Deathlock

We see the killing as Nancy Schultz saw it.

A gunshot and her husband's scream. He is outside, Dave Schultz, father of her two children, Olympic champion wrestler. He is fixing the car radio. She steps to the front door. He is in the snow, facedown. Over him, leaning out of his car with a pistol, is John du Pont, nutso lord of the 800-acre estate where they live. She starts out, but du Pont looks up and raises the gun.

She jumps back. He lowers the gun at Schultz and...another shot. Dave's body jerks, John's hand recoils. She runs to the phone, pounds 911, shouts into it what, where. As John drives off, she goes to Dave. There is so much blood. She kneels in the snow beside him, beside the body she knows so well, the warm, firm torso, the balding, bearded head. He is still. In his back is a hole. So much blood. "It's OK," she says, needing it to be. She presses her hand against the hole. Hold the blood in. He is trying to breathe. His eyes are open. He says nothing. There is only the death rattle, a long, gurgling expiration. His eyes fix.

Now nothing is the same. The long moment replays without pause.

Nancy will tell friends and repeat it to police and in court, her voice going from aghast to angry. Who can explain? What good will explaining do? John, it seems, has killed her sweet husband, Alexander and Danielle's daddy, the boisterous, brilliant wrestler, the man who was, simply, everything John Eleuthère du Pont always wanted to be.

And couldn't.

This is the green nub that will remain after witnesses and experts and shrinks have portioned out fact, motive and culpability. Green, first, for envy. Because John du Pont, an heir to one of America's oldest fortunes and proudest names, spent his life coveting a genetic inheritance he could not have. Green, second, for money, because what John could not achieve, he bought. For decades Olympic officials accepted his millions and nurtured his fantasies.

Especially wrestling. Over eight years, USA Wrestling—the sport's governing body in America and a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee—and its global counterpart, Federation Internationale de Lutte Amateur, carried off a charade so elaborate that du Pont, already given to illusions of grandeur, assumed the prerogatives of God. In return, du Pont's millions gave America's premiere wrestlers, men such as Dave Schultz, an opportunity to make the sport their career. As the multimillionaire faces trial for murder this summer in Pennsylvania, the product of his generosity prepares to dominate the Olympic mats, boasting not only the most talented wrestlers anywhere but also the most experienced.

•

Wrestling is an ancient and needy sport, a world of grunts and sweat on squeaking mats, where powerful men toil in humid rooms off the back corridors of athletic centers built to showcase basketball, swimming, gymnastics and track. When du Pont wandered in with deep pockets and a desire to play, the sport rolled out its mats. The game went well beyond just naming him to Olympic teams and stitching John E. Du Pont on uniforms and bannering it at tournaments. He was appointed assistant coach of the 1992 Olympic team and was awarded bogus medals at masters tournaments contrived to ensure his victory. ("Du Pont," said a top U.S. wrestling official, "couldn't whip his way out of a wet paper bag.") Du Pont was cynically proclaimed "world champion," "super champion," "head coach," "U.S. Olympic Freestyle Wrestling team leader" and "the Golden Eagle of America." It seemed a small price to pay.

Until Dave Schultz paid with his life.

What du Pont was in fantasy, Schultz was in fact. His hairy shoulders and chest, balding head and thick beard were famous on wrestling mats worldwide. Schultz had won a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics when he was just 25, and now, more than a decade later, was likely to make the national team again. If early (continued on page 126)deathlock(continued from page 58) success was a tribute to natural ability, more-recent triumphs spoke to effort and technique. Veteran wrestling coach Stan Abel called Dave Schultz and his brother Mark, also an Olympic gold medalist, "the Michelangelos of wrestling." But Dave was more. He was a cheerful, clever, unassuming man with a theatrical sense of fun.

Yet, in the end, du Pont shot Schultz because of his insolence. No matter how bizarre and menacing the heir became, Schultz and his family continued to live on the lush du Pont estate, which John du Pont called Foxcatcher, in Newtown Square, a suburb of Philadelphia. Du Pont had bankrolled a state-of-the-art wrestling facility on the grounds, where the wrestlers of Team Foxcatcher depended on John's largesse, Dave as much as any of them. So Schultz persevered. He ignored du Pont's threats. He even toyed with John's delusions. Schultz insisted he could handle the 57-year-old. He told a friend, wrestling coach Greg Strobel, that John "has the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old."

Schultz wasn't alone in this game. USA Wrestling was just as determined to keep du Pont's money coming. His millions had elevated American wrestling from the perennial second tier to world dominance. So his outrages were called eccentricities. In March 1995 du Pont expelled three black wrestlers—Kanamti Solomon, John Fisher and Olympic gold medalist and national champion Kevin Jackson—from his Team Foxcatcher because of the color of their skin. Three months later, USA Wrestling accepted du Pont's annual $400,000 contribution without a peep. Du Pont was an embarrassment, but a rich one.

"Everybody played the game," says Solomon. "You had to treat John du Pont like he was the greatest wrestler on earth. You didn't question it. It was hilarious and pathetic. We had to watch this stuff, watch him wrestle, listen to his speeches. The man didn't know the first thing about wrestling."

Enamored with his ridiculous nickname, "the Golden Eagle of America," he became it. Behind a locked door in the Foxcatcher training center, du Pont would climb a ladder into a thicket of twigs and branches and perch, like a bird. "He locked the door and climbed into it, squatted down, tucked his hands up to his chest and flapped his elbows, looked down at me and said, 'I'm the Golden Eagle of America,'" says a business associate who saw the sanctum last year. "And, you know, with how gaunt he had become, and with that beaklike nose of his, he actually looked the part. It was so weird I just wanted to get out."

From early childhood, du Pont was lord of his estate. Now, in his mind, he ruled larger realms. He announced to Team Foxcatcher in a pep talk before a 1995 meet, "I am the Buddha of the East and the Dalai Lama of the West!" Nobody contradicted him.

Two days after Schultz was shot dead, when du Pont was seized by a SWAT team, he shouted, "You can't arrest me!" He was a confused, wasted man, as lost in fantasy as he was in his oversize Bulgarian team sweat suit. Draped around his neck, incongruously, was his laminated VIP pass for Atlanta Sports '95, last year's world freestyle wrestling championships (where Schultz, the national champion, finished fifth out of dozens of international competitors). Du Pont was unwashed and unshaven. His crewcut was gray. His long teeth were yellow from neglect. He looked ravaged and ancient, as if rescued from a prolonged nightmare. His pale skin was drawn thin over a bony frame, accentuating that nose, the projecting patrician beak like something from a savage cartoon of French aristocracy, where John had at one time proudly placed his roots.

•

In a way he'd always looked out of place. He was an alien presence at the Santa Clara Swim Club in the Sixties, whose elite included Lynn Burke, Donna de Varona and Don Schollander. The three had been or would be Olympic gold medalists.

"He wasn't really such an elite swimmer," says George Haines, who coached the club. "Kids at that level are so focused, they don't like sharing lanes with swimmers who can't keep up. John had a good stroke and had the work ethic. But he was missing the X factor, whatever it is that makes a Schollander or a Mark Spitz."

John had grown up lonely and aloof, a skinny oddball lording over servants and groundskeepers on the vast estate, with his mother, Jean Liseter Austin du Pont. She was obsessed with breeding champions—Welsh ponies, beagles and flowers. John's father, William Jr., divorced Jean when their son was a baby and had little to do with the boy. William bred championship racehorses. John's childhood interests were lavishly indulged, but he was socially and emotionally isolated, obsessed with winning trophies, championships and titles. He seemed determined to turn himself into the object of his mother's pride and attention.

Haines felt sorry for du Pont. He saw a desperately lonesome, overgrown boy who lacked social skills. His acceptance of John was part kindness, part calculation. John, after all, stood to inherit millions. Within three years of joining the team, he was writing checks for $20,000 and covering one third of the club's travel budget—its biggest expense.

The swimmers learned to like John.

"It took a long time, but eventually we included him," recalls de Varona. "He rode in our car pools and came to our parties. We bought him ice cream because he never seemed to have a penny in his pockets. We teased him about being so slow. I felt a little sorry for him. Here was a man who could buy just about anything, but what he wanted was to be a great swimmer. He wanted what he could not have."

They all knew that John's Olympic dreams in the pool were hopeless. In 1964 Lynn Burke's father and Haines steered the heir toward the pentathlon, a five-sport event featuring swimming, riding, shooting, fencing and running. Anybody can run, Haines figured, and du Pont had become a better-than-average swimmer. He had grown up riding and shooting. If he could learn to fence, he'd have a chance. It was a small field. There were only about 25 athletes in America who competed. Few outside of military school had the means and time to train.

John charged into the pentathlon. Back at Foxcatcher he built a six-lane, 50-meter indoor pool with an elegant tile mosaic depicting the pentathlon events. He installed a shooting gallery and hired Lajos Csiszar, a Hungarian fencer, to teach him the foil. He assumed a punishing training regimen.

"He swam with us twice daily," recalls Frank Keefe, coach of a new swimming team at the du Pont estate.

"He ran four or five miles a day. He also spent a lot of time at the shooting range. He tended to push himself too hard. He would overtrain to the point where he would injure himself."

Impatient for a championship, he bought one. In 1965 he bankrolled a pentathlon championship in Australia, flew down and took first prize. It was a setup, says Keefe. "John sponsored the event so he could win it. It bothered me that a guy with only modest ability could buy something like that."

Du Pont trumpeted his championship. He announced his plan to represent America in the pentathlon at the 1968 Games. The press swooned. Du Pont was the multimillionaire obsessed with Olympic gold. Life and Look did photo stories showing the spartan young heir in training. He looked like a star. He had a lean, well-muscled frame and a fashionably severe crewcut. For his cartoon strip Steve Canyon, cartoonist Milton Caniff created a square-jawed hero called Jay Newtown, based on John.

John was a good swimmer, a fair shot and he could ride. His running and fencing were poor. Yank Albers, a spokesman for the Modern Pentathlon Association, describes him as "a talented dilettante." In 1967, when du Pont underwrote the national championship and held it at his Pennsylvania estate, he finished near the bottom after eight contestants dropped out with riding injuries. The following year at the Olympic trials, he finished 21st in a field of 22. Only the top three made the Olympics.

Du Pont was 30. He would never be an Olympian on merit. But there was another way.

"Ours has always been a very poor sport," says John Russell, founder of the MPA. "But that changed when John got involved. He bought uniforms and flew me and the team to competitions in his private helicopters." Du Pont was elected vice president of the association and in 1976 was appointed to the Olympic pentathlon team as team manager, which meant he got the warm-up suit and gear and could pose for the team picture. He flew to the Montreal Games in his private jet.

"He must have been the loneliest guy in Montreal," said Bob Paul, longtime press spokesman and historian for the U.S. Olympic Committee. "He was there, basically, because he had the pentathlon program on his payroll. He didn't fit in, and he had nothing to do."

That was as far as the MPA would go. After two years of playing along with the heir, electing him to two terms as token vice president of the organization, du Pont was voted out. He promptly severed all ties to the sport.

His Olympic hopes dashed, du Pont began to drift and decline. When he lured George Haines away from Santa Clara, doubling his salary to coach the Foxcatcher swim team, Haines arrived to find his rich young friend was drinking heavily. John's mother was both worried about and frightened by her son. She pleaded with Haines to talk to him.

Du Pont wasn't a threat to just himself. Haines was fishing one afternoon on the estate pond with his 12-year-old son, Kyle, when John joined them.

"He was a terrible fisherman," says Haines. "He couldn't catch a thing. He didn't know what he was doing. Kyle was having success, so John got angry."

Du Pont blamed the flock of Canada geese that lived year-round on the pond. He pulled a .45-caliber pistol from his pants and opened fire.

"My son was standing between the geese and John," recalls Haines. "John was aiming right past him."

Haines gave du Pont a strong shove.

"Put that thing away," he said, "or I'm going to stuff it up your nose."

Du Pont put the gun away.

Haines went back to California with his family not long afterward.

Frank Keefe visited Foxcatcher in 1984 and found du Pont scrawny, inebriated and disheveled. He and members of du Pont's family, along with a doctor, confronted him.

"It was grueling," Keefe recalls. "It went on for six or seven hours. When I left that night he had agreed to go to the hospital the following morning. The next day I phoned to see if he had followed through. John picked up the phone. He hadn't gone. He lashed out at me viciously. He accused me of mishandling our friendship and betraying him. That was the last time we talked."

It was a turning point. Du Pont had worn out his welcome with Olympic swimming and the pentathlon. And he was losing touch with reality.

•

In recent years, those who knew John du Pont wondered about one thing: Did he know? When he came out with one of his outrageous pronouncements, or pointed to a ghost on the wall or a Nazi in the trees, was he crazy or was it a game? He often punctuated his craziest behavior with a mischievous smile. One way of drowning shame is to embrace illusion, and on good days, maybe with the help of booze and prescription drugs, the fantasy feels real. Wasn't living for those moments, however false and fleeting, better than being a sick, rich old wreck everyone humored for his money?

In time, anything that punctured the fantasy provoked rage. Veteran wrestling coach Paul Kendall found that out. Working as an assistant coach at Foxcatcher, Kendall penned a short tribute to John, a paragraph of unqualified praise for a team press release. In it he called John "one of the greatest philanthropists of all time." John crashed into Kendall's office, balled up the release and threw it in the coach's face.

He launched a profane tirade, which reduced itself to one complaint: Kendall had called John a philanthropist.

"I'm not that," du Pont railed. "I am a sports psychologist! I am the head wrestling coach!"

Those he paid were expected to support the illusion. Dave Schultz and the wrestlers knew that, as did the small circle of employees and advisors who helped du Pont deal with an unending parade of supplicants—charities, schools, sporting groups, etc. Du Pont hid on his estate, and his use of alcohol and drugs worsened. He had accidents, such as falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his wrist, and a car crash that left him with injured knees and shoulders. A brief marriage to a physical therapist ended badly in 1984, when his wife accused him of beating her and threatening her with a gun.

Soon after his mother's death in 1988 he dismissed much of the longtime staff, and the estate's decline mirrored his own. The mansion, a replica of James Madison's Montpelier, became a sort of dormitory.

"The house was beautiful until Mrs. du Pont died. After that, everything went," said Marii Mak, a friend. Mak says du Pont was incapacitated by prescription drugs and alcohol for days at a time, unable to stand or speak coherently. The wrestlers humored him, and laughed behind his back. John spouted racist philosophy and talked about the presidency. He commissioned a likeness of himself, in a presidential pose, from Ronald Reagan's portraitist.

•

His fear of being kidnapped shaped his dealings with the world. The estate that had been open in his youth was now ringed by a 12-foot fence topped with razor wire. John rarely ventured off of it. He was usually armed. He befriended local police, offering the use of his shooting range and loaning them his helicopter. In return, they gave him a badge, uniform and gun and let him drive around Newtown Square pretending he was a cop.

To those who had known him for years, du Pont was becoming paranoid and pathetic. But to the wrestling world, he was the messiah. "John turned the U.S. into the world's strongest wrestling power," says Wade Schalles, a former world champion who today writes about amateur wrestling in the Wrestling Institute Newsmagazine. "Years ago the U.S. always finished second or third behind the Eastern Bloc countries. It wasn't because they had better athletes; their statesponsored programs allowed wrestlers to stay with the sport and develop their talent. The average age of the American team was 24. You wrestled through high school and then at the collegiate level. Then after graduating you might put in two or three years. After that you would retire. Also, Olympic freestyle is a different kind of wrestling. Guys who mastered the collegiate style would need years to reach that level in freestyle. But because there was no way to train and make a living, it was rare to see someone older than 24 or 25 with more than two or three years' experience in freestyle."

John changed that. His money made it possible for wrestlers such as Schultz, Bruce Baumgartner, Zeke Jones, Terry and Tom Brands, Tim Vanni, Kevin Jackson and others to make a long-term commitment. In the past decade the average age of the U.S. team has crept steadily higher—it is now close to 30. Schultz was 36 when he died.

Du Pont's first move into wrestling was a gift to Villanova University for an athletic center to be named after him. In return, Villanova started a wrestling program and appointed John head coach. He had no credentials. The experiment lasted only two years. Villanova killed wrestling in 1988, when embarrassment began to outweigh its benefits. One of du Pont's assistants accused him of making sexual advances. There were allegations of underage drinking among team members and violations of NCAA rules. And there were numerous sightings of the head coach soused on campus. Du Pont denied it all.

It didn't faze USA Wrestling or FILA. They welcomed John and his new Team Foxcatcher. John moved his wrestling program to his estate and recruited Schultz and other top athletes. He offered a generous monthly stipend, superb training facilities, travel expenses to tournaments, a home on the grounds and top-level coaching. Foxcatcher was named the first FILA international training center at its opening ceremonies in 1989. The sport honored him in all the usual ways, and then some. FILA presented John with its "gold star" in 1989. The next year he got the "diploma of honor," traditionally bestowed on Olympic gold medalists. He was the "team leader" for the 1992 U.S. Olympic freestyle wrestling team, so he got to pose once more as an Olympian. FILA minted a "super champion belt" and strapped it around his waist in 1994. But it wasn't enough. John, on the downslope of middle age, wanted to be a champion.

With world-class wrestlers humoring him daily, letting themselves get pinned, John believed he had what it takes.

"It was ridiculous," says Kanamti Solomon. "He would thrash around like a kid. He had this headlock—we called it the eagle lock—and whoever he did it to would holler, 'Oh no, not the eagle lock!' He would let go and pat the guy on the butt and say something like, 'Don't worry about it. If you work hard you can become a world champion like me.'"

Greg Strobel, a wrestling coach at Foxcatcher, found du Pont's capacity for deluding himself hard to believe: "He would bring me tapes of his practice sessions and I'd analyze them for him. When we watched other people's tapes John knew good stuff from bad. How could a guy this bright and knowledgeable watch himself on videotape and conclude that he was any good?"

•

Most of the wrestlers found du Pont repulsive, but they encouraged his excesses. Some of the acts cited as evidence of du Pont's insanity were actually stunts intended to impress. When, for instance, du Pont drove his car into a pond on the estate, he was applauded by the team as a "wild man," much to his delight. Likewise, when he performed the stunt a second time weeks later, with FILA official Mario Saletnig in the backseat, it was a way to both impress the boys and scare Saletnig.

The wrestlers dubbed him "Junkyard Dog" to salute his wildness—and because he smelled so bad. Du Pont's heavy drinking and poor hygiene made him particularly rank on the mats.

Du Pont took offense. As an alternative, "the Golden Eagle of America" was proposed and promptly adopted—with snickers all around.

To test his wings, du Pont paid for a new international event, a masters world wrestling tournament. The idea was to lure old wrestlers back to the sport. The first of these FILA events was held in 1992 in Cali, Colombia. John waited in the wings until his karma was right, then the meet was halted and it was announced that the Golden Eagle of America was to wrestle. Du Pont emerged to a standing ovation, looking knock-kneed and ridiculous in a singlet, and assumed his place on the mat as his event was called. Interestingly enough, no one stepped up. And voilà! Du Pont was world champ by default. The name John E. du Pont was duly inscribed in international wrestling record books, and the "achievement" was noted in USA Wrestling's official team guide.

Trouble was, the masters event was popular. There were many capable old wrestlers longing to compete again. It was clear du Pont would actually have to wrestle to sustain this fraud. When du Pont was challenged at the world championships in Toronto in 1993, he quickly backed down, claiming injury.

"He was outraged," said one associate. "How dare someone show up to fight him at his tournament."

Things got worse in Rome the following year. A contestant showed up and du Pont wrestled and lost. Quickly. His personal photographer was chagrined. His assignment was to compile an album of the Eagle's triumphs. For most of this title match, the old man's spindly legs were in the air.

"John complained bitterly," the associate says. "He wasn't paying for a tournament so he could lose."

The next year, in Sofia, Bulgaria, du Pont won handily. Fans were coached to cheer for du Pont, to throw flowers onto the mat. His white-haired opponent put on a good show. When du Pont was declared the winner, his teammates carried him around the arena.

"He actually thought he won," says Kurt Angle, a current world champion who attended the event. "He got very intense. We thought it was fun."

So did John. He insisted on scheduling the same event in Sofia again. He grew closer to Valentin Jordanov, a Bulgarian national champion who had moved to Foxcatcher.

Jordanov had helped arrange the tournament in Sofia and was gradually supplanting Schultz as the favorite son in Foxcatcher's stable. Du Pont even adopted Bulgaria as his ancestral home, finding bizarre reasons to relocate his well-known French ancestry to eastern Europe.

His mind made strange connections. Clocks in computers, microwaves, faxes and exercise machines were running fast, stealing seconds from his life, so electronic gadgets were disassembled, or burned. At the Cali masters world tournament, he was so worried about a terrorist attack that he wore a Bulgarian team uniform and demanded to be introduced with a Bulgarian name (even though everyone in the arena knew who he was). His real name was used only when the bogus gold was draped around his neck—to ensure it went into the record books correctly.

•

Du Pont went beyond foolishness when he abruptly dismissed three black wrestlers from Team Foxcatcher. Kanamti Solomon, the team's exciting 22-year-old 105-pound wrestler, showed up one afternoon for his workout, and coach Strobel sent him packing. Solomon was shocked. Being cast out of Foxcatcher meant starting over from scratch. He managed to attend the NCAA tournament a month later because his mother withheld car and mortgage payments. At that event he learned he wasn't alone. Kevin Jackson, Foxcatcher's 180-pound wrestler, gold medalist in the 1992 Olympic Games and one of the mainstays of the U.S. team, was out too. Strobel had just given Jackson the news.

"Greg told me he was sorry, and that he didn't really have a choice," says Jackson. "He told me it had to do with this black thing, with du Pont's paranoia about death. He associated the color black with death. He had ordered the wrestlers to stop wearing black clothing. Greg had to get rid of his black Jeep. Du Pont didn't want anything black around him."

Also out was John Fisher, the country's number-two-ranked 136-pound wrestler. Du Pont did not accept calls from the three wrestlers. Solomon learned he had been replaced by Joe Ramsey, who was older, white and had a less impressive record. At the end of April, at the U.S. Nationals in Las Vegas, Solomon confronted du Pont as he was leaving the arena with Jordanov and Ramsey.

"He wouldn't stop to talk to me, so I followed them, shouting at them in English and Spanish, demanding answers," Solomon recalls. "I was shouting, 'Why did you kick me off? You promised you would get me through school! You promised you would help me get to the Olympics! What did I do?'"

Du Pont offered an enigmatic explanation: "Solomon, you can spell catsup with a C or with a K."

Then he pointed to the X in the name Foxcatcher printed on his T-shirt and said, "The X is three letters from the end. KKK. Foxcatcher is run by the KKK now."

Du Pont laughed. Ramsey and Jordanov smiled, rolled their eyes and walked away. Solomon, Fisher and Jackson complained to Mitch Hull, USA Wrestling's national teams director. Surely the sport's top governing body wouldn't countenance this discrimination. Because Solomon was still on the way up (he made the national team on his own this year), it would be harder to prove the racial argument in his case, but nobody weighing merit would dismiss Jackson and Fisher. Both were at the top of the sport.

Hull advised them to take it up with the organization's Athletes' Advisory Committee. Nothing happened. USA Wrestling made no comment and took no action against John du Pont. In June, three months after the wrestlers were cut, the organization accepted du Pont's annual $400,000 donation as if nothing had happened.

USA Wrestling handled the matter with a swift bureaucratic two-step.

"We referred it to the Athletes' Advisory Committee for investigation," explains Larry Sciacchetano, the organization's president. "They looked into it and decided to recommend no action. If they had determined it was a racial thing, USA Wrestling's only option would have been to say, 'If we get another check from du Pont, we will have to decide what to do with it.' It's hypothetical, because they didn't decide it was racial."

"We heard that the steering committee was going to reassess the organization's relationship with John, so when the issue of the dismissed wrestlers came up at our November 16 meeting we decided to leave the matter to them," says Chris Campbell, who heads the advisory committee.

The steering committee was still "reassessing" when Schultz was killed.

"I don't think kicking out Kevin Jackson and the others had anything to do with ethnic considerations," says Sciacchetano. "It had to do with du Pont's associating the color black with death, which is weird, but not racist."

"Oh yeah?" responds Jackson. "The idea that we were kicked off the team because of our skin color has some ethnic and racial overtones to me. The reasons for racism have always been pretty screwy."

Du Pont's move caused some soulsearching on Team Foxcatcher, but none of the black wrestlers' former teammates stuck their necks out.

"I really regret it now," says Kurt Angle. "What I did was, well, maybe not cowardly, but I acted like a puppet. If I could do it over again I would take a stand against what he did to Kevin, John and Kanamti."

There was no such soul-searching by USA Wrestling or FILA. They accepted every cent du Pont cast their way. Still, the heir worried about his standing with wrestling officialdom. Wade Schalles visited du Pont in the summer of 1995, researching a column for the Wrestling Institute Newsmagazine.

"I don't want you to say anything, Wade," du Pont told him, "but I have been chosen to be the Dalai Lama of North America."

"Really, John?"

"I'm planning a trip to Tibet to get the appointment. I don't want you telling anyone yet."

"Your secret's safe with me."

That afternoon du Pont was odd but charming. After the interview he walked the writer to his car and wished him well. But when Schalles got home just hours later, there was a profane message on his answering machine. Du Pont accused Schalles of setting him up, of planning to trash him in print.

Schalles dropped the story.

•

Du Pont's demons were circling. He saw ghosts in the mansion. One acquaintance encountered him in his library with blood running down his legs. He had been gouging "bugs" off his skin.

Du Pont continued to dismiss wrestlers. Former U.S. champion Dan Chaid, an eight-year resident, was ordered off the estate abruptly one afternoon, he says, with no explanation other than the machine gun du Pont pointed at him. Others left on their own.

Strobel took a job at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In the weeks before Schultz' murder, only a handful of wrestlers remained at Foxcatcher. Among them was John's newest favorite, Valentin Jordanov.

"John was developing this weird father-son thing with Val and seemed to be adopting Bulgaria as his national identity," says a business associate. "At the same time, America and Dave were on the outs."

Schultz was still the only person who dared challenge du Pont and who still tried to keep things real. Jordanov worked to please the heir, humoring du Pont's newfound Bulgarian pride so successfully that American wrestling officials anticipated that du Pont, despite lifelong superpatriotism, would soon shift his financial backing to that nation's team. Du Pont had spent the last world championships seated squarely in the Bulgarian camp.

Just days before the shooting, du Pont picked Jordanov as the team's new coach, telling one associate, "We can't give it to Dave."

Schultz was becoming the enemy. He chided John about his drinking and encouraged him to seek medical help. Schultz would cut short du Pont's tantrums, telling him, "John, you're acting like a spoiled child." No one had ever spoken to du Pont that way. Not as a child or as an adult. Schultz told friends that the heir had angrily ordered him off the estate five times over the course of the winter.

Late last year, du Pont went to the Schultzes' house in a stew, accusing Dave and Nancy of sheltering Dan Chaid. As he looked around, he fell and gashed his head. In an account local police found fanciful, du Pont claimed Chaid had assaulted him with a baseball bat.

Dave saw such things as annoyances.

"He still thought du Pont was harmless," says Chris Horpel, a wrestling coach and longtime friend. "He told me, 'He's unstable, he's eccentric, yes, but he wouldn't shoot anybody.'"

Horpel and others warned Schultz to leave. Friends offered to let the family move in with them temporarily.

Dave didn't think it was necessary.

The winter day Schultz was shot was Jordanov's birthday. A little party was held for him at the Foxcatcher training center. Du Pont didn't show, which was odd. It was the kind of event he ordinarily wouldn't miss.

Perhaps he was steeling himself for a desperate task. After all, something had to give. Foxcatcher was the center of du Pont's universe, and he was in charge. But here was Schultz, thumbing his nose, casting a shadow on the bright vision. In fact, his very stature belied the whole elaborate fraud. And if the supreme champion, the Golden Eagle of America, the Buddha and Dalai Lama, banished Dave Schultz from the garden and he wouldn't go?

What then?

He told Team Foxcatcher: "I am the Buddha of the East and the Dalai Lama of the West!"