31/01/2023
In 2013, Dr. James St. James was a 61-year-old tenured psychology professor at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois.
In the summer of that year, St. James was contacted by a reporter from a newspaper in Georgetown, Texas. The reporter was conducting research about a book about psychology and wanted to meet with St. James to consult his expertise.
But that was only a ruse. It turned out that the reporter had been researching a triple murder in Georgetown from August 4, 1967. A 15-year-old boy named James Wolcott had shot his entire family to death, including his father, his mother, and his 17-year-old sister.
Although he initially denied committing the murders, he eventually confessed to the police that he killed his family after a week of planning. Some of his complaints were that his mother chewed loudly, his sister had a bad accent, and his father hindered James's anti-war protest activities.
Wolcott was tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. The murders were deemed to have been a result of mental illness compounded by a glue-sniffing addiction. He was remanded to hospitalization in lieu of prison and was treated for a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
In 1974, he was declared sane and released, but his whereabouts had generally unknown until 2013, when the reporter discovered that James Wolcott was now Dr. James St. James.
After his release, Wolcott changed his last name to St. James and went on to obtain a B.A., M.A., and PhD in psychology. His career at Millikin University began in 1986. Until 2013, the school had not been aware of St. James's past. Despite calls for him to resign, the administration released a statement in support of St. James and expressed their intent for him to resume his teaching duties that fall.
