Du Pont Heir Holds Off Cops Barricades Self In Mansion After Olympic Wrestler Slain

A gun-loving heir to the Du Pont fortune shot a top Olympic wrestler to death Friday on his estate, then holed up inside his mansion and refused to negotiate with SWAT team members, police said.

John E. du Pont was heavily armed and had barricaded himself alone inside a second-floor bedroom of his mansion in suburban Philadelphia, police said.

Negotiations broke down after several hours. Officers could see du Pont walking around late Friday night, and as of early today they were keeping their distance.

“John du Pont is a marksman and he has an arsenal,” said police Sgt. Brian McNeill.

Initially, police were uncertain what to expect at the estate. They thought that du Pont had an armored personnel carrier at his disposal. There was also the possibility that he might have access to a helicopter, which he once had a license to operate.

Dave Schultz, 36, was shot once in the arm and twice in the chest with a .38 caliber revolver about 2 p.m. Friday, Police Chief Michael Mallon said. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Mercy Haverford Hospital.

Mallon said the shooting took place in the driveway of the home on the estate where Schultz lived with his wife, Nancy, and two children.

Du Pont then drove back to his mansion, about a mile away, and holed up in the bedroom.

“We do not know what motivated Mr. du Pont to do what he did,” Mallon said. “We intend to take as long as it takes to resolve this problem without any other people being injured.”

One of three du Pont employees in the mansion acted as intermediaries at first, talking with police by cellular phone, but they left about 6:45 p.m. and du Pont refused to take any further calls from police, Mallon said.

McNeill said that phone company workers were trying late Friday to rewire du Pont’s mansion, which had been without phone service since a day last October when there were two separate fires on the estate.

Also, a flatbed truck carried Schultz’s blue Toyota station wagon with blown-out front and back windows from his driveway, which had been cordoned off with police tape.

Officers from at least 10 departments and two SWAT teams had the place surrounded. It was familiar territory for some; officers had once used a shooting range at the estate for target practice, and du Pont had been an honorary police force member in the 1970s, police said.

McNeill said du Pont himself conducted gun training for police there twice a year.

“That gave him police credentials, and allowed him to buy anything he wanted,” McNeill said. He added that du Pont enjoyed “hanging out with the police.”

Schultz was among the best-known amateur wrestlers in the country. He won the 163-pound freestyle gold medal at the 1984 Olympics and the 1983 world championship. He won seven world-level freestyle medals overall.

A wrestling coach for du Pont’s club team, Schultz was ranked first in the country in his weight class and was working on a comeback, training for the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

“He was considered a top hopeful for the 1996 team,” USA Wrestling spokesman Gary Abbott said. “If the Olympics were today, he’d be the guy.” Olympic trials are scheduled for June.

Du Pont, 57, is a great-great grandson of E.I. du Pont, the French-born industrialist who founded the chemical company. He is one of hundreds of heirs to the family fortune.

Although unmarried and not known to have children, du Pont told The Philadelphia Inquirer he paid for the college education of 100 students and gets Father’s Day cards from some of his athletes.

“He’s an interesting fella,” said Michael Piroff, who lives across the street from the estate. “He’d stroll around in his bathrobe. I wasn’t surprised (by the shooting). He just seemed very eccentric.”

Carla White, who lives a half mile away, said about two years ago du Pont took two new Lincoln Continentals and drove them into a pond on his property, one after the other.

“He has a bad reputation for being off the wall,” White said. “Everybody knows about it in town.”

Du Pont, himself a wrestler in masters competitions, told the paper in 1991 that his family disapproved of the sport.

“Wrestling was thought to be the sport of ruffians,” du Pont told the Inquirer. “Someone of society, like John du Pont, should not wrestle. It wasn’t a country-club sport.”

In 1986, du Pont founded a wrestling program at nearby Villanova, funding student scholarships, paying the coaching staff and naming himself head coach. Two years later, Villanova dropped the program when the school and other coaches failed to resolve control issues.

In 1989, du Pont built the 14,000-square-foot Foxcatcher National Training Center in Newtown Square and recruited Olympic-caliber wrestlers worldwide, some of whom live yearround on the 800-acre estate.

Du Pont also contributes about $500,000 a year to USA Wrestling, the governing body that runs the Olympic team.

Schultz, a native of Palo Alto, Calif., wrestled at Oklahoma in 1981 and ‘82, winning the Big Eight title in ‘81 and the NCAA championship at 167 pounds in 1982. He was the nation’s top wrestler in the 163-pound class over the last three years.

His former coach at Oklahoma, Stan Abel, said he did not want Schultz to take the job at Foxcatcher, where another former Oklahoma wrestler had quit a coaching job for reasons Abel didn’t want to explain.

“I wish he would have taken my advice,” Abel said. “He was a guy we wanted to try to bring home. And wish we could have, he would still be with us.”

Map of area

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PLANNING A COMEBACK Dave Schultz was currently ranked No. 1 in the United States in his weight class. He was the nation’s top wrestler at 163 the last three years, placing second in the world in 1993, seventh in ‘94 and fifth in ‘95, when he also was a member of the U.S. team that won the World Cup of Freestyle Wrestling. He was working on a comeback, training for the Olympic Games in Atlanta. “He was considered a top hopeful for the 1996 team,” USA Wrestling spokesman Gary Abbott said.