The photo of a buff, smiling, handcuffed Richard S. Baumhammers was projected in the courtroom yesterday above the defendant, a hunched figure whose muscle has melted to fat, whose once-perfect hair is now mashed and dull.
"This picture captures the post-arrest swagger," testified Dr. Michael Welner yesterday at the homicide trial of Baumhammers in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. "It's not just that he smiled. He straightened his posture, looked out over the crowd, took in the scene and appreciated that it was for him."
Welner, testifying for the prosecution, portrayed Baumhammers as a malingerer -- medical terminology for liar, faker or exaggerator. Far from a tortured, delusional man driven by voices to kill, he said, Baumhammers was a person who had a long history of animosity toward religious, ethnic and racial minorities and who acted on that hatred when he shot six people on April 28, 2000. Though Baumhammers has a history of legitimate mental illness, Welner said, the killings in the South Hills and Beaver County last year were not a result of psychosis, and the claims of hallucinations are fake.
Welner said when he began the series of interviews with the defendant before the trial, "Mr. Baumhammers greeted me with the news that 'March and April of 2000 were the worst months of my life. I was hearing voices constantly telling me to kill minorities.' "
The other psychiatrists who had seen Baumhammers, including the one who treated him regularly for seven years, never reported him talking about hallucinations or command voices.
"I don't think I merit more confidence after five minutes than the guy who's been treating him for seven years," said Welner, 36, a forensic psychiatrist who is clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine.
Welner is the prosecution's main expert witness, brought to rebut defense expert witnesses's claims that Baumhammers was legally insane when he committed last year's murders. Welner was permitted to testify out of order yesterday because he could not be in town today.
The prosecution also found plenty of ammunition for its arguments in cross-examination of a defense witness who testified earlier in the day.
Dr. Lazslo Petras was called by the defense to testify about Baumhammers, whom he interviewed the night of the killings and also treated at Mayview State Hospital, where Petras is on staff. Petras was the first psychiatrist to interview Baumhammers after he was charged with methodically killing five and wounding a sixth earlier that day.
Security and tension were high at Beaver County Jail following the traumatic day in which police struggled to keep up with a horrific path of death and desecration through the South Hills and Beaver County. Petras was forced to interview Baumhammers in a trailer crammed with law enforcement officials and said he himself was anxious and tense.
When he asked Baumhammers how he had ended up there, he replied with a "nervous smirk," Petras testified. "He said, 'I don't know. I don't remember. You tell me.' " Unable to induce Baumhammers to discuss the events of the day, Petras moved on to other subjects. He used several standard sets of questions used to gather information about the patient's mental functioning, including memory.
"We give a standard short-term memory test in which you give the patient three objects and ask them to please remember them because I'll ask you to recall them later." The interviewer asks the patient if he remembers them 15 or 20 minutes later. In the somewhat chaotic atmosphere, Petras said, he never asked Baumhammers to recall the list.
"At the end of the interview, as he was leaving, he turned around and said, 'Doctor, you forgot to ask about the three objects.' I said, 'Sorry, I forgot. Do you remember them?' He said yes and named them."
Deputy District Attorney Edward J. Borkowski used cross-examination of Petras to portray Baumhammers as calculating rather than incapacitated, a man who used selective memory to avoid incriminating himself, who faked physical discomfort to avoid psychiatric evaluations, who even under medical care and medication continued to display the bigotry and racism that the prosecution contends was the motivation for the shootings.
Petras testified that members of Baumhammers' treatment team at Mayview reported that Baumhammers refused to go to the recreation room there because "there are too many black people there."
He consistently complained of chest pains when Petras or other members of the staff tried to discuss the events of April 28 with him or conduct psychological evaluations.
"But did he not sit down and talk for two hours with Dr. [Robert] Wettstein?" Borkowski asked.
"Yes," agreed Petras.
Wettstein is a Shadyside psychiatrist hired by the defense as a consultant in the case.
When Borkowski brought on Welner, he painted a picture of a man who he said fit the category of two psychiatric disorders: delusional disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. He firmly rejected the diagnosis of schizophrenia that several defense psychiatrists had given and also dismissed the notion that Baumhammers' delusional disorder was severe enough to incapacitate him.
Welner methodically moved through the arguments that had been put forward in previous testimony.
He said that his review of the diaries of Baumhammers' mother, Inese Baumhammers, indicated that there were no severe problems in the months before the killings. Baumhammers was dating, using escort services, active on the Internet, not complaining of medical ailments or of being watched or followed. He saw his regular psychiatrist in March, and was scheduled for an appointment in two months -- an indication he was stable, Welner said, since his psychiatrist saw him as often as daily when he was experiencing difficulties.
"There is no indication that he believed the victims worked for the government," which was the object of Baumhammers' paranoid delusions. "He was antagonistic toward the victims, not fearful of them."
He said Baumhammers had told him that he "lost control" on April 28. "His actions show otherwise. He maintained the secrecy of the plan. He buckled his seat belt. He reloaded in the parking lots. He showed no signs of emotional distress. He exited the scene without detection. He used a map. He adhered to traffic regulations. He didn't engage in indulgent shooting. He shot, accomplished the objective of striking the victim in a vital area, and moved on."
The long Sunday in court started with a motion for a mistrial by Difenderfer. He said that Manning's decision to view a tape of an interview given by defense witness Dr. James R. Merikangas along with prosecutors and with Welner was inappropriate and showed the judge was biased in favor of the prosecution. Manning said he was unaware that Welner was in the room during the viewing, and that he had told all parties that he intended to review the interview because of concerns about whether Merikangas had contradicted elements of his testimony in the interview. Manning denied the motion.
Difenderfer also brought up the possibility that the jury could have seen a headline in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that read: "Testimony fails legal-insanity standard, judge rules." Manning asked the jurors whether they had inadvertently seen anything relating to the trial, and they all said no.
Difenderfer again unsuccessfully sought a mistrial late in the day after Welner, as part of his presentation, projected onto a screen a number of pages that outlined his conclusions about Baumhammers' motivations. One of those pages contained a statement attributed to Anita Gordon, Baumhammers' next-door neighbor and first victim. It said that in 1995 or 1996, Gordon, who was Jewish, told a friend that Baumhammers was an anti-Semite and that "I'm terrified of him."
Difenderfer argued that the statement should not have been viewed by the jury. But Manning told the panel to disregard the text on that page and denied the request for a mistrial.
