| abstract | - Dr. Loomis received six-year-old Michael Audrey Myers. For the rest of his natural life, Loomis would adopt unconventional obsession in trying to solve the enigma of his patient's relentless rage and remorseless violent behavior. For a period of six months, the genuine psychiatrist was ordered to spend four hours each day in therapy sessions with the young boy. Finally, on Friday May 1, 1964, Loomis tried convincing two superior doctors that Michael's state of catatonia was a farce, "a conscious act." He believed that there was "an instinctive force within him." Michael was keeping himself silent, but still alert as if waiting for something; but Loomis did not know what it was. On the stormy night of Monday October 30, 1978, after fifteen years of confinement, the now-21-year-old Michael Myers "awakened" from his fictitious catatonia. In his cell, he scrawled the word "sister" onto the back of his door, and trashed the bed, walls, and windows. Succeeding in breaking one of the windows, he freed himself from the room. He opened the doors in the corridor releasing other patients and pushed them all outside. Bernardi, the night watchman, was not present during his regular duty at around 10:00 P.M. Michael had wanted to create chaos to keep from being detected by the facility's staff. Also that night, Dr. Loomis and his assistant Nurse Marion Chambers arrived at Smith's Grove to pick up Michael for his scheduled court date. While driving up, they noticed a few patients, wearing only nightgowns, were "wandering around" the grounds of the sanitarium even while the storm raged on. Loomis instructed Marion to "pull up to the main gate" so he could telephone the hospital about the released patients. When Loomis was on the telephone, Michael appeared, frightened Marion, and hijacked the station-wagon. Michael's destination was Haddonfield, Illinois, his childhood hometown. The next morning, a nurse of the sanitarium explained to Dr. Loomis that it took most of the night to round up the released patients. In fact, "one of them was way over in the Morgantown Road." She escorted Loomis to Michael's cell revealing what his patient wrote on the door. Loomis knew that Michael was on his way home to Haddonfield.
|
