CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

In years before Mount Pleasant shooting death, an escalating struggle with mental illness

Post & Courier - 5/28/2017

The Simpsons of 38 Saturday Road seemed to have a good life.

They hosted parties at their 3,000-square-foot waterfront house. They fished and lounged on their two boats. Their patriarch’s work as a driver in show-business brought him close to Hollywood stars.

But a problem lurked unknown to many Mount Pleasant residents familiar with the family of six.

Mental illness had set in for the oldest of the four children, Brittany Simpson, now 31.

It started with petty quarrels over a bicycle, a treadmill, a dog on the couch. It worsened with fights, theft and delusions. Police were called more than 30 times in the past decade.

She had bipolar disorder, police said, a mental illness typified by sharp mood swings. Her manic episodes fueled at least three emergency commitments.

In the past year she wanted a gun. Her two sisters and residents of their pricey I’On neighborhood, including a current candidate for governor, told the police about it. But she brushed off the accusation and the police never found evidence of a crime.

The early morning of May 9 changed that. Gunshots jolted family members from their sleep. Simpson’s mother, Susan, rushed down the stairs and saw blood seeping under the door of her husband’s bedroom.

Simpson walked through the front door.

Police officers would find her father, Robert, with a bullet hole near his heart. He tried to speak but died there.

One of his other daughters said Simpson was unstable and probably had killed him.

Detectives agreed and arrested Simpson on a murder charge. The police said she had taken a gun from a family member who kept it legally in the house. They have not discussed a motive, but Simpson had just been given an eviction notice.

The years leading to that violent turning point and the death of Robert Simpson, a 66-year-old London native, were documented in hundreds of pages of police reports. They described his daughter’s struggles and the pleas many made to get her help.

While mystery surrounds the steps that authorities and professionals took to intervene, the case poses new questions about whether the mental health care system is equipped to deal with behavior that fuels worry but stops short of violence.

‘Irate’ behavior

In the reports, officers from the Mount Pleasant Police Department painted a portrait of life that was sometimes hectic, frustrating and disturbing for the Simpsons and their neighbors.

Brittany Simpson first caught their eye in July 2007. Her father was putting in 18-hour days as a transportation captain, chauffeuring film cast and crew members. He was working on the “Army Wives” TV production in the Charleston area.

He came home one day to the noise of Simpson’s treadmill. He cut its power, sparking an argument that prompted family members to call for help.

The police returned three years later when Simpson and her sister pulled out each other’s hair in a fight over a bicycle each wanted to take on a ride.

In 2011, patrol officers found Simpson and a boyfriend with Xanax and marijuana during a traffic stop for speeding. He was wearing only underwear. She was naked.

A year passed before an officer saw Simpson again, reportedly drunk behind the wheel of her car in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Squabbles at the house escalated after that.

Police were called to handle an argument that erupted after Simpson griped about a dog on the couch.

In August 2014, she was moving into the house when she yelled and cussed at her father. She kicked him. He slapped her. The police arrested neither.

Five days later, officers for the first time documented a mental health commitment. She didn’t leave willingly for the evaluation at Medical University Hospital. For such measures, state law requires reason to believe that a person is a danger to herself or someone else. A probate judge follows up to determine whether the commitment should continue, but the outcome of any proceedings in Simpson’s case is not clear.

Upon her return, she ranted about doing her family’s dishes and laundry. An officer reasoned with her.

“She agreed that she would only worry about herself and that she would remain calm,” the officer wrote.

She called the police the next day, saying her father had stepped on her foot and hurt her finger. He might have damaged the letter Z on her laptop keyboard, she said. She grew “extremely irate” and asked officers to “subpoena” her family members.

She was 29, hadn’t worked in 10 years and called the police whenever she didn’t get her way, her father said. He and his wife had taken her to doctors, but her behavior persisted.

Pictures posted on Facebook during these years showed family Mother’s Day and birthday celebrations. Simpson wasn’t in them.

In search of a gun

Simpson’s yelling became a familiar sound on Saturday Road. One of her sisters stuffed a towel under her door to muffle it.

The episodes grew more peculiar.

Residents found notes on their mailboxes explaining that Simpson was a “conduit” to Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s lieutenant governor at the time. The State Law Enforcement Division got involved. But the fliers contained no threats toward McMaster, now governor.

Neighbors suspected that she was entering their homes. In February 2016, she showed up during odd hours at the house of former state health department director Catherine Templeton, hoping to cajole Templeton’s husband into buying her a truck. A detective looking into the complaint called Simpson manic and paranoid.

Simpson called herself “creative.”

Templeton, now a Republican candidate for governor, implored the police to “do whatever it took” - hospitalization or arrest - to get Simpson help.

Simpson was hospitalized.

Meanwhile, her youngest sister, Brooke, reported that Simpson had been looking for a gun. Then in June, several residents came forward and said she had asked them for a Glock pistol.

Simpson denied it, insisting that she was “doing great” and wasn’t suicidal. The police alerted her mental health counselors.

Simpson’s middle sister, Chelsea, soon told the police that Simpson already had a firearm. But their mother knew only of a BB gun. The police left, satisfied that everyone was all right.

No crimes had been committed, and no one was in danger, police spokesman Chip Googe said, looking back on the reports.

Authorities in such situations must walk a “tight rope” between ensuring unstable people don’t have weapons and protecting their rights, said Paton Blough, a state board member with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Emergency commitments, he said, do not necessarily mean someone can’t have a gun. Under federal laws, that typically takes a court order.

“If someone talks about getting a gun, she hasn’t committed a crime,” he said. “But no one wants a person in a delusional state to have a gun. They could kill someone, thinking they’re doing good for their family or society.”

Morning gunfire

Loved ones said Simpson stole from them in recent months: $5,000 from her mother’s bank account, $211 charged to her sister’s credit card.

She was caught at Wal-Mart stuffing a pair of $50 work boots into her purse.

More neighbors grew apprehensive. She tossed mail into their yards and yelled at them to pick it up.

On May 1, one family friend told the police Simpson had sent him 70 harassing text messages seeking money for shoes. He worried that she could be a threat to his family.

Eight days passed.

Around 5:30 a.m.May 9, a neighbor heard four gunshots at 38 Saturday Road.

Robert Simpson lay in a pool of blood.

His daughter said an intruder had broken in.

Brittany Simpson had gone for a swim before 5 a.m. at a community fitness club. Detectives found video of her there.

But there was a gap between then and the shooting. That’s when, the police said, she fetched a 9 mm Smith & Wesson and shot her father; she ran to a dock and dropped her clothes and the gun into Hobcaw Creek.

After the police showed up, her mother and sisters cried at the home of a neighbor, who had seen someone on the dock that morning. They asked if it was Simpson; the neighbor wasn’t sure.

They cried harder.

‘Doesn’t always work’

Simpson wore an anti-suicide smock for her jail booking photo later that day.

Her mother will not discuss their ordeal, out of respect for the family, said her lawyer, David Aylor. Whether any mental illness will come into play in Simpson’s defense was unclear.

“This has been a complete tragedy,” he said.

At a recent memorial, the Simpsons mourned Robert’s death. Friends remembered him as the life of a party, a multi-talented musician, an avid golfer.

He would have retired soon from a decades-long career that had taken him to filming sets for “G.I. Jane” and “The Notebook” and for the upcoming “Mr. Mercedes,” a TV series based on a novel by Stephen King.

“If there’s one positive thing I can take from all of this, it’s taught me to be stronger,” his son, Taylor, said on Facebook. “The pain we’ve felt during this time is indescribable and unfathomable.”

His obituary urged mourners to donate to the South Carolina chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Blough, the advocate from that organization, said 80 percent of mental health patients improve with treatment. Blough has bipolar disorder, and he got better. But the “tough reality” is that some just never do, he said.

“Getting a loved one help is one of the most difficult things,” he said. “You can have all the resources in the world sometimes. But it doesn’t always work.”