Witnesses detail synagogue shooter's family history of suicide and abuse

Naomi Grimm never met her second cousin, Robert Bowers.

She never even knew he existed until after he killed 11 people at a Squirrel Hill synagogue in 2018.

Still, Grimm, a home health aide from Ohio, testified for the defense on Monday, recounting for the jury a pervasive family history of abuse, neglect and mental illness dating to Bowers’ great-grandparents.

Grimm, who has done extensive research into her ancestry, told the jury that Bowers’ great-grandparents placed all nine of their children in the McCullough Home for children in 1931. Bowers’ grandmother, Patricia, was the youngest and was around age 3 at the time.

“It was a very harsh place,” Grimm said. “A lot of cruelty went on there, a lot of severe abuse.”

Sexual abuse by the man who ran it was common, she said.

Of the nine children who went to the home, Grimm told the jury, at least five went on to have mental illnesses or alcoholism or became sexually abusive themselves, including her mother and Bowers’ grandmother.

“They all seemed to be very similar — the way they raised us because of the treatment in the children’s home,” she said. “We all have a certain amount of mental illness because of how they were raised.

“Because of the abuse they took, we’re kind of a reflection of that abuse.”

Grimm was the third witness called by the defense in its mitigation case as part of the sentence selection phase in Bowers’ trial, which began last week. After Grimm testified, the defense called a series of relatively short witnesses — ranging from a grade-school classmate to the psychiatrists who treated him during hospitalizations at age 13 — to bolster their claims that Bowers has a long history of mental illness.

Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, was found guilty of all 63 counts against him for the Oct. 27, 2018, attack on the Tree of Life synagogue building.

The same jury on July 13 found him eligible for a possible death sentence.

The victims were members of the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations. They were Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Irving Younger, 69; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; and Richard Gottfried, 65.

Grimm spent about an hour on the witness stand, tracing the research she did on the maternal side of Bowers’ family.

She described her own difficult childhood, which she said stemmed from abuse her mother endured at the children’s home.

After reporting her sexual abuse to a cook there, her mother, who was 17, was kicked out on Christmas Eve, Grimm testified. After she and her sister were born, she said, their family never celebrated Christmas, and her mother slept in bed with her and her sister throughout their childhoods.

As part of her testimony, Grimm showed the jury a copy of a book, “Lost Children of the Ohio Valley,” that described the children’s home and included a photograph of her mother while she lived there.

Grimm wrote a letter to the author in 2009.

“This home’s staff ruined my mom’s life and also my sister and I’s,” she wrote. “I believe we were parented just like she was taught in the children’s home.”

Grimm described the abuse she endured as a child, along with her sister.

She told the jury that her grandfather died in a state psychiatric hospital in Ohio and said that her aunt, who had been in the children’s home, was hospitalized repeatedly. An uncle, she recounted, was a severe alcoholic and sexually abused women and children. Another aunt, who was married and spent six years in a traveling circus, at one time lived with him and her five children in a chicken coop.

An uncle used newspapers to cover the windows of his home and raised two boys who were non-verbal and lived in group homes or state hospitals.

Grimm’s cousin, who went into foster care, had a disagreement with his foster dad, who was a police officer who lived above the jail. Grimm’s cousin burned down their house and the jail, she said.

Bowers’ grandmother had a severe drinking problem, Grimm testified.

On cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo Song, Grimm described raising her own four healthy daughters and her commitment to working in home health care.

She proudly said that her work requires her to be responsible, reliable, considerate and careful.

Song asked her how she was able to be successful in work and family, despite the family history of mental illness.

“I have been very blessed,” Grimm said. “I’m not going to be my mom.”

Later Monday, the defense called both an elementary school classmate and a teacher of Bowers at Faith Community Christian School.

Jace Wingard said that he went to school with the defendant from second through fifth grade, from 1979 to 1983.

He described Bowers as quiet and a bit of a loner, but normal in his interactions.

“He ate the chalk dust off the tray,” Wingard said. “We, the students, were a little amazed by it.”

He suspected Bowers did it for attention.

Wingard remembered that his mom once drove Bowers home, and after they had dropped him off, she told him that she was worried about Bowers and his family. He doesn’t recall if she gave a reason why.

Dennis Kavanaugh, who was Bowers’ teacher in 1981, told the jury that the defendant once became visibly upset and was shaking in anxiety over a timed math competition. Then, on a separate writing assignment, Bowers told him, “‘I can’t touch that kind of paper. I had to go to the hospital once because of that kind of paper.’”

Kavanaugh was not able to explain that incident any further.

“That’s pretty striking — the kind of thing a teacher would remember,” he said.

Kavanaugh also recalled that the school principal recounted to him that Bowers had tried to hurt himself, prompting Kavanaugh to try to give him more attention.

Bowers rebuffed him.

“I didn’t know how to break through to him,” Kavanaugh said.

The defense also called two psychiatrists who treated Bowers during hospitalizations at McKeesport Hospital and Southwood Psychiatric Hospital in Upper St. Clair.

Neither of the physicians remembered treating Bowers, but recounted his treatment at both locations based on records from the defense.

Bowers was admitted at age 13 to McKeesport Hospital on Sept. 23, 1985, for probable depression and trouble with impulse control and a suicide attempt, said Dr. Earl James Brink, who retired in 1998.

In the records, Brink noted that Bowers ought to be evaluated for incipient schizophrenia — which likely wouldn’t show symptoms for several years.

“I didn’t know what was coming, and that was a possibility,” he told the jury.

Bowers remained there until Oct. 10, 1985, when he went to Southwood.

Dr. Alan Axelson then told the jury about Bowers’ hospitalization at Southwood, where he remained for 41 days.

While there, Axelson said Bowers was diagnosed with atypical depression. Although Pennsylvania law requires that the medical records be disposed of seven years after a patient turns 21, Bowers’ admission and discharge records were provided to Children, Youth Services at the time.

During the defendant’s hospitalization, he began to show progress on antidepressant medications and participated in group activities.

The last defense witness of the day was an investigator with the federal public defender’s office.

Ashley Hatcher-Peralta testified briefly about recovering documents from Bowers’ home after they were released by the FBI on Nov. 16, 2018.

Among the documents, she told the jury she found what appeared to be the envelope that contained Bowers’ father’s suicide note and other documents, which had been sent to him by his paternal grandmother in 2003.

The envelope was labeled, “My Last Words,” by Randall G. Bowers.

According to a Forest County coroner’s report, Randall G. Bowers killed himself in a public park on Oct. 23, 1979, with a shotgun.

He left a 10-page letter to his mom, which began, “Dear Mom, I just want to say I’m sorry about this.”

At the time, he was facing rape charges in Pittsburgh and believed he would go to prison.

Earlier Monday, clinical psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Katerine Porterfield concluded her testimony in which she summarized Bowers’ chaotic home life.

Porterfield was asked by the defense to conduct a psychosocial history of the defendant.

She said the fall of 1975, when Bowers was 3 years old, was particularly chaotic with Bowers’ mother, Barbara Bolt, moving in and out of relationships. Porterfield said Bolt felt ashamed about times she taught a young Bowers how to pleasure himself sexually and when she took a 6-year-old Bowers to “Saturday Night Fever,” which had suicide and rape scenes.

When Porterfield questioned Bolt on those topics, “She became very embarrassed, expressed a lot of shame, looked down and filled up with tears.

“She felt that she was truly incapable of parenting,” Porterfield said.

Bolt also admitted to cutting herself in front of Bowers — on her arms, legs and abdomen.

Bolt told her son, “‘At least you’ll know why you’re messed up,’” Porterfield testified. “It was almost comforting to feel pain.”