Folsom Officials Wonder if Mute Ex-Con Is Really Ill or Faking It

Whether truly ill or one of the world’s great impostors, Kerry Lane Wheeler has managed to befuddle his mother, his fiancee, his family and the California prison system, and he has done it without ever saying a word.

Since he was reportedly injured in a prison fight two years ago, the convicted thief has not uttered a sound. He communicates only in writing, in short notes and messages, and by a self-taught form of sign language--a system he continues to use even after being paroled from prison two weeks ago.

Prison officials scoff at his statements that his throat and vocal cords were severely injured during a fight with correctional officers in Folsom. They contend that he was merely play-acting to survive harsh prison life and yet marvel that he remains speechless outside the prison walls.

His family assumed he would talk to them when he came home, but he offers them nothing. Even when a family dog mauled his arm the other day, he never screamed out in pain.

Some speech and mental health experts suggest that Wheeler, a tall, strapping 27-year-old, is suffering from an extremely rare case of “hysterical conversion reaction.” Few cases of this behavior exist today, but one example is of a woman who did not speak for three years after screaming out to a child just moments before the boy was hit by a bus.

Wheeler furrows his brow, twists his jaw and scribbles on a legal pad when asked during an interview at his mother’s home here whether he can’t speak, won’t speak or no longer knows how to speak. He insists he is not cooking up a lawsuit against the prison system; on the contrary, he merely wants to be left alone.

I tried, he wrote, attempting to explain his efforts to push air through his windpipe. I tried but I can’t do it. I sometimes make a low rattle in my throat but that’s all I can do.

His mother, Marie Tevis, an inner-city Pentecostal minister, prays for her son. “I know his voice will come back,” she said. “I believe in the Almighty, the voice-giver. He gave us five senses, and with proper medical attention, that voice is going to come back.”

Wheeler was arrested in Sacramento in 1986, and convicted of burglary and receiving stolen video equipment and a pair of water skis. A business school student at the time, he was sentenced to six years. He did four.

Two summers ago, according to prison officials and Wheeler’s scrawled notes, he was involved in a brawl at Folsom. Several correctional officers subdued him, and Wheeler claims his throat was seriously injured when the officers took him down with a chokehold.

One had grabbed me by the neck to allow the others to rush on me, Wheeler wrote. I blacked out.

In the following days in his cell, Wheeler wrote, his neck was so sore that the pain wouldn’t allow him to use his vocal cords. I tried but my throat was too bruised, he wrote. I waited several days before I attempted it again. And still, my voice was not there.

He did not complain to the prison administration. You don’t make waves , he explained. He soon was transferred to the California Men’s Colony, a minimum-security prison in San Luis Obispo.

“He was injured in some kind of fight in Folsom,” Larry Kamien, a prison spokesman, acknowledged during an interview while Wheeler was still incarcerated as No. D-29272. “But there is no apparent reason for him not to speak, other than he does not want to communicate with staff. And when we look at him out in the yard, we don’t see him talking to inmates, either.”

Records at the prison, signed by Gerald Russell, the staff psychologist, show he suffered no mental disorders. A medical examination “revealed no evidence of physical impairment.” Instead, the records state that the inmate is “unwilling, rather than unable, to talk.” Russell said in a recent interview that inmates occasionally will clam up for a month or two while they adjust to prison. But the Wheeler case, he said, is dumbfounding.

“Judging from my experience here, you often don’t find inmates who refuse or will not or cannot talk,” Russell said. “I would say it’s rather uncommon.”

Two outside experts, told of Wheeler’s condition, said it appeared similar to unique case studies of hysterical conversion reaction--in which someone involved in a highly emotional incident no longer uses his voice.

Tom Murry, a San Diego speech therapist, said he worked with a woman who was silent for three years after she screamed out to a child moments before he was struck by a bus. He said the woman was able to talk, but the psychological trauma from witnessing the boy’s death, coupled with her inability to save him by screaming, had left her literally speechless.

“She was found to be normal in every other which way,” Murry said. “And we finally did get her voice back.”

Dr. Alfred Coodley, a UCLA psychiatrist and longtime counselor to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, said he helped rehabilitate a mute Army soldier who was silent for six months after witnessing the death of two fellow soldiers during World War II. Coodley said the soldiers were killed by a German bomb just moments after the man insulted them.

“He wouldn’t communicate in any way, shape or form after that,” Coodley said.

Coodley and Murry also said it was doubtful Wheeler was faking his mute condition, particularly since he remains speechless on parole. “It’s too difficult to go around not talking,” Murry said. “Just try it for a day and see.”

Behind bars, Wheeler was commended for saving another inmate’s life by giving him first aid when the inmate began choking and fell unconscious. He also worked as a teacher’s aide.

The records also show another side. I just want to do my time and go home, he replied in a note to the prison medical clinic soon after he was injured. I prefer not to talk, not really that I cannot talk.

Helena Bialowis, Wheeler’s fiancee, said she is particularly troubled by his inability to speak now that he is free. “I get mad, but I love him,” she said. “I mean, I’ve waited 4 1/2 years, and now look at him.”

Wheeler appears confused and unsure of his future.

After so long, readjusting would be far more difficult than any attempt I may make at articulating, he wrote, explaining how sign language has filled the void of not talking. I now sign in my dreams.

It’s not a matter of how long , he added. I would like to talk sometime again. I just don’t try anymore.

And if he doesn’t speak again?

I don’t know. I’m not comfortable. Have you ever lived in a nightmare that never ends?