Finding the Duclod Man, part 2

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.