Two Sides Of A Gunman: Affable, Then Intensely Angry

DETROIT - A happy, confident Tom McIlvane perched on his usual stool at Buck's Palace in Oak Park, Mich., last Saturday morning and plunged into a stack of hotcakes with double syrup.

He told the help he was about to get his job back after a bitter two-year battle with the U.S. Postal Service.

"He was not somebody you would say, `Tom's going to go off the deep end someday and start killing people,' " said Mickey Wheeler, 38, a cook and son of the restaurant owner. "But if he lost that arbitration . . ."

Wednesday, McIlvane learned he had lost the arbitration fight. Yesterday, he invaded the Royal Oak, Mich., post office with a sawed-off rifle, killing four former co-workers and wounding six others before killing himself.

Friends and neighbors remembered McIlvane, who died early today from his wounds, as an affable, earnest man who drenched his omelets with ketchup, an ex-Marine like his father and a skilled kickboxer not inclined to fight outside the ring.

But his co-workers knew a different McIlvane. They said he was a volatile, verbally abusive, angry man operating in a workplace in which many complained of strict, intimidating management practices.

"He was an easygoing guy when he first started working here, then the pressure got to him," said letter carrier Rocky McDonald. "They took away his job . . . he changed."

Like his late father Richard McIlvane Sr. - a tough ex-Marine who chain-smoked Pall Malls - Tom McIlvane was proud, tough and self-sufficient with a streak of niceness, as long as you didn't cross him.

The elder McIlvane raised Tom and his older siblings, Richard Jr. and Rose, alone in a three-bedroom brick bungalow in Berkley, Mich., after McIlvane's wife left.

"They don't know if she's alive or dead or what," said family friend John Vyse, 26, whose family accepted the McIlvane kids as their own.

Tom's fascination with karate and the martial arts began in high school. He worked out in the garage with a heavy bag hung from the rafters.

Following his father's footsteps, McIlvane joined the Marines, serving in Okinawa, Japan, and Twentynine Palms, a base near Palm Springs, Calif.

"One time at Twentynine Palms, there was a guy he was mad at and he drove a tank over his car," said Mark Mitchell, who served in the Corps with McIlvane and later worked with him at the post office.

McIlvane continued his martial-arts training after leaving the Marines. In the winter of 1984-85, he entered and won the amateur division of a Tough Man contest, a no-holds-barred competition.

James Vyse, 29, said McIlvane then began a professional kick-boxing career. It took him to Europe, where he was unsuccessful. But McIlvane did get featured on television's "Bernie's Bloopers," which ran a clip in which McIlvane and another fighter punched each other simultaneously, knocking each other out.

People in Oak Park, where he had lived since 1987, remember him as a nice neighbor.

"Is he the one?" asked Clara Williams, 86, yesterday. "Oh, my goodness! Now, he was as nice a guy as you'd ever want to meet. I'll be darned."

At Buck's Palace, waitress Yvette Desmarais, 36, said that McIlvane came in often. On weekends, he'd arrive early and read the newspaper until someone needed his seat.

For the past three or four Sundays, however, McIlvane began bringing in a copy of the Bible to read, Desmarais and others said.

"He mostly made small talk with a lot of the regulars," said Laura Wheeler, 29, a waitress/cook and Mickey Wheeler's wife.

At the Royal Oak Post Office, McIlvane had a different image.

They thought he was a ticking time bomb.

And his situation, they said, was compounded by the stress at working at the Royal Oak Post Office. Many workers complained that some supervisors harassed and intimidated employees.

Sue Thomas, who worked at the post office until she transferred to Pontiac, Mich., two months ago, said McIlvane was "a good guy until the pressure started coming down."

Management had begun cracking down on "privileges" for workers, such as where they could take their coffee breaks. By the time she left Royal Oak, Thomas said, the most common comment one would hear from a postal worker was "I hate this place."

Each morning, when he arrived to pick up the mail for his route, McIlvane, who was called "Mackie," would grab a metal bar above his head and do chin-ups. Approaching swinging doors, he wouldn't just push them open, he'd kick them open.

A postal worker recalled that McIlvane, an avid newspaper reader, was angered once when the newspaper box failed to open after he'd deposited his 25 cents. He kicked the box open, took only his paper and walked away.

On July 31, 1990, McIlvane was fired. An arbitrator's report cited his profane language towards supervisors. He told the crew at Buck's Palace that he had been let go for "laziness, sloughing off, just not doing his job," Laura Wheeler said.

Margaret Wheeler, the owner, said McIlvane "used to tell me about how they used to harass him.

"He'd say, `I'd wear a pair of shorts to work and they'd tell me the shorts were too short. I'd put the hem down and they'd still be too short.' He said, `They'd harass me to death.' "

Earlier this year, Oak Park police were told McIlvane had made a vague death threat against his former employers. His permit was revoked in May, although it did not cover the rifle he carried yesterday.

McIlvane had been granted the permit in January 1990 by the county's concealed weapons licensing board after claiming he needed a handgun for target practice and deer hunting.

According to Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson, McIlvane complained to the Oak Park police April 14 that he was being threatened over the telephone and "he would have to do something about it . . . he told the officers he was contemplating homicide."

"He's had several contacts with police departments over the years involving assaultive behavior and telephoned threats," he said.

Police said he had been charged several times with disorderly conduct and assault. Postal officials had complained of threats from McIlvane.

William Kinsey II had been the director of the Postal Service's Management Sectional Center in Royal Oak and then the Southfield, Mich., postmaster. He told police McIlvane called his office on Oct. 24, 1990, and said "F--- you, faggot postmaster. I'm going to be watching you and I'm going to get you."

At a 46th (Southfield) District Court trial, Chris Carlisle, the supervisor who initiated McIlvane's firing, and who was killed yesterday, testified that McIlvane also threatened him.

McIlvane denied making the Oct. 24 call to Kinsey. He was acquitted by the jury.

Southfield attorney Joel Sklar, who witnessed the aftermath of yesterday's shooting, had observed the trial.

McIlvane "did look pretty tightly wound up," Sklar said. "I could see the guy was intense and big and if he wanted to hurt somebody, he could."

Those who testified against McIlvane "were jovial," he said. "During a recess, they would sit together and joke and talk, and this guy was just simmering."

-- Information from Associated Press is included in this report.