Commentary
986
2007-05-22
2007-05-07
Finding the
Duclod Man, part 2
In one of The
Advocate ’s most talked-about stories ever,
reporter Sarah Aswell recounted her search for
This all started
when somebody mailed me an anonymous letter containing
strange jokes and the word duclod—“dually
closeted.” I found out that the Duclod Man had
been sending these odd, vaguely threatening letters for
years to gay and bisexual students at Grinnell College in
Iowa, where I was a student. I decided one of us
should fight back.
I know his name
is Richard. It took me two years of sleepless nights to
track him down through hundreds of online forums and
homemade Web pages. Then I sent his own anonymous
letter back to him—at his home address. I hoped
that would scare him into stopping.
But the letters
didn’t stop. A senior at Grinnell received one over
Christmas break this year. It was postmarked Memphis, Tenn.,
and had all of the telltale signs—an odd joke
and childish yet disturbing illustrations. More jokes
were posted in abandoned Internet guest books: If a
duclod was an Eskimo, he’d only go east and west.
It enraged me
that he was still harassing people; this sick, bored man
was going out of his way to make other people’s lives
worse. The sinister words he’d used in my
letter haunted me: Duclods die twice. What if
he went further than the letters?
Revisiting
Richard, I felt like an alcoholic who makes any excuse for
another drink. I told myself I’d stop after I found
his name. Then I told myself I’d stop after I
sent him back the letter. Now I wanted to talk to him.
Now I wanted to understand him.
First I found the
Duclod Man’s father, or rather, I found his obituary.
He was a chemistry professor at the University of Kansas,
the only other school that received a significant
number of letters. The obit listed his surviving
relatives. The Duclod Man had a sister, Janis, in Memphis,
and a brother, Allen, in Albuquerque. His mother,
Mary, lived in Memphis, and his stepmother, Catherine,
in Bennington, Vt. The locations matched the postmarks
I had scribbled to myself over a year ago off the Duclod
Man’s envelopes.
I called his
mother in Memphis. I didn’t know what to say. She was
elderly and a little confused. She didn’t ask why I
was calling. She told me that he lived alone and I
could call him at work—a doughnut shop. I
balked, thanked her, and hung up. This horrible man worked
in a doughnut shop?
I called his
sister-in-law, Elaine, and his sister, Janis. This time I
was able to stammer out my story. They were shocked and
surprised, but perhaps not as shocked and surprised as
I thought they’d be.
Richard was
autistic, the sisters explained. Or, they added, he had a
mixture of problems that might be indefinable. He grew up in
the 1950s, before anyone knew much about such
disorders. They hadn’t even heard about autism
until Richard was in his 20s. He was intellectually normal,
Janis said, maybe even above average, but emotionally he
functioned like a 10-year-old. He was much better at
communicating through writing than through
conversation. He liked numbers and making up words. He was,
she said simply, odd.
Elaine was a
little more descriptive concerning her
brother-in-law’s mental health: He spent his
days watching black-and-white science fiction movies,
tinkering on his computer, and possibly drinking too much.
He didn’t quite know how to take care of
himself—you had to tell him to bathe and change
his clothes. He probably shouldn’t live alone, she
said, but his mother had always been in denial about
his mental health. We have our own families and
careers, Elaine said, and we’re all used to the way
he is. Most of the time we leave him alone.
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