Nevada City Suspect Fears Crowds, Neighbor Says

SMARTVILLE, Calif. —  Scott H. Thorpe, the “disturbed” gunman accused of casually killing two mental health workers and a restaurant employee, emerged Thursday as a recluse who preferred the company of his geese and chickens to people.

The one neighbor who knew Thorpe best in this Sierra foothill hamlet described the suspect as a peaceful man who sought help from mental health professionals for his overwhelming fear of crowds.

“It’s just so out of character,” said Gary Dalbey, 61, Thorpe’s neighbor across the street. “He must have snapped.”

Dalbey described Thorpe, a former janitor at a middle school in nearby Grass Valley, as a self-sufficient farmer who grew his own vegetables and raised geese, chickens, catfish and pigs.

Thorpe could not bear to kill the pigs, so he paid a butcher to do it, Dalbey said of the 40-year-old Thorpe, who had injured his back some time ago and got by on a disability income: “He hated blood and guts.”

But law enforcement officers in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento prepared to formally charge Thorpe with three counts of murder in the rampage shooting Wednesday of two workers at the Nevada County mental health department in Nevada City and an assistant manager of a Lyon’s restaurant, several miles away.

Nevada County Dist. Atty. Michael W. Ferguson said Thorpe will be charged with three counts of murder, and separate counts of attempted murder of three other people who were wounded in the rampage.

“Seeking the death penalty will be given very, very careful consideration,” Ferguson told reporters.

Investigators said they still are searching for a motive for the surprise killings that shook western Nevada County, a generally peaceful retreat removed from many stresses of urban life.

Two of the dead, Laura Wilcox, 19, a temporary receptionist at the mental heath department, and Lyon’s restaurant assistant manager Mike Markle, 24, had been at their jobs only three days when they were killed.

Pearlie Mae Feldman, 68, an independent health caregiver, also was killed at the health department as Thorpe fired a barrage of about 10 bullets from a semiautomatic pistol.

Witnesses said Thorpe had strolled into the department at Nevada City. In a methodical and casual manner, he fired through a receptionist’s window, shattering it and killing Wilcox, a college student who was helping out at the department during her winter break.

Feldman also went down in the gunfire as others in the area scattered for their lives.

Sheriff Keith Royal said it appeared that Thorpe was “disturbed or upset” about the service he had received at the mental health department. He did not say why Thorpe had sought services.

“Chances are they [victims] were at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Royal said. “He probably went there with a specific intent, and they were the first he came across.”

A few minutes later, Thorpe showed up at the crowded Lyon’s restaurant about two miles away. He demanded to see the manager and when Markle appeared, gunfire erupted again. A cook was wounded, and customers fled into the street.

Royal identified the gun as a 9-millimeter semiautomatic Ruger. He said it was equipped with a high-capacity magazine that contained 20 bullets, 10 of which were fired at each site.

About 10 hours later, sheriff’s deputies, acting on a tip from Thorpe’s brother Kent, a Sacramento police sergeant and hostage negotiator, captured him without resistance about 15 miles away at his small clapboard house on a lonely road near Smartville.

Authorities said the fugitive called his brother and told him of the shootings. Kent Thorpe then contacted Nevada County authorities and told them his brother was at the Smartville farm.

“He ended up having conversations with his brother on the phone and was able to talk him into giving up without confrontation,” said Sacramento Police Lt. Sam Somers.

On Thursday, the Thorpe family issued a statement saying their “thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of those who were victimized in the tragic incident.”.

Meantime, it was learned that the suspect had worked as a night janitor from 1988 to 1992 at a middle school in Grass Valley. School administrators praised his work as good and said there was nothing remarkable about his departure.

“He submitted a letter of resignation and moved on. There was nothing unusual about the circumstances,” said Grass Valley School District Supt. Jon Byerrum. He said Thorpe passed an employment fingerprint check.

At about the same time, said neighbor Dalbey, Thorpe purchased the 11-acre farm near Smartville for about $91,000 and set about living off the land.

But he said Thorpe complained of severe back pains, consumed painkillers, occasionally smoked marijuana for its therapeutic value and talked of his fear of crowds.

“He had a phobia about crowds and people. That was the reason he was going to mental health” services, Dalbey said.

Another neighbor, Wendell Miller, 82, said that when Thorpe arrived in the little community he was friendlier.

Miller said Thorpe seemed to be the picture of a contented man. He said he had a fiancee, talked of moving his mother to the property and occasionally borrowed a lawn mower.

As the years went on, “he became more isolated,” said Miller, a retired wildlife biologist.