Winterbourne’s Mother Says Son Snapped

After a week of horror and reflection, the mother of Alan Winterbourne said Friday that her son was a paranoid who finally snapped under the strain of years of joblessness, then killed four people while out of his mind.

“The psychiatrists have stated pretty much what Alan was suffering from,” said Ila Winterbourne, with whom her son had lived during nearly eight years of unemployment. “He was a paranoid. . . . They will go until the strain is so much and then they snap. Then they don’t even remember.”

Those analyses have come since Dec. 2, when Winterbourne, 33, killed three people and wounded four at an Oxnard unemployment office, fatally shot a police officer and then was killed himself by officers.

The college-trained computer engineer was apparently never treated for psychiatric problems. His family said the seriousness of his troubles was a surprise, although he was clearly frustrated.

Ila Winterbourne, her daughter and son-in-law--all gathered Friday at the Winterbourne family home in Ventura--said Alan Winterbourne had been frustrated since 1986, when he resigned as a systems engineer at Northrop Corp. for vague ethical reasons and was never able to get another job.

“He never talked about it as his inability to get a job,” said sister Carol Lockhart, a flutist for the Ventura County Symphony Orchestra. “He was angry about Northrop ruining everything for him for life, essentially.”

The young man was convinced that the aerospace company for whom he worked for only a few months had conspired to make sure he never got another job, she said.

“After he left Northrop,” Ila Winterbourne said, “He’d say, ‘If I die an untimely death, check Northrop. They’re after me.’ ”

The mother said her quiet son’s self-esteem was battered by the rejection of his job applications by nearly 300 employers.

“Of course it’s hard on a person’s ego. Wouldn’t you be humiliated?” she said. “But if Alan was, he never showed it. You have to remember, we’re Scandinavian.”

That ingrained social reserve may help explain why Alan Winterbourne gave his family few clues that he was about to explode in the bloodiest shooting spree in Ventura County history.

Only cousin Kitty Winterbourne, up from San Diego for Thanksgiving, said she had noticed a change.

“He was different, even at Thanksgiving,” Kitty Winterbourne said. “I hadn’t seen him for a while. He seemed a little more removed.”

Traditionally the Christmas season had been a difficult time for her son, Ila Winterbourne said.

“It was hard for him to face the holidays,” she said. “He had no money.”

Winterbourne, who never received welfare and was supported by his mother, herself a former manager for the county symphony, made some small gifts with his own hands.

Last Christmas, for example, he fashioned scraps from the family’s new redwood fence into a compact disc holder for his sister.

“He was a creative person,” his mother said. “He was good.”

On a day-to-day basis, quiet, caring, self-contained Alan Winterbourne rarely mentioned his frustration and gave his family little indication of his inner turmoil, family members said.

Though described by unemployment workers as despondent over job prospects, his family said they saw no severe mood swings or depression.

He mowed lawns, baby-sat his nephew, did odd jobs, bicycled, hiked, attended church, volunteered time to homeless people and generally made himself useful.

“Alan was not a despondent person,” his mother said. “He’d go run. He’d do things with us. We’d go out to eat.”

Over the years, Winterbourne had accumulated two powerful hunting rifles, a shotgun and a handgun, the weapons he used lethally last week. But the guns had been only for target practice, his sister and mother said.

On trips to Ila Winterbourne’s native farm country in Minnesota, her son went hunting with his cousins, but he could never bring himself to kill--even refusing to shoot a gopher on one occasion, his mother said.

“He wouldn’t kill any animal,” she said.

If Winterbourne had survived his own rampage, the horror of what he had done would have prompted him to take his own life, his sister said.

“He couldn’t have lived with what he’d done,” she said. “I don’t think he ever knew (what he did).”

His sister acknowledged Winterbourne’s eccentricities. He’d warred irrationally with city officials over a stop sign for years, officials have said. He had run an eclectic race for Congress in 1990 because he couldn’t get an appointment with the incumbent congressman.

“But he was so capable in so many other ways--so bright and caring and gentle--that we wrote off the other side,” his sister said. “He never showed any indication of violence ever.”

The family’s inattention to Winterbourne’s inner troubles seemed to weigh on them Friday. His sister noted the many things he had done for her, especially his loving care for her 16-month-old son.

“I relied on him too much,” she said. “I didn’t give enough back to him.”

And Ila Winterbourne said:

“We feel badly about what he has done to the community and what we were unable to recognize about Alan.”