Capitol Reopens; Shooting Suspect Charged With Murder

As the U.S. Capitol reopened Saturday, federal officials investigating the bloody shootout there began the task Saturday of penetrating the delusions of a gunman who tormented his neighbors with bizarre threats and marched into the nation’s greatest public landmark with a pistol in his right hand and his pockets full of ammunition.

The suspected gunman, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., drove here late last week in his red pickup truck, and inside authorities reportedly recovered a packet of writings that included science-fiction literature and notes in which he referred to himself as “the General.”

Authorities were anxious to review letters and contacts he made with the offices of the two senators from Montana. In Illinois, his father, apologizing to the nation for the carnage, confirmed that the son he calls “Rusty” had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

Such were the slowly unraveling clues into the troubled past of the 41-year-old former mental hospital patient, a man who drifted between the Rocky Mountains and the Illinois flood plain, erratically railing at a federal government that he contended spied on him, poisoned his water and threatened his safety.

Now under heavy guard in a hospital ward, Weston was charged in a criminal complaint with killing two Capitol Police officers in Friday’s gun battle, a charge that could bring him the death penalty if he’s convicted.

After two surgeries to repair the damage from three bullet wounds, Weston lay in a coma. He was unable to tell authorities what might have driven him to rush the Capitol building with a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, reportedly his father’s, kill the officers and injure a tourist.

Hospital officials recalled that, moments before slipping into unconsciousness, Weston was combative and blurted out, “Sorry, I went down.”

Silent and hooked up to a ventilator, Weston was given a “50-50” chance of survival by his doctors.

A day after the shooting sent lawmakers, staffers and tourists diving under desks and scurrying for safety, the Capitol struggled to return to some normalcy and the nation’s top leaders offered passionate tributes to the officers killed protecting visitors and members of Congress.

Tourists, many still shaken as they left wreaths of flowers on the Capitol steps, cautiously wound through the corridors of the reopened marble edifice flanked by American flags at half staff.

But everywhere over Capitol Hill hung a deep sense of sadness, and some House leaders beefed up their security details hoping to prevent similar attacks.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, in an emotional televised address in which he shed tears and ended with a prayer for the families of the dead officers, said: “Please help this country learn to live with its freedom. Please help those who are troubled learn to live peacefully with their problems.”

President Clinton, reading a statement at a local airport before flying to Norfolk, Va., for the launching of an aircraft carrier, said the shooting was a “moment of savagery at the front door of American civilization.”

Clinton said of the Capitol: “We must always keep it a place where people can freely and proudly walk the halls of our government. . . . I would ask all Americans to reflect for a moment on the human elements of yesterday’s tragedy. The Scripture says, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.’ ”

Killed in the shooting were officers Jacob “J.J.” Chestnut and John Gibson.

Injured was Angela Dickerson, a tourist from Chantilly, Va., who was released from the hospital on Saturday.

Congressional leaders announced a fund drive, in care of the Capitol Police, in memory of the fallen officers and their families. Throughout Capitol Hill, security officers put black tape across their badges, and on the Capitol steps appeared bouquets of flowers, some with handwritten notes. Said one: “Thank you, heroes, for our freedom.”

Inside the building, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) said it was taking longer than officials expected to sort through the crime scene.

“They are attempting to obtain all the bullets that were fired,” Thomas said. “That means some digging into the walls.”

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the majority whip, provided fresh details of the shooting that erupted just inside his office near the east front of the Capitol.

Hearing the burst of gunfire outside, DeLay said he rounded up several aides, plus a tourist who was in the office, and they all took cover in DeLay’s private bathroom, locking the door. Other DeLay staffers were crouching under desks and behind doors.

According to an FBI affidavit filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court, Weston first shot and killed Chestnut with one bullet to the head at the metal detector in the main entrance, then turned left and headed for one of the doors leading into DeLay’s suite of offices.

Gibson was sitting just inside one of those doors, DeLay said. Near him was Scott Hatch, a young DeLay aide. Gibson ordered Hatch to climb under a desk.

Within seconds, the gunman burst through the door, DeLay said. Gibson yelled, “Drop your gun!”

The gunman wheeled and fired at Gibson, and Gibson returned fire before being hit in the chest. “They killed Gibson! They shot Gibson!” another DeLay aide screamed.

Another officer reached the office and jumped atop Weston, who was face-down. “Don’t move, mother----,” the officer yelled, a gun pointed at Weston’s head. The suspect did not respond.

It was unclear whether security cameras caught all or part of the gunfight, and it was also uncertain whether the gunman was purposely headed for DeLay’s office.

According to a senior House Democratic aide, House Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Livingood immediately took several steps to increase security for top congressional figures. Shortly after the shooting, he suggested to the top leaders who are entitled to have an officer detailed to guard them--the Republican and Democratic leaders and whips--to double their protection to two officers. Gingrich already is protected by four officers.

In addition, the aide said congressional security officials were doing a “thorough threat assessment”; that is, checking out threats that have been made against any of the leaders.

Early next week, a congressional official said, Capitol security officials will meet “to review security procedures for the entire institution.”

Weston in the past has made repeated efforts to communicate with some of his representatives in Congress.

Matt Raymond, a spokesman for Sen. Conrad R. Burns (R-Mont.), said the senator has received up to eight letters from Weston dating back as far as 1991, but he declined to comment on the subject or character of the letters.

The office of the other Montana senator, Democrat Max Baucus, has also come into contact with Weston, but in person rather than by letter, according to one aide in Baucus’ Helena office. “Our office has had physical contact with him,” said the aide, who declined to elaborate.

In Weston’s other hometown of Valmeyer, Ill., Monroe County Sheriff Dan Kelley said local authorities have had about six contacts with Weston over the last eight or nine years, but that he was never arrested.

“I don’t think he was ever even verbally confrontational with us,” the sheriff said. “The degree of violence that was displayed yesterday was a real surprise.”

Kelley said their contacts with Weston tended to be requests by him for the sheriff’s office to investigate his delusions that he was being hounded. “It could be anything from a trained Navy SEALS to government to whatever,” Kelley said.

The father of the suspect, Russell Eugene Weston Sr., said in the family’s statement: “It is with great sorrow that we speak today--sorrow for the families that lost their loved ones, sorrow for the children that lost their daddies. Our apologies to the nation as a whole, for the trauma our son has caused. To say that we are sorry is very inadequate.”

The statement also included this anecdote from Weston’s father, a local Democratic state committeeman:

“I remember when Jack Kennedy was shot and Rusty was watching TV and crying. His sister made fun of him [because he was crying]. He said he’s crying because John John and his sister [the president’s children] didn’t have a daddy anymore.”

Noting that the two police officers also were parents, the elder Weston said of his own son: “And now he’s caused these . . . children not to have a daddy anymore.”

Others who know the family in Valmeyer disagree on when he began to change, when he started to “talk funny,” in the words of one longtime neighbor, and exhibit a mean streak, according to another.

In the early 1970s, the school bus would wind along B Road and pick up Howard Riechmann’s teenage son John before stopping at the Weston place, the elder Riechmann said. “They said he was a mean kid,” said Riechmann, 74, who decades ago played semipro baseball with Weston’s father. “But at that age, there are a lot of mean kids.”

Henry Rahe, who was born and still lives in a house about a mile from the Weston place, across a green sea of soybeans and corn, said Weston began to lose his social foothold in his late teens or early 20s.

“People have been saying he was lazy,” Rahe said. “He was not lazy. He sawed wood. He planted trees. He mowed grass. It ain’t like he was scum. He was a good kid.”

Rahe added Weston first went to Montana with his grandfather to hunt deer. He fell in love with the wilderness. “Rusty decided he could make a living mining gold,” Rahe said.

The Westons and the Rahes are among the few dozen households still left around the Valmeyer levee that gave way during the 1993 flood. The elder Weston is retired, having worked many years in the grocery business in St. Louis, residents said. He sings in the Zoar United Church of Christ choir, according to neighbors.

“They’re a good family,” said Rahe’s wife, Belle. “Did something go wrong? You bet it did. It’s not a good day for the neighborhood.”

Contributing to this report were staff writers Edwin Chen in Washington and Eric Slater in Illinois.