The Tragic Descent Of Marc Gerson: `Not The Same Guy' -- Friends Recall Sudden Personality Change In Man Charged In Fatal Redmond Arson

Friends from Mercer Island High School remember Marc Gerson as a gap-toothed kid with curly, dark hair, an honor student and garage-band guitarist who displayed an easygoing humor and compassion rare among his peers.

After graduating in 1985, Gerson headed off to The Colorado College in Colorado Springs. When he returned home the next summer, former classmates say, they noticed an alarming change in his personality. Gone was the thoughtful young man who had held so much promise. Marc Gerson, as they once knew him, seemed to have disappeared.

Yesterday, King County prosecutors charged Gerson with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree arson in the deaths of his sister, Jennifer, 35, and her 9-year-old son, Richard. His father, Philip, remained at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in serious condition this morning with burns over his arms, hands and legs.

Last Friday morning, police say, Gerson, 31, poured gasoline on blankets and sweaters outside the bedroom doors of his family's Redmond house and set them on fire. According to charging papers, he told police he had heard the voices of "demons" who directed him to start the blaze.

Gerson's mother, Ellen, slightly injured in the fire, told detectives he suffers from schizo-affective disorder, which includes characteristics of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

At an arraignment next Wednesday, prosecutors plan to ask the court to send Gerson to Western State Hospital at Steilacoom for a 15-day evaluation to judge whether he is competent to stand trial. Determining competency could take a year.

The tragedy highlights frustrations felt by many families of the mentally ill as they wrestle with caring for loved ones without the legal power to mandate treatment.

Although experts say most mentally disturbed people are not violent, the story of Gerson's descent into psychosis mirrors hundreds of other cases of a young life gripped by an illness that strains friendships, families and mental-health laws to the breaking point, sometimes beyond.

Gerson's family did not respond to requests for interviews. But through court records and interviews with friends and neighbors, two starkly different portraits of Gerson emerge, before and after his 19th birthday.

Likable, talented, compassionate

If Gerson was remarkable in his early teenage years, it was for his ability to attract friends in different circles and to excel in both creative and scientific studies, say classmates. He came from a close family and got along well with his older siblings, Jonathan and Jennifer.

He learned to play the guitar before he could drive. He formed a band called Free Will and copied complicated riffs from his favorite songs, note for note. In his junior year, Gerson joined the Sky Club, a school group that worked with the physically and developmentally disabled. His band often played at club fund-raisers.

His involvement in the Sky Club was no coincidence. His sister

was developmentally disabled, said classmate David Saulnier.

"He had compassion for people who weren't able to speak up for themselves," he said.

Mercer Island High School typically graduates dozens of students into prestigious colleges and universities, and the Class of 1985 was no exception. Gerson, perhaps more than other students, felt under pressure to succeed academically. It didn't come from his parents, said Saulnier, but rather from an internal sense that he had to make his family proud. That, coupled with living away from home, may have contributed to Gerson's mental breakdown, he said.

A sudden change

Gerson returned to Mercer Island several times during his first year of college. Derrick Grenier, who played guitar in Free Will, said he noticed no change the few times they jammed together.

But in the summer of 1986, Gerson seemed paranoid and disturbed. Something was obviously wrong, Saulnier remembers: "It was sad to see him in a very short period of time change from who he was to the guy he is today."

Such drastic change is not uncommon. Experts say mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, otherwise known as manic depression, often appear in the late teens or 20s.

In early 1987, Gerson's family sought limited guardianship. Court files show he was "severely disabled" with bipolar disorder and had been diagnosed as psychotic. At some point he was hospitalized for mental illness. The petition for guardianship included a provision that would have given Gerson's parents the power to get him into treatment.

Gerson was given an attorney to explain the process to him, but the two never met. According to court files, Gerson left the state, and the petition was later dropped.

Guardianship is critical to families of adult children, said Tom Richardson, state president of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

State laws prevent doctors from talking about treatment of mentally ill patients to their families unless they have legal permission. Without guardianship, "you are out of the picture," said Richardson. "It's extremely frustrating for caring families."

Sometime after the petition for guardianship was filed, Gerson hopped freight trains and hitchhiked across the Northwest. On Nov. 27, 1987, he was convicted of attempting to assault a police officer in Eugene. He served 10 days in the Lane County, Ore., jail and was ordered to obtain private psychiatric treatment.

The next year, in August, Lynnwood police picked up Gerson along Highway 99, disoriented and bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. In a filed report, police said Gerson had heard voices telling him to kill himself. He was taken to the emergency room at Stevens Hospital in Edmonds. His parents told police that Gerson had also attempted suicide about a month before.

Gerson later attended classes at the University of Washington. He greased his hair back with vegetable oil and told friends of wide-eyed plans to hitchhike to South America, pick himself up "a senorita and a horse" and live in the mountains.

"You could just tell by his speech and the way he acted that he wasn't the same guy," said Grenier.

In the past 10 years, former classmates say they've seen Gerson walking along Broadway in Seattle, or reading the Bible in Redmond's Marymoor Park, or working as a busboy at an Eastside restaurant.

"He gave off a lot of pain," said classmate Mary Edwards. "He wasn't frightening - it was just uncomfortable. He was impenetrable."

Records indicate Gerson had periods of lucidity in recent years. He voted in the 1996 general election and lived for several years in a Bothell complex run by Mentor Health Northwest before moving in with his parents, sister and her son. Two weeks before the fatal fire, he went out to dinner with a former neighbor at the Bothell apartment.

On Jan. 15, Gerson, accompanied by his mother, sought help at a mental-health counselor's office. He told the counselor that "one of his multiple personalities" had told him to kill himself, but he left the office after becoming agitated. Shortly afterward, Gerson checked into the psychiatric ward at Overlake Hospital Medical Center and stayed there five days. He checked himself out Jan. 20.

Washington state law requires that hospitals release patients unless they are discussing plans to injure themselves or others, said Todd Langton, spokesman for Overlake.

The night of the fire, Gerson told police that he sat in his bedroom, watching television and listening to voices in his head. Several hours later, he was arrested in the front yard as flames devoured the house, killing his sister and nephew.

News of the fire spread quickly through the community of families coping with mental illness. Many of them recounted stories of threats and assaults from adult children, and expressed sympathy for the surviving family.

"There is no such thing as a mentally ill person. The whole family is involved," said Willimine Woolslayer, a support-group facilitator for families with disturbed children. "There is a four-letter word to describe what families go through: hell."

Alex Fryer's phone message number is 206-464-8124. His e-mail address is: afryer@seattletimes.com Seattle Times Snohomish County bureau reporter Anne Koch contributed to this report.