KYW Flashback: The Notorious 'Foxcatcher' Murder Case
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- A major movie has rekindled interest in the bizarre slaying of champion wrestler Dave Schultz.
He was shot to death by John DuPont, the eccentric heir to the DuPont chemical fortune, at a training complex he owned in Delaware County, called "Foxcatcher."
There was never any question about whether or not DuPont pulled the trigger in January of 1996. There were stunned eyewitnesses.
But without a logical motive, it became a question of whether the hard-drinking DuPont was guilty of murder, or was he insane?
Psychiatrists, trying to determine if he was competent to stand trial, suggested he was psychotic.
KYW Newsradio reporters covering the trial broadcast the middle-of-the-road verdict: the jury had found him guilty but mentally ill.
In March of 1997, Judge Patricia Jenkins issued the sentence for the man who had it all and lost it, in what some of DuPont's friends speculate was a fit of delusional rage.
She ordered him to serve 13 to 30 years behind bars in a Pennsylvania state prison. He died in jail after spending just over the minimum thirteen.
