OBITUARIES : Dennis Farrell; ‘Hermit of Griffith Park’ in 1950s

The “Hermit of Griffith Park” is dead.

Dennis Farrell, an enigmatic World War II veteran who gained widespread but fleeting fame in the late 1950s, has died in his hometown of North Platte, Neb. He was 62.

Farrell fought as an infantryman on Okinawa, receiving a Purple Heart for wounds suffered there.

But he led a meandering existence after the war, leaving his family in North Platte and making his way to California where, increasingly reclusive, he found a cave in a remote area of Griffith Park and was rarely seen by the outside world.

Arrested in 1959

His hermit-like existence came to the attention of authorities in 1959, when he was arrested as a prowling suspect.

He told police officers who befriended him that he had been living in a cave in a remote area of the park for five years, emerging at night to scavenge for leftover food at picnic areas.

Police determined that Farrell had committed no crime and he was released, but his primitive life style and the privacy he apparently sought were never to be regained.

News accounts about Farrell, under headlines proclaiming him the “Griffith Park Hermit,” traveled around the world.

One German woman, believing Farrell to be a long-lost brother who had served in the German Army during World War II, sent a 10-pound parcel of clothing--addressed to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Increasingly Depressed

Members of his family in North Platte also read about his plight and traveled to Los Angeles several times to urge Farrell to return home. But he had become increasingly depressed and unstable. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was committed to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Los Angeles.

Accounts of Farrell’s life after his hospitalization are sketchy. A brother-in-law, Don McMurtry, said Farrell spent many years in and out of hospitals for treatment of his mental problems.

He returned to North Platte in the early 1960s and spent several fairly peaceful years with his family, McMurtry said.

But he later entered a VA hospital in Sturgis, S.D., after another bout with depression. He worked at several odd jobs in South Dakota before returning to North Platte in the mid-1970s, where he lived with his mother until his death June 12.

His mother, who once said of her son, “He is a brooding, tormented man that no one can understand,” died three days later on June 15.

Farrell’s father, who made several unsuccessful searches of Griffith Park in 1959 looking for his son, died in 1961.