`Gentleman' killer wants to be free

[Ubiquitous]

Richard Greist killed his wife 18 years ago. Today, at the
asylum, he seems sane.

By Rena Singer
INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT

As a girls' softball team warmed up on the groomed grounds of Norristown
State Hospital, a neatly dressed and perfumed man with a trim beard
watched quietly from a blanket at the edge of the diamond.

With a cellular phone on one hip, a pager on the other, the spectator
could have passed as a doctor or hospital administrator. The players
asked if he was their umpire.

No, he said with a smile.

"They would never ask that of the other patients here," he told a
visitor sitting with him. "And if they had any idea of who I was,
they wouldn't ask me either."

The man on the blanket was Richard Greist, who in a psychotic fit 18
years ago butchered his eight-months-pregnant wife in their East
Coventry home, ripped the fetus from her womb, stabbed his 6-year-old
daughter in one eye, and slashed his grandmother across her throat. The
grandmother and daughter survived.

Greist, a former aide at the Pennhurst Center, an institution for the
mentally retarded in Chester County, later told investigators he
believed the women were possessed by the devil.

Found not guilty by reason of insanity, Greist has spent nearly two
decades as a patient at Norristown State Hospital. During that time,
according to a number of friends, doctors and hospital workers, he has
recovered his sanity. He has not had a psychotic episode since 1981,
doctors say, and has been off medication for 11 years.

In recent years, doctors who examined him almost all agreed he was well
enough to be permitted unsupervised leaves from the hospital, though
none was granted. Others have testified that he finally is sane enough
to be released into society.

On Wednesday, Greist will appear before Chester County Judge Leonard
Sugerman for his annual hearing to determine if he is well enough to
be released.

"Richard is as normal as any of my neighbors," said Theodore Thompson,
Greist's attorney. "And he would like the walls of his world to be
expanded a little."

Chester County Assistant District Attorney John Crane counters that
Greist remains "seriously mentally disabled" and dangerous.

"Richard is very charming," Crane said. "Oh boy, is he a manipulator.
He is very clever and has managed to manipulate people very well. Put
it together with his background of violence and you better watch out."

"I feel a responsibility to the general public to keep Greist in the
hospital," said Crane, who has handled Greist's case since 1985. "I
would not sleep well at night if he had the opportunity for a repeat
performance."

It seems unlikely that Greist will win release this year or anytime
soon. His acts were so horrific that Greist himself is not surprised
that Sugerman, year after year, has declined to grant him freedom
despite testimony that he has regained his sanity.

"Doctors . . . can't predict future dangerousness, no matter what
they say," Sugerman said in a recent interview. "Unfortunately,
there's no way for anyone to say that he is guaranteed cured and will
never be violent again. That's just the way mental illness is."

For Greist and his supporters, that is the crux of the problem: No one
can guarantee that Greist will not become violent again, and the
notoriety of his acts has made the district attorney, the judge and
some doctors cautious.

"People judge him by his past actions, not his present condition," said
Patricia Haupt, a psychiatric nurse at Norristown State Hospital. "I
don't understand why he hasn't been discharged yet. It was a horrible
thing he did, but he was ill. It was a mental illness."

All sides of the debate agree that Greist, now 45, is not a typical
mental patient.

The trim, 6-foot-1, auburn-haired man is described by some workers at
the hospital as "a gentleman" who rushes to open doors for female
staff and patients and apologizes for using such words as "damn."

While hospitalized, he has had at least three long-term romantic
relationships, including a 1990 marriage to a former psychiatric
nurse who committed suicide after they had been married about a year.

Becky Brown, the director of a social club on the grounds of the
hospital, has known Greist for 10 years.

"The first time I met him, I thought he was a recreation therapist
here," Brown said."Richard really helps the other patients here. I've
never seen him act anything from normal."

Greist works in the hospital's commissary Monday through Friday. At
night, he runs his own housing-rehabilitation business by phone.

Since 1991, he has renovated and then rented three dilapidated houses
in Norristown. Because he is not allowed off hospital grounds without
a special escort, Greist employs contractors to do the renovation work.
Last year, he made a $2,000 profit from the venture.

In his free time, Greist watches television -- PBS's business report
is a favorite. He keeps a journal, now 2,000 pages, and plays guitar.

Greist credits his routine and self-awareness with enabling him to
keep emotionally stable.

"I work hard at my mental health," Greist said. "When I'm stressed, if
I'm upset, I can do isometrics, take a hot bath, drink milk, try to
relax and go to sleep, or if all else fails I can see a doctor and get
medicine to calm me.These are powerful tools."

Acknowledging that there is no guarantee he will not suffer a relapse,
Greist feels secure that he would recognize an onset.

"Anybody can snap, anybody can break," he said, snapping his delicate
fingers to emphasize his words. "But now I know the early-warning
signs: sleeplessness, paranoia, hallucinations. That's why I feel
safe and trust myself. I now understand the signs and know the tools
available to counter them."

"If I didn't trust myself, I wouldn't want myself discharged. I
wouldn't want to take another person's life. I wouldn't want to live
through that again."

One who is not willing to trust Greist with his freedom is his
grandmother, whom he attacked with a butcher knife and screwdriver
during the same episode in which his wife was slain.

"I personally think he should never be released," Doris Houck said. "He
is not a stable person. I don't think he can make it in the real world.
He is where he belongs." Greist came closest to freedom in 1994,
when the district attorney's two expert witnesses agreed with the
hospital's treatment plan, which would have permitted Greist to make
unsupervised trips.

The district attorney soon after found Edward Guy, a psychologist at
Hahnemann University Hospital, who described Greist as "a powder keg"
and a "high-functioning schizophrenic" and compared Greist to cult
leader Jim Jones.

"It is the high-functioning, intelligent person that is ill who is
the greatest threat," Guy told the court.

Based on Guy's testimony, Greist was kept in the hospital with a
minimum of privileges.

Last year, Guy modified his testimony.

"While Norristown State Hospital is to some degree an asylum from
the stresses of life, I would like to see him eased out," Guy
testified last year. "I consider him to be in a stable remission."

Little hard scientific evidence is presented at these hearings, said
Crane.

"It is just one doctor's best guess against another's," Crane
said. "That's all this is. There's no certainty with mental illness."

Experts say a percentage of people diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia or mixed personality disorder -- two of the
labels placed on Greist during his time at Norristown State
Hospital -- can recover and lead normal lives.

Thirty percent to 40 percent of people diagnosed as paranoid
schizophrenics recover to the point that they can live independently
without being a danger to themselves or others, said Alan M. Gruenberg,
a senior attending psychiatrist at the Pennsylvania Institute, the
oldest psychiatric facility in the country.

How extreme a patient's behavior was during his sickness has no
bearing on his prognosis, Gruenberg said.

Still, doctors agree that they cannot give an absolute guarantee of
future behavior.

"You never know if patients will be OK when they leave," said Albert
R. DiDario, the hospital superintendent. "You can't prove that a
patient will never snap again."

And that uncertainty forms the core of the district attorney's
argument each year: If Greist was violently insane before, he
could be again.

Thompson, Greist's attorney, lets out an exasperated sigh when he
hears that argument repeated.

"If you base everything on his history," Thompson said, "and that
obviously never changes, the outcome of these hearings will never
change. Richard will be in the hospital then forever."

Greist calls it "cruel and unusual punishment."

But he said he nevertheless would abide by the judge's ruling to
prove he is cooperative and can live by the law.

"I could go out to the road, jump on the bus, take off at any
time," said Greist, looking out the open gate just a few hundred
feet from his building. "I don't because I'd be breaking the law,
and one of these days I believe the judge will eventually discharge
me."

--
"I don't know what kind of hell-demon you are buddy, but I'd wizz
on Mother Theresa herself to avoid that fate!"