Foxcatcher Read online

  To the same degree that Dave’s career had trekked upward, the atmosphere at Foxcatcher Farm seemed equally headed downward. The stories I heard from Dave, my good friend Dan Chaid, and other wrestlers there became increasingly perplexing. In the aftermath of Dave’s murder, when the media began investigating du Pont’s past, I heard even more bizarre stories detailing how erratic John’s behavior had become.

  Convinced there were spirits and spies inside the mansion, John had brought in a psychic to describe the spirits residing in the home. He also had workers check every inch of the walls and floors to locate the spies John knew were watching him. The spies weren’t found. But still adamant they were there, John had all the mansion’s columns and walls X-rayed.

  He also assigned a group of wrestlers the task of searching for Nazi spies that du Pont had observed hiding in treetops, and he believed enemies were coming through the mansion’s tunnels intent on killing him.

  John ordered treadmills removed from the training center because he believed their clocks were transporting him back in time. He told a wrestler to take off his baseball cap because he believed the cap was transmitting some kind of signals. The balls on du Pont’s billiards table were sent off for inspection because he suspected they had transmitting devices inside them.

  A relative said John had called himself “the Dalai Lama of the United States” and would not acknowledge anyone who did not address him by that title. At other times, he also claimed to be the president of Bulgaria and of the Soviet Union.

  He believed that rocks communicated with him, and he talked about a device he was convinced was inside the mansion that sprayed a unique oil on people that made them disappear. He shot geese that he insisted were trying to place him under a spell.

  Older stories were made public, too.

  In the mid ’80s, John had blown up a family of newborn foxes with dynamite for no known reason. In 1990, he had blood running down his legs. When asked what was wrong, he explained that he could see bugs digging into his skin and was plucking them out, tearing pieces of flesh off with them.

  John owned a tank, which had been stripped of its weapons, that he liked to drive around the estate and in parades. One night around Christmastime in 1984, he drove the tank to a home on his estate occupied by a policeman and his wife. John had driven through several trees and had scratches on his head from hitting the branches. Bloodied and drunk, he asked the wife if her husband could “come out to play.”

  Yet those who stepped forward to tell of their odd experiences with du Pont said they hadn’t thought that he would hurt, much less kill, anyone. His behavior was usually dismissed with “That’s just John,” or attributed to his alcohol and cocaine use. Family members later said they had been concerned about John’s mental health and tried to persuade him to get help. But he refused and, under Pennsylvania law, they were helpless to do more without his consent.

  Although the stories went back more than a decade, it was clear that they had become increasingly outlandishness over recent years.

  And just in the past year or so, I learned of a story that had been reported years earlier and I had not heard of even though I was working at Villanova at the time. In December 1987, John hit a flag man directing traffic. Du Pont wasn’t driving fast, but he struck the man hard enough that the man rolled up onto the hood of John’s Lincoln Town Car and then fell onto the ground when du Pont stopped. Du Pont told the man he was the Vanderbilt wrestling coach and dragged him to the sidewalk, although I still have a difficult time believing John was strong enough to drag another man. A witness said du Pont stayed with the man for a few minutes and before police or medical help could arrive, told the man in a slurred voice, “You’ll be all right” and drove away.

  When du Pont arrived at his estate, he immediately got into the helicopter with Chaid, Calabrese, and another man to go to the Philadelphia airport and fly to Wisconsin, where they would meet up with Dave to attend a wrestling match. Du Pont ordered everyone not to talk on the way to the airport. On board the Learjet, he told the group what had happened and that he might have killed the flagman. While they were en route to Wisconsin, du Pont’s lawyer made several calls to Nancy to have John call him as soon as he arrived. In front of Dave and Nancy, and still with his travel partners, John again admitted he had hit a man with his car.

  Du Pont, Dan, Rob, and the other man flew back home that night. When questioned by police the next day, John said that he hadn’t thought the man was seriously hurt and that he left the scene because he had to make the trip to Wisconsin. The man, who was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released, did not file a complaint and received an insurance settlement. John was given a minor traffic violation and fined a whopping total of $42.50.

  Looking back, it seems like du Pont spent all of those years just one step from being exposed for what he truly was. The wrong person made angry could have ruined everything for him. But John had the connections, the power, and the money to keep from being made public the selfish, manipulative man that he was.

  •

  The problems at Foxcatcher seemed to become more frequent when Jordanov moved onto the farm. Valentin was from Bulgaria, and he had been one of the marquee wrestlers in that dual that du Pont had set up.

  After Valentin arrived at Foxcatcher, he arranged matches for du Pont in Bulgaria against wrestlers in the Veterans division, for ages fifty and over. John would fly over to southeastern Europe and pay Bulgarians to lose to him. Some of those wrestlers made more money losing to John than they could make in a year competing in legitimate matches.

  During one tournament, a special exhibition match was held between John and a Bulgarian wrestler. A du Pont win had been arranged, but the Bulgarian got out to a big lead in the first minutes. Du Pont couldn’t do anything to the guy to score points. The Bulgarian realized he was in danger of winning and threw himself onto his own back, pinning himself. The ref called the fall and, for some reason, the Tunisian wrestlers there started celebrating with John, hoisting him on their shoulders and parading him around the arena. Who knows? He might have paid the Tunisians to help him celebrate, too.

  I hadn’t heard of such Veterans tournaments taking place in the United States. I had seen a Veterans match once and felt sorry for the two competitors because they were slow and uncoordinated. I think John exerted his influence to have Veterans tournaments set up in our country. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he had started donating money specifically to the Veterans program. Those tournaments started becoming popular and all kinds of retired wrestlers started competing again. My coach at UCLA, Dave Auble, became a Veterans World Champion.

  According to what I was told, du Pont really became fixated on winning a World Championship in the Veterans division. He wrestled in a few tournaments but was unable to win. It wasn’t uncommon for Veterans tournaments to have weight classes with no competitors, so to win a world title, John started showing up and signing up for an empty weight class, regardless of whether he qualified weightwise. No officials would say anything to stop him. They couldn’t afford to bite the hand that fed their sport.

  José Betancourt, who had thrown a match to John on the Villanova team’s trip to Puerto Rico, became friends with du Pont. José took part in a fake match with John, which I don’t think John knew had been rigged. Du Pont beat José by a score of 14–13 or something similar. Dave told me he considered José his hero for making John happy. When John was happy, life on the farm was better for everyone there.

  Chaid told me a story, which has since become well documented, from when Mario Saletnik came to live in the “old schoolhouse,” a renovated building at the farm. Mario was FILA’s highest-ranking official and head of its association of officials. He had been influential in getting John to donate to FILA. He was also head official at Olympics and World Championships. He had been the “extra official” assigned to watch Dave and me at the ’84 Olympics afte
r Dave had hurt the Yugoslav and I had broken the Turk’s elbow.

  Mario’s moving to Foxcatcher surprised me. I still do not know what caused him to move there. Mario was the most powerful official in wrestling, yet he had chosen to expose himself to becoming corrupted. John got a kick out of manipulating people to see if they would go against their principles in exchange for money. It was a game for him. He really did believe that everyone had a price. Now it was Mario’s turn to be tested.

  After a while, du Pont determined that Mario was trying to get more money from him not only for FILA but also for himself. John decided he no longer wanted Mario around.

  During the winter, du Pont had somehow driven his new Lincoln Continental into a pond on the estate. A few days later, John met Mario at the front gate in another Lincoln Continental. Mario said he had heard from the wrestlers about John’s driving his car into a pond and asked how it had happened.

  “I’ll show you,” du Pont told him. “Get in the back.”

  John handed Mario a plane ticket back to his home country of Canada and proceeded to drive toward the same pond, through the same set of trees, and right back into the pond. John jumped out of his car on the way into the pond and returned to his mansion, leaving Mario there in the backseat. Mario managed to get out and walked back to the wrestling facility, where, noticeably freaked out, he described what had just happened. Mario was all wet, and when he took his suit pants off, his legs were red from the near-freezing water.

  It became a joke among the wrestlers, who would tease Mario by asking if he wanted to go for a swim. But that incident later would be looked back on as the first sign that du Pont intended to start getting rid of some of those around him and would do so by whatever means necessary, including causing physical harm.

  John’s history was to become enamored of a sport or activity—such as collecting, law enforcement, triathlon, or wrestling—and make it his “toy” until he became bored with it. Then he would discard it and set off to find a new toy.

  In my opinion, John reached that point with wrestling. He had gained power within wrestling’s governing bodies and over some of the sport’s key players. He had climbed the sport’s political ladder. He had bought himself more international influence and prestige than he could through any of his other collections. But still, wrestling was his toy, and it was time to discard it.

  —

  John and Chaid, who had come to Villanova in 1987, started having problems with each other that led to a story Dan told me. In October 1995, Dan was lifting weights in the Foxcatcher weight room when John came in carrying an automatic assault rifle with a perforated barrel. John crouched in an aggressive stance, pointed the rifle at Dan, and said, “Don’t fuck with me. I want you off the farm now.”

  “John, I’ve only tried to be your friend,” Dan responded. “But I’ll leave.”

  Du Pont left the gym, and Dan started telling the other wrestlers what had happened and that du Pont was losing his mind and out of control. Their reaction was to tell Dan that du Pont was only mad at him.

  Du Pont just never seemed dangerous, because no one thought he would ever actually follow through on his threats. John would do something crazy, then it would be dismissed with “John wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  The assault rifle incident came up in the media after du Pont murdered Dave, and Dan claimed that he had reported what had happened to the police, but that they hadn’t taken him seriously, saying du Pont was “a little eccentric.” The police department countered by stating that Chaid had never followed through on the paperwork and that with nothing more than an unsubstantiated allegation available to them, there was nothing more they could do.

  Dan packed most of his belongings in a van that he left at Dave’s house and returned home to California. He flew back to Philadelphia a few weeks later to finish packing and leave for good. John wasn’t happy to hear that Dan was back on the property. Late that night, he went to Dave’s house, drunk and looking for Dan. He searched through Dave and Nancy’s house trying to find Dan, but he wasn’t there.

  John was so drunk that he was stumbling around, and he slipped and hit his head on a windowsill, opening a big cut.

  Dave and his wife helped John to his car so Dave could drive him to the emergency room, and Nancy noticed a rifle in the car and took it into their house. John kept saying he wanted his gun back before they left, and finally Dave returned it to him, but not before removing the bullets.

  Dave ran red lights driving John to Crozer-Chester Medical Center, where the trauma center had been named for him. On the way, John told Dave that he was going to file a police report claiming Chaid had hit him in the head with a bat and that he wanted Dave to back up his story.

  At the emergency room, John refused to fill out any forms, yelling, “I’m John du Pont! I don’t need to wait in line! Get me a doctor right now!” The nurses were rushing around, trying to calm him and get the necessary paperwork filled out. But John kept barking orders and asking, “Don’t you know who I am?” He wound up needing stitches to close the cut.

  John stuck with his story about Dan and a bat. Dave and his wife told police what had really happened. When John learned later that Dave and Nancy had not gone along with his story, he requested a copy of the police report.

  I haven’t confirmed this officially, but I have been told that the police report was on du Pont’s desk when they searched his mansion after arresting him for killing Dave. Only after the murder, as the media began investigating and later through information that came out as part of the judicial process, did the pieces of a complex puzzle begin to come together.

  Apparently, du Pont developed a growing animosity toward Dave, who had been John’s favorite when he moved onto the farm. Over time, Valentin Jordanov—who, like Dave, was married with children—took Dave’s place in that role.

  I think Valentin was the only wrestler on the farm who could tolerate John, and that was only because Valentin didn’t know a lot of English at that time. When I had first met Valentin, while he was living on the estate, I told him, “If you want to stay at Foxcatcher, don’t learn English. He’ll talk your head off and you’ll hate it here.”

  The odd thing was that Dave and Valentin were very close friends. Their friendship had begun during that Foxcatcher-Bulgaria match of John’s.

  John fired Dave after a party on New Year’s Eve 1994 because Dave came dressed in a Russian soldier’s uniform to get a laugh out of his Bulgarian friend. John had a fascination with Bulgaria and had made up bizarre stories about his mother having had sex with a Bulgarian soldier, meaning he and Valentin were both Bulgarian. John must have viewed Dave as a threat to his friendship with Valentin.

  The next day, John called Dave to the mansion and fired him. Jordanov and Calabrese both told du Pont that they would leave the team if Dave was forced out. John backed down and apologized to Dave.

  In 1995, Foxcatcher head coach Greg Strobel’s contract expired and he took the head coach’s job at Lehigh University. Greg recommended that du Pont appoint Dave as his replacement. Du Pont, however, chose Jordanov over Dave even though Dave was clearly more qualified. When Valentin expressed his disappointment over his new salary, it was Dave who went to du Pont on Valentin’s behalf and talked John into paying Valentin more.

  Dave was the person at Foxcatcher whom the others went to when they had problems with du Pont. Dave was the only one among the wrestlers who would stand up to John yet also could calm him down and convince him to, in most cases, act rationally. Dave was not a yes-man, and he wasn’t afraid to speak up and tell du Pont when he was screwing something up. He thought he could help John.

  John listened to Dave more than anyone else at Foxcatcher, but Valentin had become the one John most wanted to impress.

  —

  That November, the athletes advisory council of USA Wrestling gathered via conference call to consider requ
esting that the organization officially discontinue its association with du Pont. The discussion centered on two complaints.

  First, one wrestler had reported du Pont pointing guns at some of the wrestlers at Foxcatcher.

  Second, earlier in the year, du Pont had kicked three black wrestlers off the farm because of their skin color, saying the Ku Klux Klan ran Foxcatcher. It wasn’t just the black wrestlers du Pont had removed from the farm. He had developed a fear of the color black and ordered anything black on the estate either removed or painted a different color.

  Dave defended John more than anyone else on the call, and the council decided not to call for action by USA Wrestling. The council members were not convinced that du Pont was racist or a threat to anyone’s safety. Plus, du Pont’s interest in wrestling appeared to have begun to wane. He had already sent word to USA Wrestling that his financial contributions would cease after 1996. He had been talking about how he might get out of the sport altogether.

  Once du Pont had made it known that he would stop making his annual donation to USA Wrestling, a separation began to develop between him and the governing body. John had become a problem within wrestling, but he was also in the process of removing himself from the sport without USA Wrestling’s having to force it.

  Dave planned to stay at Foxcatcher through the 1996 Olympics, which would end in early August—he wanted to cap his comeback on wrestling’s biggest stage—and then return home to Palo Alto, where I only recently learned he had been offered the chance to coach at Stanford again. When other wrestlers heard of Dave’s intent, some packed up and moved and others made plans to leave with Dave. Valentin was one of those.

  —

  During the Christmas holidays of 1995, Dave and his family came to visit me in Utah. I forgot to give him the security code to my house and while I was at the school he went into the house, set off the alarm, and the police came. We had a good laugh over that.

  I took Dave’s family to Salt Lake City to visit Temple Square, which is the most-visited tourist spot in Utah. I talked to them about my faith, the positive impact it had made in my life, and what I had learned about the validity of the Book of Mormon.