Family: Slaying suspect disturbed

The affable outdoorsman in Tom Gergen seemed to disappear this winter, replaced by an increasingly paranoid man complaining of "echoes" in his head, his extended family says.

After Gergen and his pregnant wife, Kari Osterhaug, skipped a family Christmas last month, Anita Osterhaug confronted her sister. Kari Osterhaug broke down, her family said, describing Gergen's rants about government agents and forestry professors out to get him. Kari Osterhaug handed her sister a printout of a Web page describing a paranoia mental disorder. "I think this is Tom," Kari Osterhaug said.

Gergen's family tried twice in the past month to get the well-liked, 30-year-old ornithologist into a psychiatric facility, but the efforts failed because the hospitals wouldn't admit him, they said.

A day after being turned away for the second time, Gergen took a .45-caliber revolver from a hallway lockbox in their Shoreline house and shot his 31-year-old wife five times, prosecutors say. He then turned the gun on himself but survived a gunshot wound to the face.

But this week, even with Gergen facing first-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the death of his wife and unborn child, his in-laws and a former professor described an outgoing man, eager to be a father. They said they believe an untreated mental illness had begun to spin out of control.

"We feel like the system is broken in dealing with mental illness," said Anita Osterhaug, of Portland.

Gergen was in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center yesterday, awaiting an arraignment Jan. 21 in King County Superior Court on one count of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree manslaughter for his unborn baby's death.

Bail is set at $750,000.

David Manuwal, Gergen's adviser at the University of Washington's College of Forestry, noticed his student sinking into unusually deep depressions as Gergen struggled with dyslexia while finishing a master's degree in 2001.

Sometime that year, Gergen accused another forestry professor of spiking his van's tires with nails, a charge that Manuwal said was "certainly bizarre."

"There was some indication that he wasn't thinking quite right," Manuwal said.

Anita Osterhaug said Gergen and his wife were amiable at a family campout last August. Then they stopped dropping by Kari Osterhaug's parents' house for regular Saturday-morning pancake breakfasts. By late fall, they had withdrawn entirely.

In early December, Gergen's mother got a call from her son's employer, who said Gergen was acting erratically, Kari Osterhaug later told her sister. A day later, Gergen left Seattle to visit his sister in Louisville, Ky. His family found his van abandoned in Shoreline; he later told his wife he had walked 15 hours to get to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, according to Osterhaug's family.

Gergen's family couldn't be reached for this story. They have declined public comment since the shootings.

Gergen tried to get admitted to a Louisville hospital in December, but was not admitted for reasons that are unclear, said Anita Osterhaug.

On Jan. 2, he flew home. Two days later, his mother, a retired psychiatric nurse, and Kari Osterhaug accompanied Gergen to Swedish Medical Center's Providence campus, home of a 25-bed psychiatric ward that accepts patients on a voluntary basis. For reasons that are also unclear, he left without being admitted. The next day he allegedly shot his wife.

Although Anita Osterhaug said she doesn't blame the Swedish staff, she does criticize mental-health laws on detaining patients.

"If anyone comes and says they are willing to be admitted, with a wife and mother there, they should be admitted for 72 hours, or even 24 hours," said Osterhaug.

Gergen had resisted his family's efforts to get outpatient treatment, and was not on any mental-health medications, Osterhaug said.

In a statement released yesterday, Swedish said medical confidentiality laws barred it from discussing Gergen. Without saying Gergen did not want to be admitted, officials said the hospital received no requests by would-be patients for admission on Saturday.

"State laws regarding detainment of mental-health patients are very strict, and we cannot force patients to be admitted," the hospital said in the statement. "Nor can we admit patients if there are no immediate and apparent reasons to do so."

Mental-health experts cautioned against criticizing the hospital until the reasons Gergen wasn't admitted are made public. If Gergen had been suffering from paranoia, chances are high that he would not have wanted to be admitted, said Dr. Peter Roy-Byrne, chief psychiatrist at Harborview Medical Center.

Though Roy-Byrne never examined Gergen or reviewed his case, he said detaining Gergen would have required proof that he was an imminent danger to himself or others.

"You have to be dangerous now," Roy-Byrne said. "Not later. Not two days ago."

Kari Osterhaug, just before she died, told her sister she was increasingly convinced Gergen was suffering from a serious disorder. But Kari insisted she was in no danger. After all, she had been with him for eight years, and she trusted him, her sister said.

"We loved Tom, and he loved Kari," said Anita Osterhaug. "He treated her like a princess. This is just so sad."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jonathanmartin@seattletimes.com. Staff writers Dave Birkland and Kyung Song contributed to this report.