From The Oregonian, October 21, 1992 – not available online

Jane Hoyt’s sense of reality left her in the days before she died.

She told people she was married to Jim Morrison, the late singer for The Doors. That the air smelled bad all over Portland because witches were burning. That somebody was trying to steal all her assets.

So, maybe standing there on the edge of the Hawthorne Bridge on Aug. 18, she believed she could fly. Or maybe, looking at the Willamette River below, she saw something besides choppy blue-gray water. Awash in delusions, maybe the 40-year-old Hoyt couldn’t understand that plunging from the bridge would mean death.

No one will ever know.

Wandering the streets of Portland, her mind racing from one bizarre thought to the next, it didn’t matter that Jane Hoyt, a former TV reporter and promotions manager, had money and friends and a family who desperately wanted to help her.

In the middle of a manic episode — one phase of bipolar disorder, the disease that afflicted her for several years — Hoyt was utterly incapable of helping herself. Yet, when she brushed with police on at least three occasions in the days before her death, they did nothing to help her, either. To intervene, say police, would have violated her civil rights.

Lay people call Jane Hoyt’s illness manic-depression. It affects about 1.5 percent of the population and generally doesn’t show up until early adulthood. Hoyt was diagnosed in her mid-30s, well after she was into a big-time television career. Her disease eventually got in the way of work. Perhaps worst of all, though, the disease embarrassed her, says her family.

Throughout history, a number of creative people are believed to have been afflicted with bipolar disorder. Composer George Frederick Handel wrote the “Messiah” in five weeks during a manic episode. Poets Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound and William Blake supposedly were manic-depressive. More recently, actress Patty Duke said she has lived with the illness since her teens.

For Hoyt, though, her illness always carried a stigma.

“She lost her confidence with this damned disease,” says her sister, Anna Lyon. “She couldn’t accept it. She never looked at it like having diabetes or some other medical problem.”

When the illness was under control, Hoyt would look back on her manic episodes with shame, her sister says. “What if you were running around doing crazy things? It was terribly hard for her to face,” says Lyon.

Hoyt arrived in Portland Aug. 12 on an airplane from Maine, where she had lived for two years. She was to be a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. From the way she acted in Portland, though, Hoyt clearly was having a manic episode.

At a bridal shower, her behavior was peculiar, says another sister, Margaret Guinasso. And in the middle of a formal dinner, Hoyt ripped off her clothes and went for a swim.

Her friend told Hoyt that although she wanted her to attend the wedding, she didn’t think Hoyt was up to being a bridesmaid.

Enraged, Hoyt sent her luggage to the Hotel Vintage Plaza in downtown Portland and left her friend’s home. No one close to her ever saw her alive again.

While her family searched for her — checking homeless shelters, distributing homemade missing-person fliers — Hoyt’s corpse lay in the morgue for a month. It was the final indignity of many suffered by a talented, creative woman whose disease — when untreated — robbed her of her rational mind.

Manic-depression is a mood disorder characterized by episodes of mania, during which a person feels on top of the world, and deep depression. No one knows exactly what causes the illness, but genetic links are strong.

In the beginning of a manic phase, people with bipolar disorder frequently are very productive. They feel euphoric. They are a whirlwind of activity. They hardly sleep.

Eventually, though, the mania and lack of sleep combine to make them irritable. Then the irritability can give way to psychosis. As the manic phase progresses, people with bipolar disorder lose touch with reality. They think things that aren’t true. They make irrational decisions.

After such an episode — which, untreated, may last as long as three months — a debilitating depression always follows.

Unlike an acute depression, which affects as many as 5 percent of the population at least once in their lives, bipolar disorder is a chronic illness with no cure.

That said, though, the disease frequently can be controlled with lithium, a naturally occurring metal that, as a medicine, works to level out a manic-depressive’s extreme moods. Sometimes, anti-epileptic drugs are prescribed for bipolar disorder, but psychiatrists say lithium is widely accepted as the first course of treatment.

When Hoyt took her medicine, it was impossible to tell she had a mental illness. When she didn’t, or when the level of lithium in her bloodstream fell too low, a manic episode would ensue.

Even though lithium is effective, patients often don’t like it because it makes them emotionally flat.

“It’s hard for some people to feel any feelings when they’re taking it,” says Christine McCartney, a senior clinical psychologist at Oregon State Hospital in Wilsonville.

In addition, the drug’s side effects include tremors and mild memory impairment. Some patients gain 40 to 60 pounds in a year. It also can contribute to diarrhea and a need to urinate frequently.

McCartney says up to 30 percent of all people with manic-depression stop taking lithium against their doctors’ advice.

Bipolar disorder, in a way, is more insidious than other forms of mental illness because the manic episodes can produce such great highs, say medical professionals. It’s a rush that some patients find irresistible.

Mick Schafbuch, Hoyt’s former boss at KOIN, chanced to meet her in the KOIN Tower lobby on Aug. 17, the day before police believe she died.

It’s an encounter he recalls in detail because the unkempt woman he spoke with was so unlike the Jane Hoyt he remembered.

For one thing, Hoyt’s looks had always caused heads to swivel. At 20, she worked as a movie double for Raquel Welch. Just a few years ago, during a marital separation that eventually ended in divorce, word was she was dating a famous TV game-show host. No one was surprised. Not only did she have the looks — slim but shapely, pouty lips and a mane of light brown hair always tousled just so — she was smart, to boot.

Hoyt left KOIN in 1986 bound for Los Angeles and a management job with King World, syndicator of such programs as “Jeopardy!” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

So when Schafbuch spied Hoyt in skintight purple shorts, peekaboo sweatshirt and sandals, it took him a moment to realize that this was the same woman who had cut such a striking, stylish figure during her days with Channel 6.

“I walked up to her and said, `Jane, how are you? What are you doing here?’ “ says Schafbuch.

They chatted for a few minutes. Hoyt told Schafbuch she had come to Portland for a friend’s wedding. But the friend, said Hoyt, took Hoyt’s Jaguar from her. Now, she told him, somebody was trying to steal all her assets.

“I asked her if there was someone I could call for her,” says Schafbuch. “She said no.”

Schafbuch couldn’t have known it, but Hoyt’s sister, Margaret Guinasso, was frantically trying to find her.

On Aug. 16, Guinasso, the only member of Hoyt’s immediate family who now lives in Portland, filed a missing person’s report with the Portland Police.

She asked the management at Hoyt’s hotel to telephone her if her sister showed up. And the hotel did call once, with the message that Hoyt was in the lobby, involved in a fracas.

“I called the police and asked them to hold her until I could get help and get there,” says Guinasso.

They didn’t.

Police say detaining Hoyt or carting her off to an emergency room for a mental evaluation would have violated her rights; no officer who encountered her believed she was a threat to herself or others.

On the final occasion, police escorted Hoyt from the Marriott Hotel lobby, where she had fallen asleep, says Guinasso. The hotel is across the street from the Willamette River, a short walk from the Hawthrone Bridge.

“My feeling is that Jane went straight from the Marriott to the bridge,” says Guinasso.

The family believes that police could have detained Hoyt, even if they failed to connect her as a missing person.

“She was clearly out of it. She was kicking and scratching people,” her sister says.

That Hoyt crossed with police so many times and was never taken to a hospital emergency room disturbs Dr. Joseph Bloom, chairman of the psychiatry department at Oregon Health Sciences University.

“I don’t want to be a police basher, but I think this case really needs to be looked at,” he says.

Police spokesman Derrick Foxworth says there must be evidence of a threat to safety before police can hold someone. Acting goofy isn’t enough.

Several times dating to 1986, Hoyt was hospitalized because of bipolar disorder. She moved from Los Angeles back to Portland about 1988. Then in 1990, she moved to Edgecomb, Maine, renting a cottage by the sea. Her brother, Billy, lives in Edgecomb, and sister, Anna Lyon, lives nearby. The Hoyt family has a summer house in Bristol, Maine, which has been passed down from generation to generation for the better part of two centuries, so her parents were frequently around, too.

Mostly, Hoyt lived quietly and unremarkably in Maine. She was writing a screenplay. She frequently visited her sister and brother.

Then, early this year, Hoyt’s father, Bill Hoyt Jr., a newsman at KGW and KOIN during the 1960s and ’70s, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Hoyt helped care for him at her parents’ home in Dover, Del. He died July 7.

“Jane took it very hard,” says her mother, Muriel Hoyt. “She thought the world of her dad.”

Her family believes that the stress of her father’s death was part of what triggered Jane Hoyt’s final manic episode.

With this illness, says Oregon State Hospital’s Christine McCartney, self-esteem problems also are common. So much so that about 15 percent of all people with this disorder commit suicide .

Muriel Hoyt says after her daughter was diagnosed, she never would get too close to anyone. “I think she was afraid people would not accept it or understand it.”

Hoyt’s world grew smaller and smaller.

Sometime this year, Jane Hoyt wrote a letter — never mailed — to Ted Turner, the broadcasting magnate who acknowledged in a Time magazine article that he requires lithium to stay calm.

This is what she said:

“Maybe someday I’ll come to terms with my illness. The stigma and consequent embarrassment is weighty. But perhaps I’ll reach a point when I can look back without bitterness and resentment.

“If I thought my story would help others,” wrote Hoyt, “I’d share it in an instant.”

A memorial service for Jane Hoyt will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Lake Oswego’s Our Lady of the Lake church.

MAN POINTS PISTOL

From the Oregonian, October 6, 1992

A Portland policeman shot and killed a 78-year-old retired professional wrestler early Monday in North Portland after the man pointed a semiautomatic pistol at the officer.

READ – Friends shocked after man dies in police custody, KGW.com

Aimo Kallio Savuno of 908 N. Killingsworth Court died of three bullet wounds to the head and neck while sitting in his car about 2:30 a.m. at North Concord Avenue and Holman Street, said Dr. Ed Wilson, deputy state medical examiner.

Two policemen, whose names were not released, were involved in the shooting, the 13th time this year Portland police have shot suspects. Savuno was the sixth person shot and killed this year by Portland police.

Police said Savuno was bloodied in a fight with a younger man in his car, prompting a nearby resident to call 9-1-1. The younger man fled when police arrived and they were unable to catch him. Meanwhile, Savuno and police got into a confrontation that ended with Savuno’s death.

Officer Henry Groepper, Portland Police Bureau spokesman, said one policeman was standing outside Savuno’s car window, trying to get him to get out of the car, when Savuno pointed a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol at him.

“He came up with a handgun,” Groepper said.

The policeman yelled that Savuno had a gun and fired his own semiautomatic service weapon at him, Groepper said.

Savuno’s car then accelerated rapidly in reverse, backing toward another policeman standing behind it. As the car came at him, that officer also fired his semiautomatic service weapon at Savuno, Groepper said. The car continued around, making a complete circle in reverse, running over the curb and a corner of a lawn before stopping near where the shooting started.

The woman who reported the fight to police said she first heard three shots spaced in slow, steady succession. After a couple of seconds, she heard at least five more shots in rapid succession. She said she didn’t see the actual shooting.

Groepper said Savuno’s loaded gun was found in his car and an extra clip of ammunition was in his pocket.

The officers who shot Savuno were placed on administrative leave, as is routine when police use deadly force. The case will be referred to a Multnomah County grand jury. Groepper refused to release additional details until the grand jury determines whether the shooting was justified.

But the woman who called 9-1-1 and watched the events unfold outside her kitchen window supported police.

“My impression for this particular incident is that the police were fair,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name used because of crime in the area. “They tried to get him to stop — and he wouldn’t listen.”

She said her dog alerted her to something suspicious outside her kitchen window, and she saw Savuno’s car parked alongside her fence, facing the wrong direction. At first, Savuno seemed to be choking the passenger, but then the younger man got the upper hand and started beating Savuno, she said.

At no time did she see any weapons.

The younger man fled when two officers from North Precinct arrived. One policeman chased him on foot through the neighborhood while the other went to check on the driver, who already had driven onto a neighbor’s lawn and back onto Concord.

“He had been beaten up, his head and face were bleeding,” the woman said. “He tried to get away, but it was in a slow-motion, drunken stupor kind of way. He floored his car, but it wasn’t in gear. He drunkenly drove up on the neighbor’s yard.”

Results of a blood-alcohol and drug tests won’t be available at least until the end of the week, authorities said.

The woman said Savuno drove down the block so slowly after police arrived that an officer was able to walk next to Savuno’s car and shine a flashlight into the side window as the car moved south on Concord from Highland to North Holman Street.

Another officer on a bullhorn told the driver, “Get out, put your hands up where we can see them,” the woman said.

“I don’t regret calling the police. I would do it again,” she said, “but I feel bad that somebody got killed.

Savuno lived with his 80-year-old brother, Oliver, at 908 N. Killingsworth Court. Oliver Savuno said Monday that they emigrated from Finland about 70 years ago and had lived in Portland ever since. He said his brother wrestled professionally around Portland before World War II.

“But he went his way and I went mine,” Oliver Savuno said. “We didn’t talk to each other any more than we had to.”

Friends said Aimo Savuno liked to drink beer at the Paragon Club and the Jockey Club Tavern, two nearby taverns on North Killingsworth Street, and talk about sports.

“He was such a passive guy,” said Sharol Dailey, a Jockey Club tavern bartender. “I can’t picture him pulling a gun on anyone.”

Jon Posey, a former Jockey Club bartender, said Savuno had been thrown out of another neighborhood tavern for shooting his gun into the ceiling.

“But he was just trying to scare the guy off,” Posey said. “He’d never really shoot the gun at anyone. He always carried the gun, though. This is North Portland, man.”

Laurel McKay, a Paragon Club bartender, said Savuno probably knew the younger man.

“And then the guy probably tried to rob Aimo,” she said. “Aimo’d never give the guy a ride unless he knew him.”

Wilson said any injuries Savuno sustained in the fight were not apparent in the autopsy because of the damage caused to Savuno’s head and neck by three large-caliber bullets, bullet fragments and flying glass. He apparently was shot through the closed window of his car, Wilson said.

Wilson said three, large-caliber bullets hit Savuno: One entered his chin from the front, one hit the side of his neck and another glanced off his head above his right ear.

AIMO KALLIO SAVUNO

From the Oregonian, October 10, 1992

A graveside service for Aimo Kallio Savuno, a Northeast Portland resident, will be at 3 p.m. Tuesday in Willamette National Cemetery.

Mr. Savuno was shot to death by Portland police officers Monday in North Portland. He was 78.

He was born July 16, 1914, in Helsinki, Finland. He had lived in the Portland area since the early 1920s and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. A professional wrestler from 1939 until 1960, Mr. Savuno was known by the name “the Flying Finn Kellio.” He wrestled for the Owen brothers for a number of years.

Mr. Savuno then worked as a longshoreman for about three years until his retirement in 1963.

He is survived by his son, Claude K. “Duke,” daughter, Tanya C. Britton, and brother, Oliver Savuno, all of Portland; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

PORTLAND MAN ARRESTED ON ROBBERY, ASSAULT CHARGES

From the Oregonian, October 25, 1992

Portland police have arrested a man who is thought to have robbed a former professional wrestler earlier this month. The robbery apparently triggered a series of incidents that resulted in police shooting the wrestler to death.

Bobby Lee Davis, 20, of Portland was arrested Thursday on charges of first-degree robbery and second-degree assault, said Detective Tom Nelson of the Portland Police Bureau.

Nelson said Davis was jailed in September on a separate robbery charge but was released on Sept. 17, when the jail became too crowded. Davis also is wanted in Longview, Wash., in connection with robberies that happened since his release from jail.

Davis was on “intensive street supervision” when released from jail, meaning he was required to stay out of trouble and call the jail every day to report his whereabouts. Because Davis also is accused of violating the conditions of that release, he isn’t eligible to be released from jail again, even if bail is set on the robbery and assault charges.

The incident began when Davis approached Aimo Kallio Savuno, 78, at the Night Hawk Cafe and Lounge, 6423 N. Interstate Ave., on Oct. 5, Nelson said.

“He lured (Savuno) out of the Nighthawk with the scam that he was going to sell him a gun,” Nelson said, adding that Davis reportedly had seen that Savuno was carrying a large amount of money at the time.

He said that when Davis and Savuno got into Savuno’s car, Davis instructed Savuno to drive away from the heavily traveled streets so that they could make the sale. When Savuno pulled over, Nelson said, Davis “started punching on him, thinking that he could punch him out.”

Savuno, who wrestled professionally in the Portland area before World War II, “put up a pretty good fight,” Nelson added. But Savuno was hit repeatedly and finally struck over the head with a bottle before Davis escaped from Savuno’s car.

“Savuno, for some reason, took off and was bleeding from the face when officers arrived,” Nelson added.

Police were called by a neighbor who saw the fight in Savuno’s car. But by the time the officers arrived, Savuno was still in the car and the person he’d been fighting with fled on foot.

Savuno, bleeding and in an alcohol stupor, tried to get away in his car. Witnesses said he drove by police so slowly an officer was able to walk up to the car and shine a flashlight inside.

Savuno was ordered to get out of the car, but when he did he pointed a .25-caliber handgun in the face of Officer Mark A. McGlaughlin. Savuno was hit in the head and neck by three rounds fired by McGlaughlin and Officer Denny C. Kelley.

A grand jury on Tuesday cleared the policemen of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting.

AIMO KALLIO SAVUNO

Died: Oct. 5 Age: 78 Two Portland police officers shot Savuno three times in the head and neck when he refused to stop his car and get out. He had been bloodied in an apparent robbery in his car near the intersection of North Concord Avenue and Holman Street, shortly after 2 a.m. Savuno, a former professional wrestler who lived at 908 N. Killingsworth Court, pointed a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol at an officer standing outside his closed car window and the officer shot him. The car then accelerated in reverse toward another policeman standing behind it, and that officer shot at Savuno through the back window. Savuno was legally drunk.

Resolution: A Multnomah County grand jury cleared officers Denny C. Kelley, 35, and Mark A. McGlaughlin, 33. Kelley, who was approaching from the driver’s side, saw Savuno clutch a gun at his chest and then start to aim it at McGlaughlin, who was standing near the left rear of the car, so he shot him. Bobby Lee Davis, 20, of 2044 N. Kilpatrick St. is awaiting trial on charges of first-degree robbery, second-degree assault, a parole violation and being a fugitive from the state of Washington for allegedly beating and robbing Savuno while they sat in Savuno’s car.