True Crime Journal
On August 4, 1967, 15-year-old James Gordon Wolcott grabbed a .22 long-barrel rifle and killed his father, mom, and 17-year-old sister in chilly blood.
After murdering his household, Wolcott flagged down a passing automobile and instructed the motive force his mother and father had been shot.
{The teenager} appeared distraught and hysterical when police arrived however quickly modified his story and confessed to the murders.
Wolcott was arrested and booked into the Williamson County Jail. His homicide trial received underway in October the identical yr.
In court docket, Wolcott instructed the jury he was affected by a psychological sickness, which lately worsened as a consequence of his habit to airplane glue. Wolcott’s claims had been confirmed to be true – medical doctors later recognized him with paranoid schizophrenia.
Throughout his psychological analysis, Wolcott mentioned that he hated his household. {The teenager} claimed he was uninterested in his mom’s loud chewing, his sister’s “dangerous accent,” and his father’s disapproval of Wolcott’s anti-war views. In keeping with court docket information, Wolcott felt as if his household was “conniving towards him to drive him out of his thoughts.”
On the finish of the six-month trial, the jury acquitted Wolcott by purpose of madness. He was admitted into Rusk State Hospital on February 2, 1968, the place he spent six years.
Two years after his launch from the hospital, Wolcott legally modified his identify and vanished.
Practically 40 years later, Wolcott resurfaced as an award-winning professor of psychology!
In 1976, after altering his identify to James St. James, {the teenager} went on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology and joined the Millikin College in Decatur, Illinois.
Described as an “older hippie” by his colleagues, St. James has now been educating at Millikin for over 30 years and received the school’s Instructing Excellence and Management Award in 1997. Quickly after, Dr. St. James was provided the place of chairman on the division of behavioral sciences.
After studying concerning the professor’s darkish previous, native officers, together with the mayor of Decatur, had been calling for his removing. Nonetheless, the college stood by St. James’ facet and refused to let him go.
To this present day, Dr. James St. James stays the chair of Millikin’s Behavioral Science Division, and his experimental psychology courses proceed to obtain constructive reactions on social media.
