My Childhood in the Shadow of Foxcatcher Farm

​We heard about the murder on the radio. I was in the car with my mom on the way home from the grocery store. Words like "shot" and "bullets" and "killed" seemed to be pronounced by the reporter louder than the others, but it could have been my young brain's way of experiencing shock, processing a reality I had only seen in action movies or heard about in history class.

My mom pulled the minivan into our garage, got out, shut the door, and left me and the groceries in the car. I watched her through the car window. She picked up the phone on the wall of our garage, a phone we barely used. I saw her mouth a few concerned words, nod, and hang up.

I cracked open the car door. She looked at me. "That was Kyle's mom," she said. "They're OK."

Kyle was my best friend growing up. His father was an Olympic gold medal wrestler, and his family lived on Foxcatcher Farm, an 800-acre piece of land in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, about a mile down the road from my childhood home. Kyle's father was on Team Foxcatcher, a wrestling team coached and sponsored by multimillionaire heir to the du Pont family fortune, John du Pont. Other members of Team Foxcatcher included Dave Schultz, an Olympic gold medal wrestler and friend of John du Pont, Dave's brother Mark Schultz, and a pre-WWE Kurt Angle. Dave Schultz's family lived on the farm and his two kids went to my elementary school. His son was Kyle's other best friend—at ten, everyone has at least two best friends.

On January 26th, 1996, John du Pont drove the short distance from his mansion to Dave Schultz's house on the estate. When John stepped out of his silver Lincoln Town Car, Dave said, "Hi coach." Du Pont drew a revolver and fired three bullets into Dave, hitting him in the elbow, chest, and back. Du Pont fled to his mansion and stayed bunkered for two days until the police turned off the boilers in his home. When he came outside to fix the heater, he was taken into custody.

I was aware of John du Pont but didn't know much about him before the murder. I knew he lived in the white mansion off Goshen Road on Foxcatcher Farm. I remember seeing the mansion for the first time. I was gazing out the window of the car. A fence covered in vines and brush separated the street from the farm. As we drove by, empty space in the fence filled with white. I leaned in, looked closer.

"Who lives there?" I asked my mom.

She doesn't have to look over to know what I'm talking about.

"John du Pont, a very rich man."

Our car passed, and the mansion was gone. I wanted more, so I continued to look whenever I drove by. I knew where to look through the fence, almost like I had my own peephole. Over time I would make out more of the mansion, piecing together a full view in my brain—the pillars, the ghostly color, the two crescent moon windows perched on top of the black roof like the beady eyes of a rattlesnake.

​I spent many school nights and weekends at Kyle's house on Foxcatcher Farm, a half-mile away from du Pont's mansion. His family had three German Shepherds and a cat named Hitler, aptly titled for the smudge of black fur above its upper lip. (I remember the name offending my parents—completely understandably—although I don't remember it bothering me.) Everyone in the family was always nice to me, including Hitler.

Whenever I went to Kyle's house, I'd look at the du Pont mansion. I got a different view than I'd get from the street. There was no fence to separate us—only space. I could see the back of the house, which seemed flatter and longer than the front, probably because there weren't any pillars. There were also more windows, none of which provided any glimpse inside. I only saw darkness.

One time, some point before the murder, Kyle saw me looking. We stood there together, staring at a house bigger than the two of ours combined.

"What's du Pont like?" I asked.

"He coaches my dad's wrestling team," Kyle shrugged. "He's weird."

"How come?"

"Sometimes he goes to the wrestlers' homes and asks if they're allowed to come out and play."

We laughed, then laughed some more, then went and played Playstation.

I'd learn later that that "weird" behavior was actually symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. After du Pont's murder of Dave Schultz, who had planned to leave Team Foxcatcher for a coaching gig at Stanford University, the jury found du Pont guilty of third-degree murder and sentenced him to 13 to 30 years in prison. He was diagnosed as mentally ill, which feels like an understatement.

Du Pont would pick at his skin with a knife to remove the "alien bugs" burrowed in his flesh. He believed he was the American Dalai Lama, a Russian Czar, and Jesus Christ—all at the same time. He thought the trees on his farm moved and he made videos in an attempt to prove it. While in jail, du Pont had the walls of the buildings on the farm painted black as a sign to the community that the farm was mourning, hoping the people would be so upset that they would request his release so the original color could be restored.

A year or two before the murder, a group of us went to Kyle's house for his birthday party. A few friends from school were there, including me and Dave Schultz's son. After birthday cake, Kyle's dad invited all of the kids to go see du Pont's wrestling facility on the farm. "Do you guys want to go see where Olympians train?" Everyone was excited except for me. Viewing du Pont's white mansion from afar was as close as I wanted to get. I didn't know if he'd be at the facility, but I didn't want to take a chance. I stayed back and played basketball alone. I found a dead mouse and showed it to the guys when they came back.

​I don't remember the Schultz kids returning to school after the murder. Kyle told me they moved to San Francisco with their mom. I thought about them a lot, wondering what their life would be like without their dad, knowing he was gone forever. I remember thinking I'd spend more time with Kyle, considering his other best friend had moved across the country, but that's when Kyle and I started to grow apart. We were in fifth grade and would be going to different middle schools. I would continue in public school, and Kyle would go to a private school to wrestle on a full scholarship.

I never went back to Foxcatcher Farm, but the neighborhood drive past the white mansion was unavoidable. I'd drive down Goshen Road in the school bus, or in the car with my parents, or years later in my own car, and try to make out the mansion through the fence covered in vines and brush. I would look in the same spot I always used to look, but couldn't see it. Rather, I didn't want to see it.

After I left Newtown Square for college, I forgot about the du Pont murder. The memories resurfaced in 2010 when I heard that John du Pont died in jail at 72 years old and was buried in a red Team Foxcatcher wrestling singlet. I clicked through the news stories. Recent pictures of du Pont featured his hook nose prominently surrounded by the kind of deathly gray beard you can only grow in confinement. Again, I put my memories out of my mind, only to have them return in 2014 while watching trailers for the film Foxcatcher.

John du Pont's murder of Dave Schultz was the first time I grappled with evil, and in some ways, the bookend to my childhood. Pre-adolescent life was simple—school, friends' houses, the grocery store with mom. Then the devil, or some version of him, pokes his head out. He exists, and he lives where you least expect it—in the white mansion down the street, next door to your best friend.

The du Pont mansion was demolished in 2013.

Alex J. Mann is a writer living in Los Angeles. Follow him on ​Twi​tt​er.