Teresa Spitz

I have several cases put together that I have researched already but as is often the case this last one that I researched is the one that has grabbed my complete interest. It is one of those cases that I am surprised I had never heard of and to be fair I am unsure how it made its way to my list in the first place.

If you are a regular reader of my blog then you know that I am an advocate for the mentally ill... the true mentally ill. You also know that even in those cases I do believe in punishment of some manner. The problem I have in this case is not just the fact that I question the fact that Teresa Spitz was truly mentally ill when she shot both her husband and her mother in law, but also in system that allowed her to in my opinion, fairly quickly re-enter society.

Teresa Dickey and Peter Spitz were married in August of 2000. Many were skeptical about the marriage considering Peter was eighteen years older than the nineteen year old Teresa but most had to admit later that it seemed to be a good fit. Peter had been married once before and had three children that lived with his ex wife. By the time he and Teresa married he had been divorced for ten years. They had actually met when Teresa was a young girl. Peter, now a former Marine, had once worked with her stepfather. They had not seen each other in nearly a decade before they met again and would later marry. At the time of their marriage Peter was a truck driver and they lived in Wisconsin. Teresa had also gotten training for driving a truck and the two worked together on the road for some time. The couple had planned to wait a few years to start a family but Teresa had gotten pregnant and around the same time Peter's mother, Mariko Shida, who lived in Englewood Colorado began having health problems. The couple decided to move to Colorado and in with his mother to help her and start over. According to Peter by May of 2004 their son was now ten months old and things seemed to being going really well. The couple had discussed looking for a place of their own and life seemed good.

Peter would later say that in the early morning hours of May 17, 2004 he awoke and saw Teresa was dressed. He asked her what she was doing and she told him that she needed to go out and buy some diaper rash ointment. He rolled over and went back to sleep to awake his early morning alarm in just a few hours. Instead of going to the store Teresa had taken their baby son with her and took him to the home of Don and Sheila Reynolds. Some reports state the Reynoldses were friends while other reports say that they were relatives of Teresa's. Teresa would tell the couple that Peter was having chest pains and she was going to take him to the hospital and asked the couple to watch the baby. After she left Sheila Reynolds noticed that Teresa seemed to bring an awful lot of things for just a short period of time. She looked through the bag and aside from finding all the baby items she found the child's social security card, medical paperwork, five hundred dollars in cash, jewelry, a diary and a letter giving the couple custody of the child.

For her part Teresa returned home just after five that morning. She went into the master bedroom where Peter lay sleeping. She got her Smith & Wesson .38 special that Peter had given to her as a gift, placed a pillow over his head and fired the gun. When she heard him scream she fired again. She went to go out the door and heard him moaning so she fired a third shot into his right temple. No one knows for sure if Mariko heard the shots and was attempting to get to a phone, or leave the home but Teresa found her in the kitchen of the home and fired a bullet in the back of her head, killing her instantly.

Two 911 calls were made. One was a hang up call that only reported shots being fired. The second was from Peter Spitz himself. It was not made clear what, if anything he was able to communicate. Teresa got into her car, drove to the police station, went in, turned her gun over and confessed to the crime.

Only by some miracle, Peter survived after being shot three times in the head and face. He would be left completely blind. Doctors stated that they could not repair his optic nerve or his upper respiratory system that would leave him with a tracheotomy tube. He was placed in a medical coma for a period of time. When he awoke he was informed that his wife had been the shooter. At first he could not believe it, but it was obviously true. Despite coming to the realization that Teresa had shot him Peter became her biggest ally in her fight in the criminal justice system. There was also the issue of the couple's young son. Peter would later say he was given two choices, either allow the Reynolds to become the baby's guardian or have him placed in the foster care system. He opted for the Reynolds to care for him, something it seems he would later regret.

Teresa went on trial in October of 2005. She would plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Her plea was less surprising than Peter's actions. He stood by Teresa. He refused to work with the prosecution and continually pushed that she was mentally ill and did not deserve prison but needed professional care. By doing this not only did he anger the prosecution and alienate family and friends, he also did this at risk of having very limited contact with his son, who was still in the care of Don and Sheila Reynolds. He was even telling reporters that he hoped to reunite with Teresa one day. The Reynoldses were scheduled to testify for the prosecution while he was scheduled for the defense. The prosecution argued that she was not mentally ill but had planned the murder by even making a “checklist” of things. They pointed out that she had purposely removed her son from the home before she committed the crime and she had looked up the address to the police station so she could turn herself in after. The defense would argue that she had some sort of psychotic break but the prosecution countered that if she had any sort of illnesses it was narcissism and sociopathic tendencies that were known to be untreatable.

The jury took ten hours to deliberate but in the end Peter got his way. His wife was found to be not guilty by reason of insanity in the murder of his mother and the attempted murder of himself. She was placed in a psychiatric hospital for treatment. Within a few months it was said she was showing good signs and her security level was lowered. Her doctors would say her recovery was amazing and she was doing so well. Within a year of being placed in the hospital she filed for divorce from Peter and changed her name to Teresa Lynn. Allegedly the name change was to help her get a new start when she was released because the Spitz name would follow her along with the crime.

By December of 2010 Peter was at his wits end. Not only was there talk about Teresa possibly being released soon but he had other issues at hand. Of course he had to learn to function again in society as a blind man. The shooting had also left him without a sense of smell which may seem minor but as he pointed out, he already could not see and now without being able to smell he could not tell if for instance food was burning. He would eventually learn to adapt and he obtained a guide dog. But, he had an even bigger issue.... his son.

Over time Peter began having issues with the Reynolds and the raising of his son. At first it was simply described as having differences in how to raise him. Don and Sheila Reynolds disputed that Peter was able to provide a “suitable environment” for the boy. Peter had filed to regain custody but apparently the judge denied it. In fact, amazingly Teresa was allowed to testify at this hearing and did so in favor of the Reynoldses keeping custody of their son. She told the judge that she feared that he may hurt the boy. With everything that Teresa had done to him, including killing his mother, Peter had defended and stuck by her but now he was done. Peter did not know at the time of Teresa's trial that there had been an incident a few weeks before the shooting in which Teresa had all but intentionally allowed their son to drown. And now here she was telling a judge that she feared that he would harm their son. This was apparently the last straw for Peter. It appears that while, as I said, the judge denied Peter's efforts at that time he was still allowed his court ordered four visits a month. However, that seemingly did not last long. Not long after the hearing, and apparently against the court order, a therapist who was seeing the son decided that contact with Peter was not in his best interest. It was later said that the therapist had never observed Peter with his son and based this assumption on the fact that the Reynoldses told the therapist that after a visit with Peter the son had behavior problems. By the time the end of 2010 rolled around Teresa was seeing their son, with alleged supervision, more than Peter. She was still a patient at the mental facility but she had a cell phone, an email account and several other privileges and there was talk of releasing her soon.

Now, I suspect that most of the issues between Don and Sheila Reynolds and Peter had less to do with his ability to parent his son and more to do with the fact they were friends and/or relatives of Teresa's. They had testified for the prosecution but that does not mean they agreed with the prosecution theory. Peter would later say that he had felt he had no choice but to allow the Reynoldses to take guardianship of his son. I saw nothing that indicated that Peter may have had other siblings or other family members of his own who could have taken custody of his son. I also saw nothing more really in the way of Don and Sheila Reynolds either. I cannot say how old the couple was or if they had any children of their own.

In April of 2011 despite Peter's objections, Teresa was granted what was called a “conditional release” from the state hospital. This meant she was allowed unsupervised trips off the grounds and they would begin community placement. There had been a dispute as to whether she had been rehabilitated as well as whether her crime had been committed as she had projected back in 2004. Teresa had allegedly written a letter to someone who had been a former cell mate when they were in the county jail. In fact, after the woman's release Peter had allowed her to live with him but the story was she had stolen from him. The woman then went to live with neighbors of Peter's and apparently did the same thing. At any rate the former cellmate had gotten a letter from Teresa and someone else also read the letter and the two disputed as to the contents. The second person to read the letter indicated that the letter stated Teresa wanted Peter dead, not just in 2004, but even later. The former cellmate disputed that this was said and the letter could not be produced several years later. Despite that, it really did not matter I suppose. Teresa had been found not guilty in the courts so she was not a convict and as long as the doctors proclaimed she was rehabilitated there was little the judge could do but release her.

Finally in July of 2011 Peter was able to regain custody of his son. While I am sure part of the reason behind the decision was that Peter was able to prove that he was able to provide for his son, but it appears that a lot of the decision was based on the behavior of Don and Sheila Reynolds. First, the judge chastised the fact that they had prevented Peter from seeing his child for nearly a year based on a report by a therapist who had not even observed Peter with his son. The judge stated that they had used poor judgment in allowing Teresa to spend time with the child and not Peter. They were also chastised for the fact that they had allowed Teresa to stay overnight in their home. Again, all of this gave Teresa more and more access to the child while they forbid Peter from visiting. After the hearing Don Reynolds announced that the couple planned to appeal the hearing, not only because he argued that he and his wife were the only “parents” that the son knew, but amazingly because the couple was trying to adopt the child. I found this statement to be outrageous!! Here was a man who had fought for his life after his wife tried to kill him and then fought for his child and this couple not only blocked his ability to be with his child but they planned to attempt to adopt him. Of course Teresa would have been on their side and while she had committed the crime of murder, and admitted it, because of the ruling in her trial she was not considered to be a convict. I have the very distinct feeling that had they been given the right to adopt the child that he would have been left in Teresa's care far more than theirs and yet they all knew that the odds of Teresa gaining legal custody were likely slim. While she was not considered a former convict, her mental stability would have likely prevented her ever having custody of the child.

It was said that despite all that happened Peter Spitz never regretted helping Teresa's defense. He truly believed that she must have snapped and needed psychological counseling and not incarceration at the time. However, he was concerned with the “fast pace” in which the hospital contended that she was recovering. It was said that the “average length of stay for a patient found not guilty by reason of insanity is less than nine years,” at least at the facility that she was in. I have continually thought of two other cases, those of Andrea Yates and of John Hinckley Jr. They were found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to mental facilities. Hinckley spent more than thirty years in a hospital; Andrea Yates is still in a hospital more than fifteen years after her crime. That is not to say that some people do not recover faster than others and that it is not possible but in this case I have been left to wonder if her amazingly fast recovery had more to do with the fact that she did not have a psychological break as the defense argued and may have been a sociopath as the prosecution argued.

I did a search on Teresa, who was said to have changed her name to Lynn and it appears that her last name is now Harmon. I came to this conclusions based on the other surnames listed with her on one of the people search type websites. This indicates that she has remarried at least at some point. One has to wonder how much she is being supervised, even simply by those around her.