Allaway Insists He’s Cured in Bid for Release

A quarter-century after he killed seven people in a shooting at Cal State Fullerton, Edward Charles Allaway told a judge Tuesday that he is cured of mental illness and should be released from a state mental hospital.

“I’m not a danger to myself or others,” said Allaway, the janitor who committed Orange County’s deadliest act of violence on a July morning in 1976. “The last thing I want to do is hurt anybody.”

Dressed in a blue blazer and white button-down shirt, the trim and tanned Allaway appeared more like a businessman than an institutionalized mass murderer. He spoke softly and answered his attorney’s questions in a thoughtful manner.

He told Judge Frank F. Fasel that he has managed to cure himself of paranoid schizophrenia without medication.

“I know it seems funny to say, but I wasn’t a violent person,” Allaway said.

Allaway, 62, told Fasel that he has learned to recognize symptoms of his mental illness--which some of his doctors say is in remission--and would quickly seek help if the symptoms were to recur while he was free.

“I would because it’s the right thing. I wish I had the skills and the tools to have done it years ago,” he said.

A judge found Allaway not guilty by reason of insanity in 1977, and he has spent the past 25 years in state mental hospitals. This is the third time Allaway has asked a judge to grant him freedom.

He said he has tried hard in state custody to improve himself, working with therapists on anger management and reading Shakespeare to polish his speech skills. He has also taken a class to help him use an ATM machine, open a checking account and buy groceries.

The prospect of releasing a mass murderer has galvanized opposition from community leaders and relatives of Allaway’s victims. Patricia Almazan, whose father died in the shooting rampage, said she was not impressed by Allaway’s testimony and believes he should remain in custody at Patton State Hospital.

“It’s so unbelievable. It’s so rehearsed,” Almazan said. “I see him as still severely mentally ill. . . . The gravity of his crimes should stay at the forefront. He still killed seven people and wounded two others.”

Allaway’s testimony is scheduled to resume today. Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Wagner, who is opposed to Allaway’s release, declined to discuss Allaway’s testimony but said he’s looking forward to cross-examination.

Allaway became emotional Tuesday while discussing the delusions he blamed for the shooting rampage. In the months before the shootings, Allaway said he lived in fear that homosexual men who he alleges used the library’s restrooms for sexual liaisons were plotting to kill him.

The fear led him to spend his free time in his Anaheim apartment, where he would search for signs of his imagined assailants, unable to eat or sleep.

Allaway said he has learned to accept and to live with homosexuals during his more than two decades of treatment. Five clinicians have already testified that Allaway is fit for release.

“It took a long, long time for me to build my trust and come to the conclusion I can be with [gays],” Allaway said.

When testimony concludes next month, Fasel will decide whether to release Allaway. Defense attorney John Bovee, a deputy public defender, has suggested that the judge approve a modified release program in which Allaway would be set free under strict supervision, only a few hours at first, progressing to weekends and longer over a period of years.

Allaway said he would work closely with mental health officials and promptly seek treatment if he were to feel he was having a relapse.

“I would be good with them,” Allaway said. “I would have no problem explaining, telling them how I felt.”