Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold (22 page)

Paparo, not wanting du Pont to end the call, dragged out the conversation until supervisors were consulted and police officers stationed around the mansion were placed on alert. Paparo began negotiating a trip outside for du Pont. Paparo made John promise—repeatedly—that he would not carry a gun outside with him.

Wearing a dark Bulgarian team sweat suit with a light blue Team Foxcatcher shirt underneath, du Pont exited the house and took his first steps down the path toward the greenhouse. A SWAT team member, concealed behind a tree, waited for du Pont to walk far enough that he wouldn’t be able to turn and run back into the house. The officer then pointed his gun at du Pont and ordered him to stop and raise his hands.

John did as instructed, then dropped his hands and made a run for the house. The officer stepped out from behind the tree and again ordered du Pont to stop. Du Pont stopped for only a second before dashing for the door again.

The officer chased him down and grabbed him. Other officers converged on du Pont and handcuffed him.

From du Pont’s neck hung a laminated pass from the previous year’s World Championships. The pockets of his sweatpants contained keys and a passport. As du Pont had promised, he had left the house unarmed.

Du Pont was placed in a police van and, forty-eight hours after the standoff began, was on his way to
jail.

I
took leave from my job at BYU and remained in Utah. Dave’s body was cremated, so I did not go back to Philadelphia until the memorial service on Sunday, February 11.

The memorial was held at the University of Pennsylvania’s sports arena called the Palestra, which comes from the word for the place in ancient Greece used for training in wrestling and athletics. Among those in attendance were wrestlers and officials who had canceled trips for competitions in Bulgaria and Turkey.

I wore a striped, long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Others dressed up more than I had, with most in suits, but I intentionally wore clothes I would never wear again. I didn’t want any clothing to serve as a reminder of the service.

Hal Miles drove from Petersburg, Virginia, to be with me. We went into a room away from the crowd. We kneeled, and Hal prayed for Dave and me. Years later, Hal honored me by allowing me to baptize him into the LDS Church. He is still one of my best friends.

For ninety minutes, wrestlers, friends, and family members shared their memories of Dave.

Roger Reina, the wrestling coach at Penn, called Dave “a hero of the people.” Roger described how Dave had admirably managed to be both tough and sensitive, both childish and wise.

Larry Sciacchetano, the president of USA Wrestling, called
Dave “the Muhammad Ali, the Magic Johnson, the Michael Jordan of our sport.”

Larry pointed out that most people were lucky to have one or two true best friends, but Dave had ten thousand. “He made everyone feel important,” Larry said. “When you were with him, he was genuinely interested in you, in what you were doing in your life, and how he could help.”

Valentin also spoke. “My best friend is gone forever,” he said. He called training with Dave the best six years of his life.

Tears were visible on Valentin’s face as he left the stage and walked into the stands to take a seat. Alexander and Danielle noticed how upset Valentin was, followed him into the seats, and hugged him. Those kids—I can’t imagine what they were going through. Alexander was nine, Danielle six. Dave was so proud of them. They demonstrated at that service how they had learned the importance of caring for others from their dad.

I cried the entire service. Some of the speakers laughed as they told stories about Dave. I couldn’t laugh. Once when I was sobbing, Alexander and Danielle came over to console me. It should have been the other way around. I should have been consoling them, but that memorial service was so, so hard.

When my dad spoke, he referred to Dave as “Jesus in a woolen cap” and “the Michelangelo of wrestling.” It had been two weeks since we lost Dave, and Dad told the audience he still could not comprehend what had happened. “Such sweetness so swiftly taken from our lives,” he lamented.

Dad played the piano and sang a song called “The Boy by the Sea.” He had written the song about Dave playing at Half Moon Bay near San Francisco as a young kid.

Dad also told a story that jarred me.

When we were living in Oregon, when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I asked Dave what his earliest memory was.

“Tell me yours first,” he said.

“Rolling down the stairs at Grandma’s,” I told him. “What’s yours?”

“Actually, I have a memory from before I was born,” he said.

Incredulous at such a notion, I interrupted in a disrespectful tone.

“Oh, really?”

Dave never brought up the memory around me again. Not until the memorial service did I hear the story.

Dad recalled when Dave was four and the two of them were walking in the woods, holding hands. Dave asked if Dad wanted to hear “a really big secret.”

“Sure,” Dad told him. “What is it?”

“You won’t laugh at me, will you?” Dave asked.

“No, I won’t laugh,” Dad assured him.

“Before I was born,” Dave began, “I was standing in the clouds and surrounded by twelve men. The oldest one looked down on earth and said, ‘You’re going down there to be tested.’”

Story complete, Dave walked away.

Dad stood there stunned for a few seconds, and then started running to catch up with Dave.

“Did you pass the test?” Dad asked.

“Oh, yeah, I’m going to pass the test,” Dave told him. “But I’m not going to be here very long.”

Dave then left Dad to go off and play.

When it was my turn to speak, I could not prevent my voice
from cracking. I don’t remember ever crying in public before then. But there I stood, with television cameras focused on me, bawling.

I told the audience that I considered Dave my best friend, my teacher, and my coach, and how he was the most honest person I had ever known. I shared how strong he had become by diligently working to compensate for the weaknesses he dealt with as a child. He was wise beyond his years, I said, and tougher than anyone I had ever met.

I asked that everyone please pray for our family “until this murder trial is over and justice in this life will be served.”

When I changed clothes after the service, I threw my shirt and jeans in the trash.

—

L
ess than four months after the conclusion of the O. J. Simpson murder trial, nine charges were filed against du Pont, including first- and third-degree murder.

Simpson might have been the highest-profile murder defendant the US court systems had seen, but John was the richest. Two things became apparent right away: Du Pont might have no defense other than insanity, and no expense would be spared in defending against the charges.

The process would become frustratingly slow as his team of lawyers—dubbed “Dream Team East” by the media, after Simpson’s dream team of lawyers—used stall tactics to drag out the process and, presumably, buy time before having to declare whether an insanity defense would be employed.

At du Pont’s preliminary hearing two weeks after the murder,
one of his attorneys said John did not understand his legal rights as explained by the judge.

The defense team had du Pont undergo neurological tests, hoping to find a physical cause for du Pont’s peculiar behavior. The tests were made public, the results were not. It was easy to draw a conclusion as to what the tests revealed. Or didn’t reveal.

During courtroom proceedings, du Pont sat emotionless, often with a blank stare. He continued to tell his lawyers he did not understand the charges or the procedures laid out by the judge.

I knew how to stall on the mat. However, my stalling was nothing compared to the defense team’s tactics in the courtroom. But they didn’t get penalized as I had been. Twice du Pont’s lawyers went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, appealing the judge’s denial of their request to have du Pont leave prison for a psychiatric exam in a doctor’s office.

They also tried to have overturned the judge’s refusal to allow du Pont to go back to the farm to look for materials that could be used in his defense. The judge rightly ruled that du Pont, with his resources, was a flight risk. The defense did, however, manage to have John’s arraignment postponed while the two sides wrangled over whether he was competent to stand trial.

I was no legal expert, but even I knew du Pont’s lawyers were trying to avoid or delay prosecution and build support for an insanity plea. But still, it was annoying to recognize that John’s wealth was gaining him every advantage possible in his defense. To keep up, the district attorney’s office had to hire two people to deal with the media and handle all of the defense’s appeals.

The district attorney’s office also determined it would not seek
the death penalty, citing the belief that a better chance for conviction would come if the death penalty was not placed on the table. I was fine with that decision. I just wanted du Pont to spend the rest of his life in prison.

I didn’t want him in a state hospital, though, because that would have been easy time compared to prison. John had lived a life of luxury and it had not been enough for him. He had wanted more. I wanted the rest of his life to be as uncomfortable as possible. Yet, his being in prison with all of his possessions taken from him could not come remotely close to what he taken away from our family.

—

Y
ou never get over losing a brother. For me, Dave’s dying was like cutting loose the anchor on a boat and setting the boat adrift on the sea to float aimlessly. Dave had always been my anchor.

Because we had bounced back and forth between our parents growing up, Dave had been the one constant in my life. He had always been there to advise me, to help me stop worrying about things. We were like a two-man sect; he was my leader, and I was his follower.

When John killed Dave, he took my brother and my happiness from me.

For eight years, the ending to my wrestling career had nagged me. In Wayne Baughman’s book,
Wrestling On and Off the Mat
, he discussed the importance of going out a winner. More than anything, I had wanted to win the ’88 Olympics and walk away a champion. But du Pont ruined that possibility for me. Every day
since moving away from Foxcatcher, I had thought about my dream, about du Pont, and about what he had done to me.

Now, every day, I added to those thoughts what he had done to my brother.

One day, I received a call from my jujitsu coach, Pedro Sauer. He was training “Dangerous” Dave Beneteau to fight in the upcoming UFC IX: Motor City Madness, Ultimate Fighting Championship’s pay-per-view event of mixed martial arts bouts. Beneteau had been the heavyweight runner-up at the Canadian wrestling team’s Olympic trials, and Pedro wanted me to work out with him.

Mixed martial arts—a combination of wrestling, submission holds, and kickboxing—was introduced to the United States in 1993, when UFC was created. MMA became extremely popular in a short period of time. Wrestlers performed well in MMA, because the conditioning and takedowns of wrestling proved to be advantageous in the sport. If you look at any fight, with only rare exceptions, the fighters wind up on the ground. Fighters who were not good at grappling were at a disadvantage. It was easy for a wrestler to transition to MMA. You can’t teach a kickboxer how to wrestle, but you can teach a wrestler how to kickbox.

Beneteau came to Provo, and we trained together for a few weeks. During one session, I took Beneteau down and he landed wrong on his right hand, breaking it. I took Dave to a doctor, who gave him two options: undergo surgery to have a plate screwed into the bones so he could compete, or have a cast put on his hand that would take him out of action until after UFC IX
.

At age thirty-five, I had been training full-contact with my heavyweight at BYU, Mike Bolster. Although I did not believe that
Dave would opt to miss his bout, I told him that if he did have to default because of injury, I would take his place.

Dave, as I expected, chose surgery and went on to Detroit as scheduled for his bout with Gary “Big Daddy” Goodridge. The day before UFC IX, I flew to Detroit to be with Beneteau in his corner.

The standard UFC news conference was the night before the bouts, with all the fighters, promoters, referees, doctors, and trainers there. After answering the media’s questions, Beneteau asked a doctor to look at his broken hand, and the doctor told him he couldn’t fight. I sought out the promoter and asked if I could fight in Dave’s place. He liked the idea, and we started talking money.

I was offered $25,000. I asked for double that. The promoter countered with $25,000 if I lost and $50,000 if I won. I told him I would decide the next morning.

I had trouble sleeping that night. At six-foot-three and 245 pounds, Big Daddy had five inches and forty pounds on me. He had finished as runner-up at UFC VIII: David vs. Goliath, when the format consisted of a tournament bracket. He had victories in the quarterfinals by knockout and in the semifinals by technical knockout.

The call from the promoters asking for my answer came at 6:30
A.M.
From not sleeping well, I felt like crap. I said I needed more time. I fell asleep, only to be awakened by another call from the promoters. I gave the same answer and went back to sleep. They called back again. No decision yet. At ten thirty that morning, they called and said they needed my answer right away or they would sign someone else.

I called Pedro and asked him to go down to the hotel lobby
with me. The promoters were waiting for me, with a contract sitting on the desk in front of them. I asked for one more minute, walked over to a corner, knelt, and asked God to tell me what I should do.

I stayed in that position for probably three minutes until I was overcome with the undeniable feeling that if Dave were alive, he would tell me I had to fight. I stood and turned from the corner. Pedro and a group of people were looking at me.

“I’ll do it,” I announced.

That was eight hours before the fight, and the only clothes I had brought with me were a suit and tie and a pair of shorts for working out.

I took the required AIDS test and then bought a mouth guard. Beneteau gave me his protective cup to wear. One of Pedro’s students loaned me his wrestling shoes—good thing our feet were the same size—and I wore the shorts I had been given at the LA Olympics.

The list of rules for UFC fights was short. Fights were bare knuckles and inside an octagon-shaped cage, with no biting, no eye gouging, and no punching with closed fists. If a fighter opted to wear shoes over going barefoot, he was prohibited from kicking. Everything else was legal. You could head-butt, fishhook your opponent’s mouth (insert your fingers or hands into the sides of his mouth and pull hard in opposite directions), attack the groin, pull ears, choke, dislocate or break joints, break bones, scratch, twist or snap the neck, and whatever else you could imagine. Bouts lasted twelve minutes, with a three-minute overtime period if needed.

Politicians led by Senator John McCain had targeted ultimate fighting for regulation, or perhaps even banning, because of its
violence. To avert a possible cancellation of the event, UFC announced during the day that closed-fist strikes would be banned that night. Pedro told me the news and I was like, “All right! Goodridge can’t strike me with his fists!”