John du Pont

• 1. Introduction

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  John Eleuthère du Pont holds a distinction that no other American has earned. Among all the members of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, he is the only one convicted of murder. He was born into the du Pont family fortune and spent his life collecting things. He published as an ornithologist, which means a student of birds. He collected rare stamps, and he studied shells as a conchologist. He also poured money into sport and became a prominent supporter of amateur athletes across the United States. This documentary asks how a man with that much money and that many interests ended his life in a Pennsylvania prison. It asks what drew world-class athletes to live on his land, and why so many people who saw trouble coming did so little. It also asks what happened to the things he built and the things he owned after he was gone.

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• 2. Liseter Hall

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  John du Pont was born on the 22nd of November 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of four children of William du Pont, Jr. and Jean Liseter Austin. He grew up at Liseter Hall, a mansion that his maternal grandfather built in 1922 in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. The grandfather also gave his daughter and her husband more than 200 acres of land as a wedding present. Both families had emigrated from Europe at the start of the 19th century and had prospered in the United States.

  During the 1920s and 1930s, his parents bought more land and turned the property into Liseter Hall Farm. They bred, showed and raced Thoroughbred horses there. When John was 2, his parents divorced in 1941, and his mother kept the farm. She added a dairy herd of Guernsey cattle and bred Welsh ponies. John had two older sisters, Jean and Evelyn, and an older brother, Henry E. I. du Pont. A younger half brother, William du Pont III, came from his father's second marriage.

  In 1957, du Pont graduated from the Haverford School. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity, but he withdrew before finishing his freshman year. He moved on to college in Miami, Florida, where the scientist Oscar T. Owre taught and mentored him. In 1965, he graduated from the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology. Villanova University gave him an honorary doctorate in natural science in 1971. Some sources later claimed he held a Ph.D. from Villanova in 1973, but the school had no doctoral program in biology at that time. His zoology training soon carried him to the other side of the Pacific.

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• 3. Birds and Stamps

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  In the Philippines and the South Pacific, du Pont joined several scientific expeditions to study and identify species of birds. He is credited with the discovery of two dozen bird species. Back home, he turned his attention to an institution he had helped create. He founded the Delaware Museum of Natural History in 1957 and, as a young man, served on its board. The museum opened to the public in 1972 on a site near Winterthur, land donated by his relative Henry Francis du Pont. John du Pont later served for many years as its director.

  Villanova University also benefited from his money. He helped fund a new basketball arena that opened in 1986 and carried his name, the John Eleuthère du Pont Pavilion. After his conviction, the university removed his name and called it simply The Pavilion. Today it is known as The Finneran Pavilion.

  In 1980, an anonymous bidder at an auction paid $935,000 for one of the rarest stamps in the world. That bidder was du Pont, and the stamp was the British Guiana 1856 1c black on magenta. In 1986, he entered a display called British North America at the STOCKHOLMIA 86 international stamp exhibition under the name "John Foxbridge". He won the Grand Prix d'Honneur in the FIP Championship Class. He also founded the Eurasian Pacific Wildlife Foundation, based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, to support Pacific wildlife. He kept buying stamps even while in prison, though he was not allowed to bring them with him.

  On the 17th of June 2014, Sotheby's sold the black on magenta stamp for $9.5 million, including the buyer's premium. It was the fourth time that stamp had broken the record for the sale of a single stamp.

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• 4. A Short Marriage

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  On the 3rd of September 1983, du Pont, aged 45, married 29-year-old Gale Wenk, an occupational therapist. They had met after he injured his hand in an auto accident. They lived together for less than six months. Du Pont filed for divorce when they had been married for ten months.

  Wenk then sued him for $5 million. She claimed that he had pointed a gun at her and tried to push her into a fireplace. The divorce became final in 1987. In that same period, du Pont was estimated to be worth $200 million. His will cut her out entirely, so she could not inherit any of his estate. The will she was shut out of would later face legal challenges of its own.

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• 5. Team Foxcatcher

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  When his mother died in 1988, du Pont took over Liseter Hall Farm and renamed it Foxcatcher Farm. The name came from his father's famed Thoroughbred racing stable. He had been living in a smaller house on the estate, but days after her death he moved into the main house. He kept much of his mother's work going and added a wrestling facility with supporting buildings.

  In the 1980s, du Pont had become interested in wrestling and in pentathlon events. He called his private group of wrestlers "Team Foxcatcher". He built an Olympic swimming and wrestling training center and sponsored competitive events at the estate. He also sponsored wrestling, swimming, track and the modern pentathlon. He became a sponsor of USA Wrestling and promoted a run, swim and shoot subset of the modern pentathlon as a separate event.

  Olympic champion wrestlers Mark Schultz and Dave Schultz lived in houses on the grounds for years, and Dave's wife lived there with him. Dave Schultz also coached the Foxcatcher team. Another member was Kurt Angle, who won a gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics six months after Schultz's murder.

  In August 1988, a problem-plagued wrestling program that du Pont funded at Villanova was shut down after just two years. That December, a lawsuit claimed that du Pont had made improper sexual advances to Villanova assistant coach Andre Metzger. It was settled out of court.

  Du Pont also wrestled himself in his 50s. His only earlier experience was as a high school freshman. He began competing again at 55, at the 1992 Veteran's World Championships in Cali, Colombia. He returned in 1993 in Toronto, Ontario, and in 1995 in Sofia, Bulgaria. That last trip came roughly a year before the events of January 1996.

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• 6. The Driveway

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  On the 26th of January 1996, du Pont shot and killed Dave Schultz in the driveway of Schultz's home on the Newtown Square estate. Schultz was an Olympic champion freestyle wrestler who lived and worked on du Pont's land. He had helped du Pont coach the wrestling team for years. Two people saw the shooting. One was Schultz's wife Nancy. The other was Patrick Goodale, du Pont's head of security and a former U.S. Marine officer, who sat in the passenger seat of du Pont's car. Du Pont fired three bullets into Schultz. Police did not establish a motive.

  By the 1990s, friends and acquaintances had grown concerned about du Pont's erratic and paranoid behavior, but his wealth shielded him. Many people noticed his increasingly disruptive conduct in the months before the shooting. Still, some who knew him could not accept what happened. Joy Hansen Leutner, a triathlete from Hermosa Beach, California, lived for two years on the estate. She said du Pont had helped her through a stressful period in the mid-1980s: "With my family and friends, John gave me a new lease on life. He gave more than money; he gave himself emotionally." Of the killing, she said, "There's no way John in his right mind would have killed Dave." Newtown Township supervisor John S. Custer Jr. put it this way: "At the time of the murder, John didn't know what he was doing."

  Charles King Sr. blamed du Pont's "security consultant", Patrick Goodale. King said: "I don't think John could shoot someone unless he was pushed to, or was on drugs. After that guy started hanging around him, my son always said Johnny changed. He was scared of everything. He was always a little off. But I never had problems with him, and my son never had problems."

  After the shooting, du Pont locked himself in his mansion for two days and negotiated with police by telephone. The police turned off the home's power. They captured him when he stepped outside to fix his heater.

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• 7. Verdict and Prison

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  In September 1996, a court ruled du Pont incompetent to stand trial. Experts testified that he was psychotic and could not take part in his own defense. He was committed to a mental hospital, with his condition to be reviewed by the court in three months.

  At the trial, one of the defense's expert psychiatric witnesses described him as a paranoid schizophrenic. According to that witness, du Pont believed Schultz was part of an international conspiracy to kill him. He also believed people would break into his house and kill him, and he had installed a variety of security features there. Du Pont pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The court threw out the insanity defense. On the 25th of February 1997, a jury found him guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill.

  In Pennsylvania, third-degree murder is a lesser charge than first-degree, which is intentional killing. It is also lesser than second-degree, which is a killing during a felony. It indicates a lack of intent to kill. State law defines insanity under the M'Naghten Rule. That covers a person whose "disease or defect" leaves him unable to understand that his conduct is wrong or to conform it to the law.

  Because the verdict was guilty but mentally ill, sentencing went to Judge Patricia Jenkins. She could have imposed 5 to 40 years. She sentenced du Pont to 13 to 30 years. He was first confined at Cresson Correctional Institute and later housed at the State Correctional Institution - Mercer, a minimum-security prison.

  Nancy Schultz then filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him. The settlement amount was not disclosed. The Philadelphia Inquirer, citing anonymous sources, reported that du Pont was to pay at least $35 million.

  His attorneys appealed. In 2000, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict. He was first eligible for parole on the 29th of January 2009, and it was denied. In 2010, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected all but one issue he raised. That issue involved the scopolamine he had been prescribed before he killed Schultz, and the court asked for written briefs. His maximum sentence would have ended on the 29th of January 2026, when he would have been 87.

  Du Pont died on the 9th of December 2010, at age 72, from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said he was found unresponsive in his bed at the State Correctional Institution - Laurel Highlands. He was pronounced dead at 6:55 a.m. at UPMC Somerset. In accordance with his will, he was buried in his red Foxcatcher wrestling singlet at the Du Pont de Nemours Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware.

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• 8. What Remained

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  In the fall of 1996, after his arrest, du Pont sold off the dairy herd of nearly 70 Guernseys. He also ordered every building at Foxcatcher Farm painted matte black. In January 1998, after his conviction, the Delaware Museum of Natural History sold the dairy farm portion that it held in trust. A 123 acre segment is now the campus of the Episcopal Academy, a private K-12 school founded in 1785. The school moved there in 2008 from split campuses in Merion and Devon.

  In January 2013, Glenn Miller Demolition tore down the Liseter Hall mansion where du Pont was raised and where he had lived for 57 years. The 400 acre portion where it stood is being developed by Toll Brothers as "Liseter Estate", a planned community of 449 luxury homes. Most outbuildings were torn down. A 7,000 square foot historical barn will serve as the clubhouse.

  The fight over his money lasted longer. His will left 80 percent of his estate to Bulgarian wrestler Valentin Yordanov, an Olympic champion who had trained at Foxcatcher, and to Yordanov's relatives. The same split applied to the proceeds of the stamp sale. Yordanov's family received 80 percent and the Eurasian Pacific Wildlife Foundation received 20 percent. In June 2011, du Pont's niece Beverly A. du Pont Gauggel and nephew William H. du Pont filed a petition in Media, Pennsylvania. They argued that he was not "of sound mind" when he made the will, and said that he had claimed at various times to be Jesus Christ, the Dalai Lama and a Russian tsar. Judge Joseph Cronin dismissed the challenge for lack of standing. The niece and nephew were not named in two successive wills going back to 2006, so they would not be harmed if the September 2010 will stood. A three-judge panel of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that ruling on the 19th of November 2012.

  The story has been retold many times. The 2013 true crime book Wrestling with Madness recounts the murder of Dave Schultz. Mark Schultz, Dave's younger brother, wrote Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold. The 2014 film Foxcatcher, directed by Bennett Miller, explored du Pont's relationship with the Schultz brothers. Steve Carell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing du Pont. ESPN Films released The Prince of Pennsylvania in its 30 for 30 series, directed by Jesse Vile. It premiered on the 20th of October 2015 and featured former team members, Mark Schultz, du Pont's ex-wife Gale Denny, and the Schultz brothers' parents. In 2016, Netflix produced the documentary Team Foxcatcher, built from interviews and archival footage. The title The Prince of Pennsylvania comes from a letter Dave Schultz wrote to Prince Albert of Monaco, turning down an offer to coach a wrestling team in Monaco.

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