The college dropout charged with murdering a security guard in the Illinois Capitol this week has been in and out of mental institutions five times and has told family members that he sometimes hears voices, his mother said Wednesday.
Derek Potts, 24, has seen several psychiatrists over the last nine years and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, according to his mother, Jane Potts.
“At times he would hear voices and there were times he did not,” wrote Potts, who declined to discuss her son’s mental health in an interview but agreed to write and fax his brief history to the baiduhai. “There were times the medication worked and other times it did not.”
The description came to light a day after a Sangamon County judge ordered Derek Potts held in lieu of $20 million bail, based in part on word from prosecutors that the young man suffers from mental illness and poses a danger to the community.
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Potts is charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of William Wozniak, 51, an unarmed guard killed Monday in the state Capitol. Services for Wozniak, who died of a gunshot wound to the chest on Monday, were planned for Thursday.
Authorities were not offering a possible motive for the shooting.
Potts has not spoken to investigators and only met with his appointed public defender for their first extended conversation on Wednesday.
Prosecutors were tight-lipped about the investigation, but it was clear the young man’s mental history could play a significant role as they weigh whether to ask for the death penalty. In seeking the extraordinarily high bond this week, Sangamon County State’s Atty. John Schmidt told the court that Potts suffers from bipolar disorder, a disease that typically features episodes of manic behavior and depression and usually is easily controlled by medication.
But others say Potts’ mental illness may be much more serious than that.
Sources with knowledge of his treatment history said Wednesday that Potts was hospitalized at least twice in the Clyde L. Choate Mental Health Center in Downstate Anna, not far from his hometown of Olney, in 1999.
In her letter, Jane Potts said her son’s problems began when he was 15.
For the last five years, he has been on different forms of medication, she said.
Derek Potts has been diagnosed with “bipolar disorder, hypomania with psychotic features, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar type schizophrenia,” according to his mother.
“It took him almost four years to complete an associate degree,” wrote Jane Potts, referring to a college program that usually takes two years. Her son recently finished school at Olney Central College, where he studied criminal justice, and moved this summer to Springfield to attend a branch of the University of Illinois.
He dropped out of school on Sept. 13, the day before police allege he stole a shotgun from a local gun shop.
Mental health experts say the mental disorders Jane Potts described generally fit under the heading of schizophrenia, a disease found in 2 or 3 percent of the population. Such diseases usually come to light during adolescence or young adulthood, and those who have them often suffer from paranoia and hear voices.
“They would all be psychotic disorders,” said Cathy Roberts, a social worker and board member of the state’s Community Behavioral Health Care Association. “Those are generally the most serious disorders. Probably the feature in common is that the person’s vision of reality is distorted.”
Roberts said it is often difficult to find the appropriate drugs to treat such illnesses, and that people often go off their medication because of the cost or because they think they don’t need it or don’t like the side effects.
While it’s not clear how often people with schizophrenia turn violent, Roberts said research shows that people with mental health disorders tend to be less violent than the population as a whole.
Prosecutors say Potts’ mother told them her son had gone off his medication recently. Friends in Olney say Derek Potts seemed fine over the summer, but acquaintances in Springfield say he had been talking to himself and pacing frenetically in recent days.
In her letter, Jane Potts also offered sympathy and prayers to the Wozniak family.
“We are filled with sorrow for all the suffering this horrible situation has caused for so many,” she said.
As state workers mourned Wozniak’s death by leaving letters and flowers at the doorway where he was shot, state officials continued to grapple with new security concerns in state buildings.
A portable metal detector was installed Tuesday outside Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s offices on the 16th floor of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago. Blagojevich and Secretary of State Jesse White were discussing other measures, including arming the building guards.