Deadly Charm: The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer

8. January 1960: An Ominous Beginning

8 January 1960: An Ominous Beginning [T]he history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would probably . . . contain events of greater moment than all those . . . years that follow. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Even before his birth on a cold, dismal January night in Anchorage, Alaska, fate dealt Patrick Colin McCullough what would prove to be a losing hand. Patrick’s parents, twenty-four-year-old June and twentyseven -year-old Glen McCullough were a military couple, stationed far from home and family. Glen McCullough’s assignment to Fort Richardson in Alaska meant that the couple and their two children, Glen Jr., seven, and Jeanie, five, were virtually isolated from their stateside families. June McCullough would ultimately deliver her third child far from home and raise her children without the close support of friends and family. By the time the McCullough family arrived there in the late 1950s, Anchorage was well past its rough and ready infancy as a wilderness boomtown where anything goes and where bars far outnumbered churches. With Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Air Force Base adding to its burgeoning population, 47 48 McCay Vernon and Marie Vernon Anchorage was becoming a more cosmopolitan city, just as Alaska was in the process of achieving statehood. In 1959 it became the forty-ninth state in the union. To June McCullough, raised in the temperate climate of the mid-Atlantic states, Alaska seemed like the end of the earth, with temperatures ranging from an average low of 16 degrees in January to a high of 59 degrees in June, and an annual snowfall of 78 inches. As June faced the final days of her third pregnancy , along with the freezing winter cold, the area was cloaked in darkness much of the time, with only five and a half hours of daylight each day. For a young woman already caring for two young children and pregnant again, the situation was particularly stressful. During her pregnancy, June McCullough was seen by doctors at Elmendorf Air Force Base Hospital. The young motherto -be was alarmed and dismayed when the doctors there informed her that the pregnancy was a potentially dangerous one for her unborn child. They explained that her own blood type was Rh negative, meaning that her red blood cells lacked the Rh factor, while the fetus she was carrying had inherited the father’s blood type and was Rh positive. As frequently happened in such cases, the mother’s red blood cells were reacting to this Rh incompatibility by attacking the fetus’s red blood cells as if they were foreign invaders. With its red blood cells under attack, there was a strong possibility that the fetus’s growth would slow, its movements diminish, and its organs fail to develop normally. In the worst case, June was told, the child would be stillborn. What June wasn’t told was that even Rh-incompatible fetuses that carried to term faced a host of potential physical disabilities such as jaundice, enlarged livers and spleens, poor muscle tone, difficulty in breathing, diminished sucking ability , and poor reflexes. Other potential consequences were heart murmurs, swelling of the heart, brain damage, seizures, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and deafness. Deadly Charm 49 This diagnosis came as a shock to June McCullough, as this was her third pregnancy, and she had previously given birth to two normal healthy children. The unfortunate fact was, that with each of the earlier pregnancies, Mrs. McCullough’s body had built up an increased negative resistance to the Rh-positive factor. While the two previous births had not resulted in Rh incompatibility, by this third pregnancy, the antibodies had become sufficiently strong to attack the fetus’s red blood cells. This meant that within his mother’s womb, the fetus was under siege, with each passing month facing ever-greater difficulties in its struggle for existence. (June McCullough’s fourth pregnancy ended with the child being stillborn.) On January 20, 1960, two full months before his due date, Patrick Colin McCullough was delivered by induced labor. At birth he weighed five pounds six ounces. He was jaundiced, as evidenced by his slightly yellowish skin. The pediatrician who examined him immediately classified Patrick as “seriously ill.” As was the practice in cases of Rh incompatibility, within hours of his birth the child’s blood was exchanged for donated blood compatible with his own. By the time the infant was four days...