Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold (20 page)

It had been five years since my last Olympics, and I had been depressed the entire time. My life needed a change in direction, and jujitsu was the avenue. The takedowns and conditioning of wrestling were superior to any martial art, and combining wrestling with the submissions of jujitsu would create an even better martial art than either of them alone.

Pedro Sauer was one of Rickson’s students and had the Brazilian jujitsu club in Provo that had brought Rickson to town. Pedro was smart and fluid, his technique flawless. He was the perfect coach for
me.

W
hile I was experiencing life-altering moments in Utah, Dave’s wrestling career was filled with disappointment, injury, and determination.

Following his setback to Kenny Monday in the 1988 wrestle-off for the Olympic team, Dave took a year off from competition to coach the US national team. Dave came back during the ’89 season, when Kenny was in the prime of his outstanding freestyle career.

Dave and Kenny had a great rivalry going on the mat, and the two also had immense respect for each other. When Kenny won gold in Seoul, Dave was there to hoist him on his shoulders and take him on a victory lap around the mat.

Dave’s international popularity was probably never more evident than at the 1991 tournament in Tbilisi. He had won there in ’87, and no American had won the tournament twice.

Russian wrestling fans adored Dave. Zeke Jones, the current US freestyle national team coach, was coaching the Tbilisi team in ’91, and he told me that Dave’s finals match with a Russian ended in a tie, but the refs awarded the victory to the Russian because of Dave’s passivity, which had been caused by a shoulder injury.

The fans went nuts, throwing things onto the arena floor and jeering. It took several minutes for officials to get the crowd under control. The refs reconvened, and both wrestlers’ hands were raised
in victory. The fans wildly cheered the decision even though their own countryman had appeared to have won the championship. Zeke said he felt as if he were in a scene right out of
The Twilight Zone
. I’ve been told that was the only time two gold medals have been awarded in the same weight class at the tournament.

Kenny beat Dave again in the ’91 trials for the World Team. After that loss, Dave, tired of cutting weight, decided to move up to 180.5 pounds in his bid to return to the Olympics. Dave struggled with nagging injuries after the switch, and his new weight class was one of the strongest on the US team, with defending world champ Kevin Jackson, Royce Alger, and Melvin Douglas, who was a year away from beginning his run of four consecutive US national championships. All four of those guys probably could have medaled at the upcoming Olympics.

Dave lost his best-of-three to Douglas after winning the first match. Jackson wound up claiming the spot on the US team and won gold in Barcelona.

Dave turned thirty-three in the summer of ’92. He wasn’t the type of wrestler who got counted out of too many things during his career, but at that age, the widespread opinion was that Dave had missed out on his last opportunity to compete in the Olympics.

My brother, however, only grew more determined. He set his sights on the 1996 Games in Atlanta, Georgia. He dropped back down to 163, Kenny Monday retired, and Dave became our country’s top-ranked wrestler. He won the national championship and placed second at Worlds. In ’94, he won the national and World Cup titles and placed second at the Goodwill Games. In ’95, he won his third consecutive national championship and seventh overall. He also won his fifth World Cup title that year.

Dave’s inspiring comeback had become a good story. At age thirty-six, his performances were giving every indication that he was on his way to winning an Olympic medal twelve years after our double golds at the Los Angeles Games.

—

T
o the same degree that Dave’s career had trekked upward, the atmosphere at Foxcatcher Farm seemed equally headed downward. The stories I heard from Dave, my good friend Dan Chaid, and other wrestlers there became increasingly perplexing. In the aftermath of Dave’s murder, when the media began investigating du Pont’s past, I heard even more bizarre stories detailing how erratic John’s behavior had become.

Convinced there were spirits and spies inside the mansion, John had brought in a psychic to describe the spirits residing in the home. He also had workers check every inch of the walls and floors to locate the spies John knew were watching him. The spies weren’t found. But still adamant they were there, John had all the mansion’s columns and walls X-rayed.

He also assigned a group of wrestlers the task of searching for Nazi spies that du Pont had observed hiding in treetops, and he believed enemies were coming through the mansion’s tunnels intent on killing him.

John ordered treadmills removed from the training center because he believed their clocks were transporting him back in time. He told a wrestler to take off his baseball cap because he believed the cap was transmitting some kind of signals. The balls on du Pont’s billiards table were sent off for inspection because he suspected they had transmitting devices inside them.

A relative said John had called himself “the Dalai Lama of the United States” and would not acknowledge anyone who did not address him by that title. At other times, he also claimed to be the president of Bulgaria and of the Soviet Union.

He believed that rocks communicated with him, and he talked about a device he was convinced was inside the mansion that sprayed a unique oil on people that made them disappear. He shot geese that he insisted were trying to place him under a spell.

Older stories were made public, too.

In the mid ’80s, John had blown up a family of newborn foxes with dynamite for no known reason. In 1990, he had blood running down his legs. When asked what was wrong, he explained that he could see bugs digging into his skin and was plucking them out, tearing pieces of flesh off with them.

John owned a tank, which had been stripped of its weapons, that he liked to drive around the estate and in parades. One night around Christmastime in 1984, he drove the tank to a home on his estate occupied by a policeman and his wife. John had driven through several trees and had scratches on his head from hitting the branches. Bloodied and drunk, he asked the wife if her husband could “come out to play.”

Yet those who stepped forward to tell of their odd experiences with du Pont said they hadn’t thought that he would hurt, much less kill, anyone. His behavior was usually dismissed with “That’s just John,” or attributed to his alcohol and cocaine use. Family members later said they had been concerned about John’s mental health and tried to persuade him to get help. But he refused and, under Pennsylvania law, they were helpless to do more without his consent.

Although the stories went back more than a decade, it was clear that they had become increasingly outlandishness over recent years.

And just in the past year or so, I learned of a story that had been reported years earlier and I had not heard of even though I was working at Villanova at the time. In December 1987, John hit a flag man directing traffic. Du Pont wasn’t driving fast, but he struck the man hard enough that the man rolled up onto the hood of John’s Lincoln Town Car and then fell onto the ground when du Pont stopped. Du Pont told the man he was the Vanderbilt wrestling coach and dragged him to the sidewalk, although I still have a difficult time believing John was strong enough to drag another man. A witness said du Pont stayed with the man for a few minutes and before police or medical help could arrive, told the man in a slurred voice, “You’ll be all right” and drove away.

When du Pont arrived at his estate, he immediately got into the helicopter with Chaid, Calabrese, and another man to go to the Philadelphia airport and fly to Wisconsin, where they would meet up with Dave to attend a wrestling match. Du Pont ordered everyone not to talk on the way to the airport. On board the Learjet, he told the group what had happened and that he might have killed the flagman. While they were en route to Wisconsin, du Pont’s lawyer made several calls to Nancy to have John call him as soon as he arrived. In front of Dave and Nancy, and still with his travel partners, John again admitted he had hit a man with his car.

Du Pont, Dan, Rob, and the other man flew back home that night. When questioned by police the next day, John said that he hadn’t thought the man was seriously hurt and that he left the
scene because he had to make the trip to Wisconsin. The man, who was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released, did not file a complaint and received an insurance settlement. John was given a minor traffic violation and fined a whopping total of $42.50.

Looking back, it seems like du Pont spent all of those years just one step from being exposed for what he truly was. The wrong person made angry could have ruined everything for him. But John had the connections, the power, and the money to keep from being made public the selfish, manipulative man that he was.

•

The problems at Foxcatcher seemed to become more frequent when Jordanov moved onto the farm. Valentin was from Bulgaria, and he had been one of the marquee wrestlers in that dual that du Pont had set up.

After Valentin arrived at Foxcatcher, he arranged matches for du Pont in Bulgaria against wrestlers in the Veterans division, for ages fifty and over. John would fly over to southeastern Europe and pay Bulgarians to lose to him. Some of those wrestlers made more money losing to John than they could make in a year competing in legitimate matches.

During one tournament, a special exhibition match was held between John and a Bulgarian wrestler. A du Pont win had been arranged, but the Bulgarian got out to a big lead in the first minutes. Du Pont couldn’t do anything to the guy to score points. The Bulgarian realized he was in danger of winning and threw himself onto his own back, pinning himself. The ref called the fall and, for some reason, the Tunisian wrestlers there started celebrating with John, hoisting him on their shoulders and parading him around
the arena. Who knows? He might have paid the Tunisians to help him celebrate, too.

I hadn’t heard of such Veterans tournaments taking place in the United States. I had seen a Veterans match once and felt sorry for the two competitors because they were slow and uncoordinated. I think John exerted his influence to have Veterans tournaments set up in our country. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he had started donating money specifically to the Veterans program. Those tournaments started becoming popular and all kinds of retired wrestlers started competing again. My coach at UCLA, Dave Auble, became a Veterans World Champion.

According to what I was told, du Pont really became fixated on winning a World Championship in the Veterans division. He wrestled in a few tournaments but was unable to win. It wasn’t uncommon for Veterans tournaments to have weight classes with no competitors, so to win a world title, John started showing up and signing up for an empty weight class, regardless of whether he qualified weightwise. No officials would say anything to stop him. They couldn’t afford to bite the hand that fed their sport.

José Betancourt, who had thrown a match to John on the Villanova team’s trip to Puerto Rico, became friends with du Pont. José took part in a fake match with John, which I don’t think John knew had been rigged. Du Pont beat José by a score of 14–13 or something similar. Dave told me he considered José his hero for making John happy. When John was happy, life on the farm was better for everyone there.

Chaid told me a story, which has since become well documented, from when Mario Saletnik came to live in the “old schoolhouse,” a renovated building at the farm. Mario was FILA’s
highest-ranking official and head of its association of officials. He had been influential in getting John to donate to FILA. He was also head official at Olympics and World Championships. He had been the “extra official” assigned to watch Dave and me at the ’84 Olympics after Dave had hurt the Yugoslav and I had broken the Turk’s elbow.

Mario’s moving to Foxcatcher surprised me. I still do not know what caused him to move there. Mario was the most powerful official in wrestling, yet he had chosen to expose himself to becoming corrupted. John got a kick out of manipulating people to see if they would go against their principles in exchange for money. It was a game for him. He really did believe that everyone had a price. Now it was Mario’s turn to be tested.

After a while, du Pont determined that Mario was trying to get more money from him not only for FILA but also for himself. John decided he no longer wanted Mario around.

During the winter, du Pont had somehow driven his new Lincoln Continental into a pond on the estate. A few days later, John met Mario at the front gate in another Lincoln Continental. Mario said he had heard from the wrestlers about John’s driving his car into a pond and asked how it had happened.

“I’ll show you,” du Pont told him. “Get in the back.”

John handed Mario a plane ticket back to his home country of Canada and proceeded to drive toward the same pond, through the same set of trees, and right back into the pond. John jumped out of his car on the way into the pond and returned to his mansion, leaving Mario there in the backseat. Mario managed to get out and walked back to the wrestling facility, where, noticeably freaked out, he described what had just happened. Mario was all
wet, and when he took his suit pants off, his legs were red from the near-freezing water.

It became a joke among the wrestlers, who would tease Mario by asking if he wanted to go for a swim. But that incident later would be looked back on as the first sign that du Pont intended to start getting rid of some of those around him and would do so by whatever means necessary, including causing physical harm.

John’s history was to become enamored of a sport or activity—such as collecting, law enforcement, triathlon, or wrestling—and make it his “toy” until he became bored with it. Then he would discard it and set off to find a new toy.

In my opinion, John reached that point with wrestling. He had gained power within wrestling’s governing bodies and over some of the sport’s key players. He had climbed the sport’s political ladder. He had bought himself more international influence and prestige than he could through any of his other collections. But still, wrestling was his toy, and it was time to discard it.

—

J
ohn and Chaid, who had come to Villanova in 1987, started having problems with each other that led to a story Dan told me. In October 1995, Dan was lifting weights in the Foxcatcher weight room when John came in carrying an automatic assault rifle with a perforated barrel. John crouched in an aggressive stance, pointed the rifle at Dan, and said, “Don’t fuck with me. I want you off the farm now.”