Ex-Dentist Accused in Murder Case a Success Story Gone Wrong

If this were a made-for-TV movie, the opening scene would probably be a wide-angle pan of the psychiatric security unit on the sixth floor of the County Jail downtown, with men in blue shirts and pants sitting around on their bunks or in straight-backed chairs watching television.

The camera would focus in on a 31-year-old, pleasant-looking and lanky fellow with straight brown hair parted down the middle, looking quiet and subdued. He’s under medication to calm him down, and it shows in his eyes. The camera would begin making a slow, 360-degree circle around him, and in the background we would see nurses, not jailers, walking about the room.

The scene would be interspersed with a quick succession of flashbacks:

- First, as a proud Eagle Scout, leading younger teen-agers on a night hike, under a full moon, through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. We’d hear the wisecracks and giggling of a good time.

Back to the psychiatric ward.

- Then, graduation from the University of Southern California’s dental school, the youngest in his class, ready for private practice. We would hear the applause of his parents and younger brother who, a few years later, would also become a dentist.

Back to the psychiatric ward.

- Next, this same man in the Alaskan tundra fields along Prudhoe Bay, holding blueprints and a calculator and pointing to an oil pipeline pump station. Other men would be nodding affirmatively. “Good job, Steve,” we’d hear.

Back to the psychiatric ward.

- In blurred action and with a confused, muddled sound track of gunfire, shouting and screaming, this man now squeezing the trigger of a handgun, his forearm jumping up involuntarily from the recoil of each shot, and a handsome doctor backpedaling and finally falling to the floor, his chest bloodied.

The psychiatric ward.

- Now in court, standing before a judge, his attorney stating matter of factly: “Not guilty, your honor, by reason of insanity.”

- Finally, back to the psychiatric ward, the camera stopping and focusing in on his eyes as they slowly close.

This is a story about Steve Larsen, whose life as a super-achiever soured in a plot that turns from bad to worse.

He is accused of killing Dr. Craig Blundell, a popular Escondido physician, devoted family man and devout Christian, on July 28. He had met Blundell only once before but vented on him anger for an uncured stomachache--a stomachache that his attorney and some doctors said was psychosomatic.

Larsen’s lawyer, criminal defense attorney Barton C. Sheela, said in an interview that there is no need to use the word “alleged” in this case.

“He killed the doctor,” Sheela said of his client. “The only issue is his legal responsibility for his actions.”

It will be a jury’s job to determine whether Larsen was sane at the time he squeezed the trigger and should be sentenced to prison, or whether he was insane and should be sent to a hospital for the criminally insane.

Sheela said his defense will be an attempt to show that Larsen, Eagle Scout-turned-dentist-turned-petroleum engineer, is a paranoid schizophrenic who should spend much of his life in a hospital instead of prison. Psychiatrists already have told Sheela as much, but the decision will rest with a jury in a few months.

For a time, Larsen didn’t believe he had killed Blundell. Initially, he thought that the CIA had schemed, on behalf of one of his employers, to put plastic bullets in his gun and to stage Blundell’s death as a way to “get him,” Sheela said. After all, everyone was out to “get him,” Larsen thought--even those two old people who were laughing in the checkout line of the Safeway store in Bakersfield. They were laughing at him, Larsen believed.

Sheela said it was only when Larsen was shown pictures of Blundell’s autopsy that he finally understood that he had killed another human being.

Now, Larsen is filled with remorse, Sheela said.

Steven Alan Larsen was born Aug. 26, 1955, the elder of two children of Marilyn and Gordon Larsen. His parents are longtime Escondido residents who own a pleasant home surrounded by a grove of avocado trees on the town’s west side. She is a housewife; he is a construction engineer who specializes in nuclear power plants and is currently assigned by a Japanese contractor to a job in Saudi Arabia.

Larsen’s parents declined to be interviewed. This story is based on interviews with his brother, Ken; neighbors and co-workers; school and work records; police investigation reports obtained by The Times, and the transcript of a preliminary court hearing at which Municipal Judge Victor E. Ramirez ordered Larsen held for trial.

Neighbors always knew the Larsens to be a friendly, hospitable couple, and Steve Larsen as a fine young boy, if a bit shy. At Del Dios Middle School in Escondido, his old school chums recalled, Steve showed an early interest in math and science, and hung out with chess players.

Steve was an achiever from the word go, said Allen Bell, a mathematician at the University of Utah at Salt Lake City who was identified by others as probably Steve’s closest junior high school classmate--a label that Bell himself was surprised to hear.

Others, like neighbor Mark Culbertson, who is now a musician in San Francisco, said Steve was an easygoing kid “who seemed to get a lot of support from his parents and was headed toward being a big success.”

At Escondido High School, Larsen participated in a public service group and was a member of the school’s chess club. He won Rotary awards for math and Spanish, was awarded an Elks scholarship, was a lifetime member of the California Scholarship Federation and had compiled a 3.9 (out of a possible 4.0) grade-point average when he graduated in June, 1973. School transcripts showed that Larsen’s IQ was rated at 129 on one test and 139 on another.

But he was hardly a bookworm; Larsen enjoyed surfing with his younger brother and neighborhood buddies, and shone as a Boy Scout, participating in a World Scout Jamboree in Japan and attaining his Eagle rank--the pinnacle in Scouting--in 1970.

“There were other senior Scout leaders who were more outgoing than Steve, but he had as many friends as any,” recalled Jack Althouse, Steve’s scoutmaster at the time.

The troop, no longer in existence, specialized in backpacking “because we liked being out on our own and not having another bunch of campers 10 feet from us,” Althouse said. Larsen thrived on a challenge, and could be counted on for giving the younger Scouts a helping hand, Althouse remembered.

Larsen was one of the few Scouts in Troop 636 who rose to the rank of Eagle. “In my 10 years with the troop, I can only think of maybe five boys who got that,” Althouse said. Ken Larsen was another.

The fact was, Althouse didn’t push his young charges to achieve Eagle rank. “But his parents really pushed him for it. They were always the motivating force for both him and his brother Kenny. They pushed him--almost too hard, I thought,” Althouse said. “They’d have it all planned out what kinds of merit badges he should get on a particular camp-out, laid out like a military combat plan.”

After his high school graduation, Larsen enrolled at USC, where he earned virtually straight A’s during two years of full-time study. In 1975, he was accepted in USC’s School of Dentistry and four years later, as a B student, he was presented with his dentistry degree. The future was his.

“Dad always told, ‘Whatever you do, make it something you’ll be happy with.’ And we thought dentistry would be good because we could choose our own hours and go surfing,” said Ken Larsen, who is two years younger than Steve.

Shingle in hand, Larsen purchased a practice on Park Avenue in El Cajon from a dentist who moved to La Jolla. But the departing dentist took most of his established patients with him, leaving Larsen burdened with the office overhead and few patients. Struggling to make ends meet and pay off his college tuition debts, Larsen took a part-time job at a large dental clinic in Bellflower, a suburb of Los Angeles, spliting his week between there and El Cajon.

But try as he might to rebuild the practice on his own, Larsen was too distracted by the financial end of the business to enjoy dentistry. He sold the practice in 1981 and moved to San Leandro, Calif.--not far from where Ken, not only his brother but his best friend, was attending dental school at the University of the Pacific--and joined an established dental clinic.

It was there that Larsen severely burned his right hand in a kitchen grease fire while heating oil for french fries. The injury and the resulting treatment, including skin grafting, would prevent him from practicing dentistry for several years, Larsen was told by doctors, so he began looking for another career.

Comfortable with numbers, he chose engineering. Since the domestic oil business was healthy, he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to earn a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering. He compiled a 3.57 grade-point average and graduated in August, 1984.

He was recruited by the Atlantic Richfield Co. (Arco) almost immediately and, with other recruits, was sent to Anchorage for a year of on-the-job training. His base salary was $33,600 a year, but duty in Alaska brought a bonus; he was paid $46,800 a year.

Larsen, one of the older recruits from his class, had trouble adjusting to the job in Anchorage, and he received mixed performance reviews.

He was assigned a potpourri of engineering tasks, generally in identifying and measuring underground oil reserves and determining how best to pump them out. Occasionally he would leave Anchorage for on-site visits to Prudhoe Bay.

“He had real good analytical skills and knew the engineering side of the business, but he was very quiet and withdrawn,” said an Arco engineering supervisor, who asked not to be named because Arco executives have issued a blanket, company-wide “no comment” on the Steve Larsen matter.

“We give them (trainees) their own projects, and they’re encouraged to talk and discuss their ideas with other, veteran engineers. It’s very important in our business to interact with the others” for brainstorming, the supervisor said.

But Larsen didn’t work well with others. While he “exhibited good technical skills” and was commended as “a willing and hard worker putting in considerable overtime on some assignments,” he was scored for needing “improvements in teamwork, working with other people, and oral-written communication skills” in a February, 1985, performance review obtained through subpoena by Sheela. The following month, his supervisors enrolled him in an assertiveness training workshop to help draw him out of his shell.

“I’m sure he felt pressured (to do well). I thought maybe he had trouble adjusting to life in Anchorage, being several thousand miles away from home. It’s a tough transition for a guy out of college,” the supervisor said.

Based on those evaluations, Larsen was just about the only trainee out of the batch of 100 engineer trainees at Arco who failed to make the transition to regular employment at the end of his year in training. Instead, he was placed on four months’ probation in August, 1985, and transferred in September to Bakersfield for more evaluation and extended training.

“We thought we’d give him a fresh start at a new location. I’m sure that put even more pressure on him, but it was the lesser of two evils because the only other option was to lay him off,” the supervisor said.

It was during his stay in Alaska, Ken Larsen said, that his brother began to exhibit signs of paranoia.

“He thought people were out to get him,” Ken Larsen said. “Once his car caught on fire and he thought someone deliberately pinched his fuel line. Another time he complained that his apartment was broken into, although I’m not sure it was. He even bought a CB radio for his car so he could eavesdrop on people who he thought were conspiring to get him.

“I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe it was being up there all alone.”

Steve Larsen drove from Anchorage to Dallas for additional, short-term training before reporting to Bakersfield for his last chance to make the grade, and he later complained to his brother that, en route, truckers and bikers were trying to run him off the road.

Ken Larsen remembered visiting his brother in Bakersfield and, when going on car rides, being instructed by Steve to write down license plate numbers of cars that he thought were tailing him.

“He’d say things like, ‘See, there! That one! He’s checking us out!’ Once I said, ‘Steve, you’re nuts.’ ”

Larsen’s paranoia once brought him in contact with police. One afternoon last March, while standing in a checkout line at a Safeway supermarket in Bakersfield, Larsen lost his temper and created a scene when an older couple in line in front of him began laughing. Larsen felt sure he was the target of the couple’s laughter. A clerk took Larsen outside, and police were called to the store. Larsen cooled off and was released, but a law enforcement computer recorded the event, noting that Larsen had a “violent temper.”

It was in Bakersfield that Larsen, who rented an apartment there and pretty much kept quietly to himself, began complaining to co-workers about stomach pains and ulcers.

He tried to befriend a female co-worker, complaining to her about his stomachaches and asking her to help him find out who was following him.

The woman told Escondido police investigators she grew concerned for Larsen and for her own safety around him, even to the point of arranging, through Arco, a meeting with a psychologist to discuss Larsen’s behavior. He advised her that Larsen probably didn’t pose a danger to her, but she still gave Larsen the cold shoulder.

Other supervisors and engineers in Bakersfield characterized Larsen to Escondido homicide detectives as “odd from the start,” that he “had a hard time looking at anyone right in the eye,” and that he was “a very high-strung, nervous-type individual who appeared to be depressed and down on life.”

Larsen got to work early and stayed late, and ate lunch at his desk rather than in the lunchroom with the others in his group, another co-worker told a reporter.

A Bakersfield doctor whom Larsen consulted about his stomach pains described Larsen to Escondido detectives as “a very agitated, mildly depressed-type individual.” He said Larsen was convinced he had intestinal worms, and even treated himself for it. He reported feeling better afterward.

Both that doctor and another physician said they recommended to Larsen that he see a psychologist to help deal with his job anxiety; appointments were made, but Larsen did not keep them.

Larsen’s mother joined him in Bakersfield for a time because he was so troubled by his stomach, Ken Larsen said. But Steve Larsen didn’t share with his mother the sense of being followed because “he knew he couldn’t prove it and was embarrassed,” Ken Larsen said. And Ken said he didn’t feel right telling his mother about his older brother’s problems.

In February, because of industry-wide cutbacks due to dropping oil prices, Arco laid off hundreds of employees companywide, including about a third of its 100 engineering trainees. Among the first to be identified as “surplus,” because of his poor record, was Larsen.

Larsen took the news relatively well, according to those who were present in the office that day, and even told his supervisor: “I appreciate all the opportunities you gave me. I realize this is as hard on you as it is on me.”

But his mood worsened while clearing out his desk that same morning, and he snapped at a co-worker as he left the building: “Well, are you happy now?”

Larsen received two months’ severance pay and accepted an Arco offer to attend a company-sponsored job counseling session in Denver, but supervisors noted that he didn’t ask any questions there. According to files subpoenaed by Sheela, Larsen did file a worker’s compensation claim with Arco, claiming that he was “given an ultimatum which caused him great stress. Patient has now developed severe gastritis and also considerable anxiety,” the attending physician wrote. Arco denied responsibility for his ailment.

Larsen returned to Southern California in February and got his part-time job back at the Bellflower dental clinic. But he quit a month later and returned to his parents’ home in Escondido, where he holed up. Ken Larsen said his brother was taking a dozen or more different prescriptions that a variety of doctors--presumably unaware of one another’s prescriptions--had ordered for him to address his stomach malady.

His attorney wonders if Larsen may have been given medication for his stress that aggravated his stomach, and medication for the stomach that aggravated his anxiety.

Back home, Larsen’s Escondido neighbors told police that he tried to reintroduce himself to them, becoming vulgar and irritated with some but telling others: “They say I don’t make friends well, so I’m going to everyone in the neighborhood. I’m going to make friends with everyone.”

To almost everyone, he complained about his stomach.

And he told his brother that “the CIA bought everyone in the neighborhood new cars so they could spy on me,” Ken Larsen recalled. “I tried to explain to him that everybody had bought new cars since he had lived here last.”

Larsen went to an Escondido medical clinic for his stomach pains, and the physician there referred him to an Encinitas psychologist, whom he met. The psychologist, in turn, referred him back to the Escondido clinic with the advice that he meet with a psychiatrist who could prescribe medication to address the perceived stomach problem.

Worsening the situation, said Ken Larsen, was an outpatient surgical procedure that his older brother underwent in June in which a small hole was drilled in a bone in the inner ear canal. The bone had closed up because of constant exposure to cold water, a problem not unusual among steady surfers. Larsen complained to his family that the pain after the surgery was awful.

The stomach problem still unresolved, Larsen was referred by the medical clinic to Dr. Craig Blundell, a gastroenterologist. At an outpatient clinic, Blundell performed a 20-minute procedure in which an endoscope was inserted down Larsen’s esophagus to allow a visual examination of the stomach.

The following quick series of events was described at Larsen’s preliminary hearing in Vista in September:

On Friday, July 25, Larsen went to Blundell’s office on Grand Avenue in Escondido to learn the outcome of the endoscopy, but Blundell was on vacation.

The following Monday morning, Larsen returned to Blundell’s office. “He was becoming angry because they couldn’t find out what was wrong with him,” his mother testified.

Nurses at the medical clinic where Blundell worked said Larsen showed up about 8 in the morning, even before the waiting room lights had been turned on. Larsen was told that since he didn’t have an appointment, the soonest the doctor could see him would be two days later. But he insisted on waiting, and the nurses went about their morning business as he sat alone in the waiting room.

Larsen then asked to use the restroom, explaining to a nurse: “Perhaps . . . I’ll see the doctor in the hallway and I can talk to him just briefly then.”

Blundell, despite facing a full schedule of appointments, said he would defer to Larsen’s persistence and “just get it over with . . . and talk to him.”

According to office staff members who testified at the preliminary hearing, Larsen saw Blundell in a back hallway and confronted him.

“What about the tests?” he asked.

“Well, they were negative,” Blundell answered.

“What about my stomach?” Larsen retorted.

“We’re going to have to look into it,” the doctor responded.

Then there was what sounded like a cap gun to one nurse, a popped balloon to another nurse. Then again, and again. A stunned nurse watched as Blundell stumbled backward and fell into an examination room, mortally wounded.

Other witnesses testified that they saw Larsen coolly walk out to the parking lot and drive off in his Mustang. One of the nurses, despite the panic of the moment, noted the car’s license number and yelled it to another worker who already was on the phone, dialing 911.

A pair of Escondido detectives in an unmarked car heard the broadcast on their police radio while sitting at an intersection eight blocks away, and realized that the same Mustang was stopped alongside them, waiting for the light to turn green. They called for backup and Larsen was pulled over without a struggle about half a mile away. The gun, with Gordon Larsen’s driver’s license number etched on the butt, was retrieved outside Blundell’s office; a box of ammunition was in the back of the Mustang.

Steve Larsen was arrested but refused to talk to interrogators, except to complain that his stomach hurt.

Barton Sheela said Larsen’s claim of insanity will be based on the types and amounts of medication that Larsen had put in his system and by showing how his client exhibited symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

The jury’s job will first be to determine whether Larsen fired the nine-shot, .22-caliber revolver that killed Blundell. The district attorney’s office filed a charge of murder against Larsen; it is up to the jury to decide what degree of murder. But that really isn’t the issue, Sheela said.

The second phase of the trial, with the same judge and jury, will be to determine whether Larsen was insane when he confronted Blundell on July 28. And much of the testimony in that trial will focus on how different kinds of drugs, playing off each other, can trigger psychotic conditions, Sheela said.

Prosecutors declined to discuss the case. But Sheela said Larsen might stand to spend more time behind bars if he is found guilty by reason of insanity than if he is found sane and then sentenced to a predetermined period of imprisonment. If he is found guilty by insanity, the length of Larsen’s hospitalized incarceration will depend on how long before he is cured. If he ever is.