Foxcatcher: the true story

Even before he developed delusions that he was being spied on by Nazis and that horses were sending him messages from Mars, there were signs that multimillionaire John Eleuthère du Pont was, at the very least, eccentric.

Touring his 880-acre Foxcatcher Farm in an armoured personnel carrier, he would describe seeing Disney characters looming out of the rain, or trees uprooting themselves and marching around the estate. He feared that intruders were hiding in the walls of his $4 million stately home, hired security contractors to check for secret tunnels under his floorboards, and had the balls on his billiard table checked for listening devices.

But by January 1996, du Pont’s paranoia had descended into something even darker.

“On a day as cold and grey as death itself, John du Pont got into his Lincoln town car and drove out of the gates of his estate and into the abyss of insanity,” Thomas Bergstrom, his defence attorney, would tell jurors at a courtroom trial a year and a day later.

He headed to the home of 1984 Olympic gold medal wrestler Dave Schultz, 36, situated on the edge of his Pennsylvania estate, pulled up outside and lowered his car window.

“Hi boss,” said Schultz, taking a step towards him.

“You got a problem with me?” du Pont yelled, pointing a gun through the open window.

Seconds later, the champion athlete, considered the figurehead of du Pont’s world-class Foxcatcher wrestling team, lay dead.

The story of how one of America’s greatest wrestlers came to be murdered by the scion of one of America’s wealthiest families, is now being told in a new film, Foxcatcher, released on Friday [January 9]. In a rare diversion from comedy, Steve Carell plays the mercurial du Pont, alongside Mark Ruffalo as Dave Schultz and Channing Tatum as Schultz’s brother Mark, also an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler.

The film, which is tipped for Oscar success, has been described as a tale of “murder and mental illness”.

It is also a story about the blinding influence of money.

For, despite his obvious flaws, when Du Pont announced, in 1986, that he wanted to open a 14,000sq ft state-of-the-art training centre, and build a team of Olympic champions, the news was warmly welcomed by many in the wrestling community.

Offering on-site accommodation and a monthly pay packet for those who joined Team Foxcatcher, it was dubbed “the fanciest wrestling compound this side of Leningrad” and went on to boast an all-star membership.

When du Pont asked Mark Schultz to join the project, the wrestler quickly accepted. The film (which Mark has said he "hates") portrays him as down-on-his-luck at the time, and flattered by du Pont's attention. But later, he realised that he was just another one of the millionaire's collectibles. (Du Pont owned some of the world's rarest stamps, and had a collection of two million shells and 100,000 stuffed birds.)

^{Mark Ruffalo (left) plays wrestler Dave Schultz (right)}

“We were his newest trophies. If you didn’t want to be displayed on his wall, he threatened to ruin you,” Schultz writes in his newly published autobiography, also called Foxcatcher.

Mark finally left the team, feeling embittered and with a sense that he had been manipulated. He admits in his book that he deliberately lost to a Turkish opponent at Olympic trials that year because he could not bear to give the deranged du Pont the satisfaction of a win.

“He climbed to the top of USA Wrestling using the credibility he got from my name,” he writes. “In his mind, our lives only existed to glorify him. And he would do anything to get what he wanted, which was respect. But he didn’t earn it though. That was the problem. He thought he could buy it.”

With one Schultz gone, du Pont worked on getting another. In 1990 he succeeded in recruiting Dave as a coach, offering him a $70,000 salary and a rent-free home on his estate.

“If it wasn’t for Dave being at Foxcatcher, nobody else would have gone. He was a legend, just one of the best wrestlers in the world at the time,” says Kevin Jackson, a world and Olympic champion who trained at Foxcatcher from 1990 until 1995. “There was no one else who carried himself like Dave. He was an ambassador for the sport, a one of a kind [and] someone a lot of people called ‘friend’”.

He also felt compassion for du Pont, urging understanding when others condemned the millionaire’s wild behaviour.

The Foxcatcher founder, whose great-grandfather established what is now the world’s third largest chemical manufacturer, DuPont, in 1802, had certainly had an unusual childhood. Brought up by his mother Jean, after she split from her husband, William, when he was just two-years-old, du Pont wasn’t close to his siblings, who were all much older, and spent his formative years rattling around the family’s enormous estate in emotional isolation.

He considered the chauffeur’s son his only friend – but discovered later that his mother had paid the boy to fill the role. Jean herself (played by Vanessa Redgrave in the film), was often contemptuous of his hopes and opinions, despite his devotion towards her.

^{Steve Carell (left), plays John du Pont (right)}

He craved approval, and, despite earning a doctorate in natural sciences and founding the Delaware Museum of Natural History, fostered a long-term love of wrestling (a sport his mother had forbidden him to do at school) and was desperate for respect in the wrestling world. (His low self-esteem may also have had something to do with a horse riding accident he had sustained as a child, which had resulted in the removal of both his testicles.)

Du Pont poured over $3 million into USA Wrestling, the sport’s national governing body. He flew wrestlers to tournaments in his Learjet and revelled in his reputation as a sponsor of champions.

“But then came the downward spiral,” says former wrestler Dan Chaid, who spent nine years at Foxcatcher.

“After his mother’s death [in 1988] was when the decline started, without a doubt,” says Taras Wochok, who was du Pont’s lawyer and friend from 1974.

Du Pont began carrying loaded weapons, once firing through the gymnasium ceiling during team training. On another occasion, he injured a road maintenance worker in a hit-and-run incident.

His behaviour became increasingly paranoid. He shot a flock of nesting geese because he believed that they were casting spells on him, and removed treadmills and exercise bikes from the gymnasium because he believed that the timers on them were turning back time. There was frequently the smell of alcohol on his breath, and evidence of cocaine use and pills. Friends and family tried to intervene, but to no avail.

“I’d say ‘John, you really need help, pretty soon,' but he’d close you out because he didn’t want to hear that,” says Chaid. After an incident in October 1995, Chaid also spoke to the police.

“I was working out in the weight room. Du Pont came in and pulled a gun on me and said ‘Don’t you **** with me, I want you off the farm,” in a very aggressive way. I could tell he wasn’t in the right state of mind. I cowered to him just enough to get him to back off. Then he left.

“I told local police. The next day I went to the local courthouse, put in a report there, then the county courthouse. He was definitely getting closer and closer to doing something where somebody was going to get hurt.”

^{Channing Tatum (left), plays Mark Schultz (right)}

Kevin Jackson was also aware of du Pont's declining mental health.

“Sometimes he’d say something a bit off the wall and I would just not respond," he says. "Like, you’re sitting there with his trophies and he says one of them is moving and that it means someone just went in through a hidden door into the house.

“He started carrying a pistol around – it’d be at the dinner table in the evenings and I saw incidents of him shooting through the roof. I’d think, ‘Worst case scenario, he’s going to shoot somebody,’ so whenever I walked into the house I’d come in whistling and singing loudly. I didn’t want him getting all surprised on me with a gun.”

In 1995, says Jackson, du Pont “started eliminating anything black on the farm,” because he associated black with death.

“He was taking out black gym equipment, the coach was told he couldn’t drive his black vehicle. I was told, ‘Yeah, he’s kind of losing it. And the black thing, that includes you too.’ Everyone knew, including US Wrestling, everyone, that this guy was teetering on the edge. We all thought du Pont had issues and problems and unfortunately it all came to a head.”

On January 26, 1996, du Pont’s security consultant, Patrick Goodale, drove to the mansion for a 2pm appointment.

Du Pont asked him to tour the estate with him to assess the damage from recent winter storms, and took his long-barreled .44-magnum revolver with him. They ended up at Schultz’s house, where the wrestler – who was on the driveway tinkering with the radio on his Toyota Tercel – turned and sauntered towards his boss with a smile. Aware of du Pont’s increasingly erratic state, but never before on the receiving end of his madness, he had no reason to suspect anything untoward was afoot.

But without warning, Du Pont picked up his gun, pointed it first at Goodale’s face, then turned it on Schultz and fired.

“I said: ‘John, what are you doing?’ Goodale testified at the trial. “David screamed after the first shot. He fell….”

Goodale leapt from the car with his weapon and pointed it at du Pont. “Our barrels met. Then he threw his gun on the seat and backed (the car) out,” he recalled.

Inside Schultz’s house, Nancy - his wife of 14 years (played in the movie by Siena Miller) - had been clearing the dishes from a family lunch when she heard her husband scream. As his blood stained the snow on the driveway, she cradled his head in her hands.

In a call to 911 she told an operator “John Du Pont shot my husband.”

“Why?” the despatcher asked. “Because he’s insane” she cried back. Later she would have to break the news to her son Alexander, 9, and daughter Danielle, 6.

Du Pont fled to his mansion, reloaded his gun and locked himself in. Outside, 70 police officers and SWAT team members laid siege for two days.

Du Pont was finally captured after police switched off the heat to his home, driving him out. At a five-week trial, psychiatric experts testified that he was a paranoid schizophrenic convinced that Schultz was involved in a conspiracy to kill him.

Jurors found du Pont guilty of third-degree murder and mentally ill, but not insane. He was sentenced to 13.5 to 30 years and died in prison in 2010, aged 72. No motive was ever offered.

“Du Pont wanted people to credit him for creating champions. But in the end, he destroyed one of the greatest champions wrestling ever had,” says Jackson. “Dave’s death was a tragedy on so many levels and why it happened we’ll never truly know.”

Foxcatcher is released in cinemas on January 9