Navy Probing Murders at Top-Secret Sub Base : Security: Two sailors are slain and a shipmate apparently commits suicide. Questions are raised about the service’s psychological screening.

Navy investigators Friday were trying to unravel a bizarre murder mystery involving three young sailors at a top-secret nuclear submarine base.

Shyam David Drizpaul, a 23-year-old petty officer assigned to the weapons system of the Trident submarine Michigan, allegedly shot two crew mates and two civilians before committing suicide Tuesday.

The bloodshed at the Naval Submarine Base, Bangor occurred amid increased scrutiny of the Navy’s psychological screening processes and has raised troubling questions about security at the highly sensitive compound on Puget Sound.

Also unclear is whether the slayings late Monday and early Tuesday might involve military secrets, since the only suspect had top-security clearance.

“We really don’t have any idea about the motive,” Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Keith Arterburn said. “We’re looking at everything in this investigation.”

He said a team of 35 to 40 Navy investigators--including forensic specialists from San Diego and San Francisco--was working on the case.

Arterburn said none of the three sailors from the Michigan had any disciplinary record. Autopsy results were pending, so it was not yet known whether drugs were a factor.

However, Navy authorities acknowledged that they confiscated an unregistered pistol from Drizpaul, but--unaware of the murder on the base--let him go just hours after his crew mates were killed.

Drizpaul then went into nearby Bremerton, where he killed a pawn shop clerk and seriously wounded her brother in obtaining another gun, Bremerton Police Chief Delbert McNeal said.

“We figure, after having done his deed in Bangor, remorse set in and he believes there’s only one thing to do--kill himself--and he had to get another weapon,” McNeal said.

Drizpaul’s body was found Wednesday in a motel room about 100 miles away in Hazel Dell, Wash. A car belonging to Drizpaul’s roommate, David Alan Parker, 21, was outside and a gun taken from the pawn shop was in the room, McNeal said.

Killed in the spree were Parker, a radioman second class from San Diego; Fireman Recruit Scott Anthony Seely, 18, of North Ridgeville, Ohio, and pawn shop clerk Julie Lynn Tuscher, 24, of Bremerton.

Tuscher’s brother, Allan Michaels, 28, remained hospitalized in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

In San Diego, Parker’s parents struggled to make sense of the tragedy.

“Everytime he mentioned his roommate, it was all positive,” said Arthur Parker, himself a retired Navy man.

“He said they were getting along fine, doing things together and that everything was OK,” he said.

Ann Parker, who learned that her son had planned to come home Friday for a surprise visit, said she was “just numb.”

Arterburn said the base murders were discovered late Tuesday morning when the three sailors failed to report for duty.

A room-by-room search of bachelor enlisted quarters uncovered Seely’s body in a television lounge. Parker was found dead in his bed. Both men had been shot in the head between 11:30 p.m. and midnight Monday, Arterburn said.

He said Drizpaul had been stopped by gate security around 2:45 a.m. Tuesday when trying to enter the base. He was held on suspicion of drunken driving, and an unregistered 9-millimeter pistol was confiscated, Arterburn said. He said ballistics tests were being conducted to determine if that weapon killed Parker and Seely.

“The officers did everything according to procedure,” he said, adding that Drizpaul was turned over to his duty officer and told to report to superiors in the morning.

Because of tight secrecy at the Trident base, little information was available about Drizpaul, a Guyana native who moved to Milwaukee with his family 15 years ago. He became an American citizen in 1980 and joined the Navy in 1987.

Assigned to the Michigan in May, 1988, Drizpaul was a fire control technician who repaired and maintained some of the computer systems used in the Trident sub’s missile-launching sequence.

The Navy maintains that personnel in such sensitive positions are rigorously screened and are suspended if there are any indications of drug abuse, emotional instability or financial misconduct.

Navy officials said that Drizpaul was not under any such suspicion.

The case occurred just six months after another Bangor sailor was arrested in the slaying of an elderly couple off base.

The Navy’s psychological screening process came under the most scrutiny last year after investigators contended that a suicidal sailor triggered an explosion that killed 46 other sailors aboard the battleship Iowa. But many have rejected that explanation for the explosion.

A pair of Navy psychologists sharply criticized the screening process in the December issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.

The authors, Lt. Cmdr. Douglas Derrer and Lt. Michael Gelles, said sailors exhibit more severe personality disorders today than in previous years and that those with such emotional disturbances seem to be “more dangerous to themselves and others.”

Staff writers Nora Zamichow in San Diego and Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this story.