02/23/2014
Killer Ulysses Cribbs now bedeviled by dementia
Killer Ulysses Cribbs now bedeviled by dementia
LINCOLN — Ulysses Cribbs needs a new home.
He needs a place where caregivers know how to deal with his confusion.
And aggression.
And fear.
Anyone who lived in Omaha nearly four decades ago probably knows the name.
On a Saturday evening in the fall of 1977, Cribbs carried a 12-gauge shotgun into an Omaha supper club. He fired six shots into the crowd of several hundred.
Then he walked out, leaving one dead and 25 wounded.
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Several hours later, police arrested him at his home, where he sat in pajamas in front of the TV, eating a sandwich. The shotgun had been cleaned.
Despite his calm demeanor, Cribbs had suffered a psychotic break. The 32-year-old Air Force veteran thought the people enjoying a stage show at Club 89 were the enemy from his war in Vietnam.
A judge decided that Cribbs was not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was sent to live at the Lincoln Regional Center. For all but one of the past 37 years, the center has been his home. During the one year he was allowed to return to Omaha, Cribbs displayed violent behavior, and was sent back to the center following a suicide attempt.
But now his psychiatrist says Cribbs, 68, must leave the institution again.
In addition to schizophrenia, Cribbs has developed rapidly progressing dementia. Late last year the psychiatrist told Douglas County District Judge Marlon Polk that Cribbs needs to be moved to a nursing home or an Alzheimer's unit. The psychiatrist said the state would look for suitable community care providers.
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said he will wait to see what the medical professionals recommend before deciding if he would oppose such a move.
“He committed a horrific crime,” Kleine said. “From a public safety standpoint, we want to make sure he can't do anything like that again, wherever he's at.”
In the late 1970s, Club 89 was a popular food and music venue in an industrial area of southwest Omaha. The establishment had white tablecloths, a dance floor and a stage where there were regular performances by entertainers such as Ricky Nelson, the Platters and Marilyn Maye.
On the night of Nov. 26, 1977, the big crowd included a group of off-duty sheriff's deputies celebrating the wedding anniversary of a colleague. A few children sat with their families at some of the tables.
Shortly after 7:30 p.m. the house lights dimmed and attention turned toward the stage for a comedy show by Dave Wingert, a WOW disc jockey. Wingert told the audience he and his fellow performers had some surprises for them.
Just then, the first shot.
Wingert remembers thinking it sounded like a firecracker. He was confused by the noise. Then more blasts.
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“I saw a flash, felt a burn and saw blood. I thought, 'Oh, my God, I've been shot.' ”
He dived under the cabaret tables in front of the stage.
Larry Williams, one of Wingert's stage partners, realized the audience thought it was part of the act. So he stepped to the microphone and told people to get down. The shooting was real.
Except for the gunfire, the room fell nearly quiet. People were stunned into silence.
In seconds, it was over. The gunman walked out, told someone in the parking lot he had just shot a bunch of people and drove away.
That's when the cries started.
People tended to the wounded. A man in a bloodstained suit shouted that his friend had been shot. Rescue workers rushed in with gurneys and IV bags.
The gunman had sprayed the room with buckshot, which is why so many people were struck though just six blasts had been fired. Ambulances took the wounded to four Omaha area hospitals.
Some suffered serious wounds that required multiple surgeries and years of recovery. Others were treated and released. Wingert's injury was minor.
Dennis Lipari, 39, a Douglas County sheriff's captain and father of six, died shortly after arriving at a hospital. His wife, Ruth, lost one eye and nearly all of her sight in the other. Two of the other deputies at their table were wounded.
Wingert heard one of the deputies lament that he didn't have his service pistol or he could have stopped the gunman.
Police swarmed the scene and learned the gunman had left in a Chrysler Cordoba. A witness caught a partial plate number.
About six hours later, police arrested Cribbs at the Omaha home where he lived with his girlfriend and infant son. He did not resist.
Cribbs had been a standout basketball player at Central High School and went on to play football at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. After the shooting, Warren Marquiss, his former coach at Central, told The World-Herald that Cribbs had been popular in school and won awards in debate.
But the coach also said Cribbs had returned from the war a changed man. In a phone conversation about a year before the shooting, the coach asked his former player why he wasn't working.
“He replied that he no longer had any confidence in himself,” Marquiss said. “I'm all nervous and shook, coach.”
Neighbors described him as a sharp dresser who bought neighbor kids ice cream and seemed friendly enough. But one mentioned a strange story Cribbs had relayed not long before the shooting.
Cribbs had been hunting near Lincoln when he shot a squirrel with his shotgun. But as he went to retrieve the animal, he noticed gopher holes nearby. He counted his shells and decided he didn't have enough ammunition to fight off a horde of gophers, so he left the squirrel.
Authorities soon learned Cribbs had been treated for mental illness at the Veterans Hospital in Omaha.
Douglas County Attorney Donald “Pinky” Knowles charged Cribbs with first-degree murder and several related felonies. Over the ensuing months, powerful anti-psychotic medications stabilized his condition and he was deemed competent to stand trial. Rather than a jury, however, Douglas County District Judge John Grant heard the case.
During the trial, a psychiatrist for the defense testified Cribbs suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. The illness was triggered by the emotional trauma of combat, said Omaha attorney David Herzog, hired to represent Cribbs by his family.
Before he was discharged from the Air Force, Cribbs had spent about 600 days in military hospitals for mental health treatment, Herzog said. After he returned to Omaha in 1971, he was admitted to the Veterans Hospital multiple times.
Six months before the shooting, Cribbs left the hospital against his doctor's advice. Steps were not taken, however, to have him involuntarily committed.
The man Herzog got to know as they prepared for trial wasn't a deranged killer, he said.
“He's the nicest guy — chatty, conversational,” Herzog said. “Just a nice guy … when he was medicated.”
During the trial, Cribbs was questioned by his psychiatrist. He expressed remorse for what he had done but said he had no clear recollection of the shooting.
On May 7, 1979, the judge found Cribbs not guilty by reason of insanity. Perhaps knowing his decision would be criticized, Grant called the attorney who prosecuted the case “a coward” for delaying a psychiatric evaluation of Cribbs after his arrest.
“Were you afraid of getting two or three psychiatrists who would say he did not know right from wrong?” the judge asked.
After the verdict, the Douglas County Mental Health Board committed Cribbs to the Lincoln Regional Center. By law, Cribbs is entitled to annual status hearings to determine if he remains mentally ill and dangerous to himself or others. If the judge determines he is not, Cribbs must be discharged to a less-restrictive setting.
Cribbs has lived in various units on the center's campus and in an outside transition program. His symptoms have largely been controlled with medication, although he has suffered setbacks from time to time.
He also told his doctors why he walked into Club 89 in 1977.
“He stated at the time of his crime, he saw ghostlike figures and thought that they were Vietnamese,” Dr. Klaus Hartmann wrote in a letter to the court. “He reported that he took a shotgun and fired into the nightclub, thinking that the people inside were the enemy.”
In June 2009, after 30 years of inpatient treatment, Cribbs was allowed to return to Omaha. Judge Polk determined that, under the law, Cribbs had to be treated in a less-restrictive setting.
He moved in with his sister, and other relatives came together to help him adjust to a life of freedom. But the adjustment proved too much.
Within a year of his release he had been hospitalized five times at the VA Medical Center. During one of his stays he was smacked by a male patient and Cribbs smacked him back, Dr. Hartmann wrote. Cribbs also thought a female patient wanted him to take her children, so he slapped her.
In October 2010 Cribbs overdosed on prescription medication. The suicide attempt got him sent back to the regional center in January 2011.
Things did not go well after his return. He told therapists he felt overcome by fear at the thought of having to reintegrate into the community. Unprovoked, he slapped a fellow patient and threatened to harm two others.
“There have been, over the years, similar such incidents when he felt under stress, though there is no history of any serious violence during his previous or current stay at our facility,” Dr. Hartmann wrote in 2011.
Over the next two years Cribbs made progress, and his treatment team was ready once again to recommend he be allowed to live with his sister. Then, last Oct. 1, the judge received another letter from the psychiatrist, saying Cribbs had taken “a remarkable turn for the worse.”
Cribbs was now diagnosed with dementia in addition to mental illness. “He is often confused, disorganized and aggressive,” Hartmann informed the court. “He has had to be in seclusion and in restraints part of the time.”
The psychiatrist also indicated that the center was no longer able to provide for Cribbs' needs. The doctor recommended discharge to an outside nursing home or Alzheimer's unit.
It's not clear, however, why Hartmann made the recommendation, because the regional center is able to provide necessary medical care, including treatment for Alzheimer's, said Marla Augustine, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
She turned down a request for an interview with Hartmann, saying, “We can't talk about patients or anything related to them.” Cribbs' sister in Omaha also declined to talk for this story.
Cribbs is scheduled for an annual status hearing March 31 in Douglas County District Court. He will be represented at the hearing by Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley.
He is one of 28 patients committed to the regional center after being found not responsible by reason of insanity. It costs the state $202,600 annually to house such patients. In comparison, the highest annual cost for a prison inmate is about $40,000.
Perhaps the most infamous resident of the forensic unit is Erwin Charles Simants, 68, who in 1975 killed six members of a Sutherland, Neb., family. In October, a judge rejected what was considered Simants' strongest case for discharge.
Dick Glasford, who owned Club 89, said he opposed Cribbs' release in 2009, and he does so now. He's not convinced by the argument that Cribbs no longer represents a danger because of his advanced age.
“I would hate to see him out in society,” said Glasford, 79. He sold the business in 1990, and it was subsequently destroyed in a fire.
Wingert was 29 when he stood on a stage and tried to make sense of what was happening. He's 65 now. Surviving the experience taught him “we only have right now, and it's a gift.”
He harbors no ill will for the man who taught him that lesson, he said. But he offered one thought, if a new home is found for Cribbs.
“For his own sake, and for everybody's sake, he needs to be on his meds,” Wingert said.
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