In While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent into Madness, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Sanders investigates a monstrous crime—the rape of two Seattle women in their home and the stabbing murder of one of them—and the mental health and criminal justice systems’ tragic failure to forestall it.
What were the red flags in Isaiah Kalebu’s behavior before he committed this particular crime?
He walked into a business office, declared himself an African king, and started firing everyone. He was evaluated in a psych ward, but released; the next day he threatened his mother, smashed her car windows, and when she fled to her daughter’s house he attacked her there, swinging a dog-chain and throwing rocks through the door. He began a long journey through the criminal justice and mental health systems.
Given his delusions and violence, shouldn’t he have been involuntarily committed as a danger to himself and others?
To the judge and state psychiatrists, he didn’t meet that standard. He was released pending trial for malicious harassment and ordered into community mental health treatment. But the court failed to make sure he was doing that, and the treatment program failed to notify the court that he wasn’t showing up. As his attorneys put it, he wandered, accompanied by his dog and his delusions, until he encountered his victims, Jennifer Hopper and Theresa Butz.
Before that murder, his behavior escalated. How did the courts deal with that?
He was arrested for walking his dog without a leash, during a violent confrontation in which he was tased. This was another violation of his pre-trial release conditions, but the state that birthed Microsoft couldn’t afford a computer system that lets a district court inform a superior court what’s going on with a defendant. Isaiah’s aunt asked the district court for a restraining order against him; the next day her house burned down in an arson and she died, along with a boarder. Isaiah’s own defense attorney withdrew from his case and told the superior court judge she believed Isaiah had killed his aunt, but he was released on his own recognizance. Shortly afterward he attacked Theresa and Jennifer.
Reading the book, we see an ominous pattern developing, but the courts and mental health system did not put the puzzle together. Why not?
The systems were fragmented and communicated poorly because they are underfunded. The mental health system in Washington State faced massive budget cuts due to the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, precisely when Isaiah needed it. Solving the puzzle doesn’t require huge investment, just some investment. The lack of investment stems from policy choices made by politicians—who are elected by us.
