question and got only “that was a long time ago...I don’t want to go there... I don’t really remember” responses.

I asked him about writing the book and he said he didn’t care. When I asked if he’d just help me get to the truth from his side he gave me an immediate “No.” I then said it would be hard to write a truthful book about him without his input. He said “then it would be time to walk away and do something else…” We parted cordially and did not promise to be Facebook friends. Our outside officer said he left the vicinity but did not drive home. No telling if he had a second thought about our conversation at all, really.

Afterword

As I drove out of town the following day, I saw him sitting on his porch—perhaps wondering what is going to happen next for the first time since 1974. Meeting him in person created some ambivalence. I had, reluctantly, found him engaging and admired his intelligence. Even knowing that his doctors thought him to be a narcissist. Wise counsel later reminded me that he once chose to permanently take away his family’s choice to get out of his way. And until now, almost no one else has had all the facts about him before choosing to be in his life at all. Some may feel he paid his price and finish a beer with him. Others may be glad to know exactly who they are inviting into their lives before doing so.

Some may say it was foolish, but I like to think I did something bold for the sake of truth. We will probably never know if he changed his name to hide or to simply move on. Even his lawyer never really knew why he killed his family. We do know that, delusional or not, he, himself, said he felt threatened by them, and for many reasons I don’t enjoy the fact that I may now threaten the one thing he seems to love most.

http://wilcoonline.com/GeorgetownAdvocate-158.htm

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On the evening of Thursday, August 4, 1967, James joined Libby and some friends on a trip to Austin to see a show. They returned home about 10 pm and life in the Wolcott house appeared to be normal. By midnight Libby and Elizabeth had retired to their respective bedrooms, while Gordon read in the living room. Inexplicably, just after midnight, James, by his own account, sniffed some airplane glue “to give him a boost,” loaded a .22 long-barrel rifle, walked to the living room and shot his father twice in the chest. He then walked to Libby’s bedroom and shot her once in the chest, and when she fell he shot her in the face.

Awakened by the blasts from the rifle, his mother Elizabeth called out from her bedroom. James then shot her twice in the head and once in the chest. He later admitted that he had decided to kill them a week prior and had made a plan the night before. Next, he hid the rifle in the attic crawlspace above the closet in his bedroom and ran out of the house toward University Avenue. Three college students traveling from Houston to Eden, Texas saw him there at about 1 am. James flagged down their car, crying that he needed help because someone had just shot and killed his entire family. Reluctantly, the three returned with James to the house to assess the situation. While James waited outside, the college students entered the grisly scene to find Gordon and Libby dead where they lay and Elizabeth barely breathing on her bed. According to police interviews, the students repositioned Elizabeth on the bed to make her more comfortable, called for an ambulance and the police, then waited outside with James. Later, in court, one of the students described James’ demeanor as “hysterical, pounding on the porch and wondering how this could happen.” None of the college students were entirely comfortable with the situation and they were hesitant to commit to any kind of empathy or reaction. Oddly enough, when they realized there might still be someone in the house with a weapon, they “high-tailed it out of there.” James, however, did not hesitate to go into the house with them.

At approximately 3 am, Williamson County Sheriff Henry Matysak arrived on the scene, and was joined shortly thereafter by Texas Ranger Jim Riddles from Austin, and Williamson County Attorney Timothy Maresh. A family friend took a very distraught James to the hospital where his mother was fighting for her life. They were soon joined by another family friend, Reverend Wallace Chappell, pastor of First Methodist Church of Georgetown. Witness reports indicate that James was very anxious at the hospital and the Reverend asked the doctor to provide him with a tranquilizer, believing him to have been traumatized by the event. Upon receiving the news that his mother had died from her wounds, James simply said, “Thank you.” Reverend Chappell, a neighbor of the Wolcott family, took James back to the parsonage while the authorities processed the crime scene. Ranger Riddles and Reverend Chappell began reviewing the evening’s events with James who still maintained that “someone” had shot his family. According to his report, Ranger Riddles idly chatted with James about his activities with his father. Then he asked James directly, “Did you kill your parents, son?” With only a brief hesitation and a sigh, James replied “Yes, sir,” and went on to describe each of the shootings in detail. Although there are variations of the subsequent exchange, court and police reports agree that James indicated that he hated his parents, giving motive to his actions. After he was informed of his Miranda Rights, James stated he did not want a lawyer and was willing to show the investigators where he hid the rifle.

James Wolcott was held in the Williamson County Jail in Georgetown until his trial.

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After The Trial

Martin McClain said his father told him at the time that James did not actually live at Rusk full time during his detention. Purportedly, one of James’ psychiatrists felt he didn’t deserve to be incarcerated and invited James to live in his own home. According to Martin McClain’s account, the doctor and his wife became “sort of surrogate parents,” apparently trusting James around their family. Medical records have since been destroyed, but in 1974, the hospital administrator sent a letter to the Williamson County District Attorney stating that James was no longer suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and requested a competency hearing. Just six years after shooting his entire family, a jury declared James Wolcott sane after only ten minutes of deliberation, making him a free man.

The district attorney at the time subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the indictments for Elizabeth and Libby’s murders, conceding if James had been insane when he killed his father, a new jury would certainly find him insane for the other two.

Because he had been found not-guilty of the murders, James, the only surviving heir, was entitled to his parents’ estate. He also received a monthly stipend from his father’s pension fund, and was ultimately awarded the balance of the estate, minus his attorney’s fees and those paid to Mrs. Wolcott’s sister, the estate executor. As unbelievable as it may seem in today’s “Google society,” what happened to James Wolcott after that was mostly unknown. As far as anyone knew, he left Georgetown and never contacted his family or anyone who knew him. He took nothing from his family home and left no forwarding information outside of court records. But he and his story remain a part of the city and those who lived here in the 1960s. Like many small towns that suffer a similar event, people tend to think of their home in terms of before-and-after the crime. It changes things because people just never imagine someone could do such a thing.

http://wilcoonline.com/GeorgetownAdvocate-158.htm

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