Love Couldn’t Conquer His Illness

Christine Humbert never fell out of love with her husband, even after he sliced her neck while she slept on the Friday before Valentine’s Day.

“It’s time for both of us to go,” she awoke to hear him say. “We had enough. We’ll go together.”

She recognized, her family said, that Johnny Humbert had momentarily lost the struggle against mental illness that had plagued both of them for years.

He lost the struggle permanently last week, killing himself instantly by stepping into the path of a Metrolink train in Anaheim.

Humbert’s death didn’t end the despair. Within hours, Christine Humbert, 49, was hospitalized with severe depression, for which she had also been treated in the days before the attack. And her family now fears that in her own sickness she might again find something in common with her husband--suicide.

“They loved each other like no other couple I’ve met,” said Claudia Gaona, the Orange County public defender who represented Humbert on attempted murder charges. “I don’t know. Johnny must have been at his wit’s end. . . . Here were two people dealing with mental illness, who loved each other tremendously.”

Theirs seems an unusual brand of love, a love that could stretch the definition of family, as Christine Humbert’s brother opened his home to Johnny Humbert even after the attack. And the case has served to underscore the difficulty the judicial system sometimes faces in dealing with cases involving mental illness.

As the family tries to sort through its grief, some officials have contemplated where blame might be fixed. The prosecutor has said Humbert never should have been released from custody. Gaona said she tried to get more treatment and antidepressants for Humbert but had trouble making appointments under his medical plan.

But Christine Humbert’s brother, Ed Bevill, isn’t thinking about blame.

“Sometimes everybody does the best they can and nothing is going to help,” said Bevill, with whom Humbert was living after his release from jail May 10. “As we look at it, we probably couldn’t have done more. It’s a tragedy.”

*

If there was a driving force in Johnny and Christine Humbert’s lives it was love, not mental illness, her brother said.

After more than a quarter-century together they still drove at least once a week to Laguna Beach or Newport Beach to watch the sunset together.

“He was never a violent person,” said Bevill, 52. “He was exactly the opposite.”

Humbert was particularly close to Bevill’s 7-year-old son, Frankie. The boy wanted a pet dog, but his father and mother, Kathy Bevill, ruled it out because of their erratic life schedules.

So the Humberts got the boy a pet dog and a cat, and kept them at their house.

In the weeks before the knife attack, Humbert had begun a new prescription of Prozac. Critics have contended the antidepressant can spur suicidal impulses in some patients, but defenders of the drug have argued that there is insufficient evidence to prove there is a suicide side effect.

Gaona, the public defender, said that Humbert’s mood improved and he became more outgoing, which she said spiraled his wife into depression.

“She became unsure about her role in his life,” Gaona said. When Humbert took her to Western Medical Center-Anaheim for treatment, she weighed less than 90 pounds, Gaona said. Days later, Humbert went back to pick his wife up.

“He was really upset,” Christine Humbert told police, according to court records. “He knew I had to stay, but the medical insurance ran out. I wanted to stay because I could tell I was getting better.”

She described Humbert as being particularly loving that night.

“Johnny was so sweet by cleaning the house from top to bottom,” she said.

She awoke from a nap the next day as her husband tried to kill her.

“I kept saying his name to get him to snap out of it,” she told police. “He just flipped. He wasn’t himself. The next thing I knew he wanted me to lay on the bed and use the pillow with pressure to stop the bleeding.”

Humbert called 911 about 8:10 a.m.

Christine Humbert later tried to get police to understand her husband the way she did.

“Johnny has never been violent,” she said. “We totally love each other. It was all the stress and Prozac he takes.”

*

Police arrested Humbert anyway.

Prosecutors charged Humbert with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. He was placed under suicide watch at the Orange County Jail when he couldn’t post the $250,000 bail. He was taken off Prozac and placed on a mood stabilizer, but not an antidepressant, Gaona said.

In an extraordinary display of support, three months after Humbert slashed his wife’s throat her family gathered to urge Orange County Superior Court Judge Martin Hairabedian Jr. to reduce bail to $10,000.

They argued that the attack was far outside Humbert’s character and that he was not a dangerous person. Hairabedian agreed and his in-laws immediately posted the bail. Humbert was released on condition that he move in with the Bevills, not have physical contact with his wife, continue his psychiatric treatment and return to work at the Fullerton Joint Union High School District maintenance yard.

The family thought the worst was behind them.

“She loved him, and we could see that they were going to be able to get together and that life would be normal again,” said Ed Bevill, a retired salesman.

But in a dark part of his soul, Humbert was losing another battle.

On June 12, Humbert went to work as usual but left early. No one knows where he went.

The next morning, the answer came with devastating intensity in a telephone call from the assistant district attorney prosecuting Humbert. “He gave no indication he was going to do this,” Ed Bevill said.

Humbert’s death is shrouded in painful irony.

“He didn’t want to become a burden to anyone,” Ed Bevill said. “He wasn’t a burden. Everything that was going to happen to him in the future was positive. He was taking medications and was seeing counselors.”

In the end, Kathy Bevill said, the weight of the illness crushed all else.

“It was more overwhelming,” she said, “than the love he knew we felt for him.”

Ed Bevill hopes his sister won’t collapse under the same weight. She remains hospitalized, and the family has delayed planning Humbert’s funeral in hopes she recovers sufficiently to take part.

“Johnny was her entire world,” he said. “Hopefully, she’ll be OK.”

*

Times staff writer Hector Becerra contributed to this report.