The Man On The Bridge

Real Change



“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

What led the 24-year-old Bret Hugh Winch to the Aurora Bridge last October? The first installment of a three-part series looks at the young man’s early life, one marked by abuse, mental illness, and a major felony conviction

The Man who Stood on the Bridge Pt. 1: All around him, bridges By ROSETTE ROYALE, Staff Reporter

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tanding on the Aurora Bridge, a man. Behind him, along Aurora Ave., vehicles race north and south. Some 130 feet below him, on N. 34th St., the occasional car. It’s a little after 10 in the morning. He’s been here for — how long? One minute? Two? Three? Maybe more? No one can say for sure because no one knows when he caught the bus that brought him to the nearest stop. No one knows just when he set foot on the bridge. But he won’t be here long. By 10:22 a.m., the ordeal on the bridge will be over. Earlier in the morning, around 9 o’clock, he sat in the day room of the downtown parole office. His parole officer had told the man to wait there while he tried to solve the man’s housing crisis, even if it meant all day. But when the parole officer went to check on him, the man was gone. And now, here he stands, on the Aurora Bridge. It’s Oct. 17, 2007. The bridge was built in 1932. A regis-

Since its construction, more than 230 people have jumped to their

deaths from the Aurora Bridge. It ranks second in the nation for most suicides by jumping. tered historic landmark, it stretches 898 feet across Lake Union. From a distance, it resembles a giant silver crown turned on its points. Since its construction, more than 230 people have jumped to their deaths here. The Aurora Bridge ranks second in the nation for most suicides by jumping. And now, he stands on the same bridge where hundreds before him have leapt to the water or the ground below. But this man: Who is he? Like all people, he has many facets. A son. A friend. A compassionate being. A vulnerable child. An angel. A menace to society. A man who hears voices. A man who sees demons. A registered sex offender. Quite the character. A lost soul. The people who know him see in him these traits, these identities. In his life, they find many stories. They acknowledge his presence has impacted their lives.

Yet this morning, before any of them are aware where he is, he stands on the bridge. But why? Why has he chosen to come here? Why does he, why does anyone consider suicide? Such questions are timeless. They have been asked before. Surely, they’ll be asked again. That’s because survivors seek answers. They look back, mining the past for clues. Sadly, none ever fully resolve the questions, because the questions have no answers. They’re riddles only one person can solve. He’s the person no longer here. But no one has reason to ask the unanswerable this morning, at 10:14 a.m. That’s the moment Bret Hugh Winch, the 24-year-old standing on the Aurora Bridge on a mostly sunny day, takes out his cell phone. He dials a friend who lives just down the hall. He calls to say he’s on a bridge. And this time, he intends to jump.

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umpy. The young Bret was jumpy. And, his uncle, Raymond Shoquist, remembers, he got into things. Nothing bad, at least not then, but the boy had a tendency to misbehave. Bret played with Shoquist’s children and as the uncle watched, he could see his nephew was — what exactly? Amped up? Hyperactive? “I didn’t know,” Shoquist confesses. “A trying to fit in, and half the time, he wasn’t trying hard enough. Or he was trying too hard.” Other people saw it in the young boy, too, including a doctor. Bret’s mother took the boy to see someone, telling Shoquist later the child had been prescribed Ritalin, used to treat children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD (Attention Deficit & Hyperactivity Disorder.) And the antidepressant Prozac: Bret took that too. These drugs would signal Bret’s entry into a lifetime of prescription medications. At points, his adherence to his ever-changing regimen would prove to be a struggle. When he failed, he often made poor decisions, ones that affected others as well as himself. In rare cases, Prozac can unmask tics or symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological condition characterized by involuntary muscle movements. Some doctors eventually would believe Bret had the syndrome when he got older, because he developed a habitual blink that would continue. His parents were young when he was born in 1982 — his mother had just

On the morning of Oct. 17, 2007, 24-year old Bret Hugh Winch rode a bus to the Aurora Bridge. Minutes later, he was standing on the bridge’s western ledge. What brought him here? Photo by Joel Turner turned 24 — and they lived north of Seattle. Not long after the birth of their only child, their relationship hit a rough patch. Maybe the drinking played a part. But the couple, who had never married, separated. Bret was still a toddler. His mother had family on Whidbey Island, connected to the naval base, and her brother introduced her to a buddy who was just getting out of the service. The two hit it off. In 1987, barely five years old, Bret found himself with an ex-sailor as a stepfather. Shoquist recalls visiting his sister-in-law and her new

Prozac and Ritalin would signal Bret’s entry into a lifetime of prescription

medications. At points, his adherence to his everchanging regimen would prove to be a struggle. When he failed, he often made poor decisions. husband, who sometimes fought. “We used to see them all the time.” But putting down roots has become a sometime thing. And the newlyweds, with Bret in tow, bopped around. With them being constantly on the move, Shoquist saw the couple, and his nephew, less and less. He found it harder to see them when Bret’s family set anchor in Cowlitz County, in southwestern Washington, where all around them lay bridges. Arcing over the Cowlitz River was the W. Cowlitz Way Bridge; a few blocks further south, the Allen St. Bridge. To-

gether, they carried traffic above the tributary, connecting the city of Kelso to Longview. But neither structure, both a few blocks in length, could compare to what lay roughly seven miles south: the Lewis and Clark Bridge, a mile-and-a-half long behemoth stretching above the steady flow of the Columbia. From Longview to Kelso, from Kelso to Longview Bret and his mother and stepfather bounced, staying in apartments here, trailers there, traversing the bridges. A few extended family members — aunts, uncles, cousins — moved close by, seeking a quiet place to retire. Along with Shoquist, other family members continued to live in distant places and once, while still an elementary school student, Bret went to see a relative other than his uncle for an overnight visit. The relative, an older male, invited the seven-year-old Bret to share his bed. The older male was naked. Bret wouldn’t talk about what took place. Years later, his mother, while discussing Bret’s sex offense charges with authorities, would reference the sleepover, but would never say if anything sexual happened to her son that evening. Though her actions seemed to speak for her. Bret, long after grade school, never had contact with this relative again.

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he school system deemed Bret a “slow learner.” As a result, he sat in special education classes. But even in the new setting, staying on task proved difficult.

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The BRIDGE, Continued from Page 1 He had a hard time concentrating. And sometimes, he couldn’t remember things. He did recall, when he was 11, being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Though when he was seven — or eight, maybe: he wasn’t sure — he spent time at Dammasch State, another psychiatric hospital and asylum south of Portland. Bret never enjoyed being alone, so, with the relatives who did live close by, he spent as much time as he could. He hung out with a male cousin just a few years younger than him. They played together and, on a few occasions, his cousin shared his porn magazines with Bret. Sometimes, when the two were alone, they’d watch the Playboy Channel. Visits with his cousin and other relations got him out of his own house, where family life proved dysfunctional, if not chaotic. Not that he had any trouble with his mother. They maintained a good relationship. But when it came to his stepfather, the two butted heads. By the time he’d reached his teens, the battles with his stepdad escalated. If Bret forgot to take out the garbage, he’d get beaten. When he turned his music up too loud, his possessions would be taken away as punishment. If he came home late, he’d have to spend the night outside. His stepfather would get so mad at him, he wouldn’t allow Bret to sit at the kitchen table: He’d make him eat from off the top of the garbage can. Bret’s mother had it no easier. In 2005, during divorce proceedings, she’d confess what her dating and married life to Bret’s stepdad had amounted to: abuse — verbal, sexual, physical, mental. Cheating, manipulating, controlling. Ambulances, hospitals. “Eighteen years of my life was all lies.” Though Bret dealt with more than abuse at home. Thanks to five juvenile

“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

offenses he’d racked up by the time he was 17, he had been in and out of juvenile detention centers. Bret tended not to talk about his early crimes. Instead, he secreted the information away, similar to how once, while in juvy, he hid himself in the empty girls’ locker room, hoping to see something when they returned. Staff caught him before the girls re-entered. Home, juvy, home, juvy, and, in between, foster care. From his youth and into his teens, Bret lived in numerous foster homes. Not that he enjoyed them. Whenever an opportunity arose, he’d run away. That wasn’t so easy to do from juvy. During his times at home, tensions remained at a simmer, flaring to a boil during confrontations with his stepfather. Though any referee who might have observed their run-ins would have sent them to their corners. Bret’s stepfather stood 6’2”, tipping the scales at 260. The 17-year-old Bret stood 5’5”, coming in at 135. Heavyweight vs. lightweight. In early January 2000, right before his stepfather’s 38th birthday, Bret ran away. It would take two days before his stepdad alerted police to the missing teen. As an identifying feature, he told police the left side of Bret’s face was red due to a recent bike accident. His running away amounted to a parole violation, and when police found him, they sent him, once again, to juvy. Out of juvy six months later, he was

By Nov. 7, 2000, he’d foregone his psychiatric medications. Some time before 6 p.m. that evening, Bret rode his bike to an adult female relative’s house.

placed in a foster home in Kalama, WA, 17 miles from his family. History repeated itself

when he ran away. Police picked him up with two other teens. But that foster home proved to be his last, because by early November 2000, Bret, not quite 18, had moved back in with his mother and stepfather. By Nov. 7, 2000, he’d foregone his psychiatric medications. Some time before 6 p.m. that evening, Bret rode his bike to an adult female relative’s house. At home with her were two of Bret’s younger relatives, a boy and a four-year-old girl. The children’s bedtime approached. As the female relative helped the young boy into his pj’s in the living room, Bret and the young girl sat in the kids’ bedroom, watching Rugrats. With the boy changed, the relative went to check on the young girl. There the child sat, with Bret, looking at TV. Leaving the room, the relative told the girl to follow with her pj’s. The child stayed put. No surprise, thought the relative. The girl suffered emotional disabilities and had a stubborn streak. And she knew what pj’s meant: bed. The relative sat down to wait her out. Then she heard the bedroom door shut. Walking up the hall came the young boy. Go back and open the door, she told him. He obeyed, returning to the room before closing the door again. Open, close, open, close. This went on for about 10 minutes. By then, the relative had enough. It was time to get the child in her pj’s. She walked down the hall. Quietly, she opened the door. And stopped. She spotted Bret kneeling in front of the girl. One of his hands was on her genitals. The other was on its way toward her. She was lying on her back, legs spread. Her diaper was under the bed. What are you doing? she screamed. Bret hadn’t seen her. He turned toward the door. At first, he didn’t speak. Then he said, I don’t know. She ordered him to leave. He fled on his bike. She dialed 911. At home, Bret called the relative’s house. An older male relative answered.

He told Bret he was no longer welcome. Bret only stayed home a couple of minutes. Just long enough to yell to his stepfather that he had to apologize to someone. Then off he rode on his bike. His

I’m in trouble with the Department of Corrections…I want you

to know I’m not upset with you…But I have to do this…I’m on a bridge. stepfather didn’t hear anything else. Until later that evening, when the phone rang. It was Bret, calling from Rainier, OR. The town sat on the southern bank of the Columbia River. Longview, WA, sat on the northern bank. Connecting the two riverbanks, the Lewis and Clark Bridge. Some 200 ft. below, the Columbia flows to the Pacific. Bret told his stepfather he was going to jump off the Lewis and Clark. He planned to kill himself. Then he hung up. Bret’s mother and stepfather raced to the bridge in their car. But when they got there, they couldn’t find him. In the darkness, they searched and searched, but there was no trace of the boy. Bret had disappeared.

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tanding on the Aurora Bridge on Oct. 17, 2007, Bret makes a call. He’s just dialed a friend on his cell phone, but the friend doesn’t pick up. That’s because the friend can’t hear his phone ringing. The bus he’s on is too noisy. The phone call goes to voicemail, so Bret leaves a message. I’m in trouble with the Department of Corrections…I was supposed to go wait in

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“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

The Aurora Bridge, seen from the west. Construction began in 1931. Since then, more than 230 have leapt to their deaths from the national historic landmark. It ranks as the nation’s second most sought-out bridge for suicides by jumping. Photo collage by Joel Turner

The BRIDGE, Continued from Page 2 the lobby…I want you to know I’m not upset with you…I’m still your good friend…But I have to do this…I’m on a bridge. Then Bret ends the call, never identifying the bridge as the Aurora Bridge. And then — what? Does he look to his left, at the houses climbing up Queen Anne Hill? To the right, at the Fremont Baptist Church and the other buildings heading to Ballard? Does he feel his heart race standing so close to the edge? What is he thinking? What does he do? He decides to call another friend. He dials the number. It’s 10:15 a.m. The phone rings. The friend answers. Bret tells him he’s on a bridge. About to jump. Which bridge? the friend wonders. Where? Roughly 130 feet below, down and off to the right of the Aurora Bridge, a construction crew excavates a site for a commercial space. Bret tells him, On a freeway, near a large crane. A crane? Where? Where’s the crane? Bret won’t say. The friend on the phone knows Bret has threatened to take his life before. But this morning, he sounds more despondent. Has he gone off his meds? In the past, when Bret has threatened suicide, the friend convinced him to call his mother. He tries to get him to phone her now. Bret won’t do it. Maybe he can find Bret himself. But where? A freeway, near a crane? Wait. There’s an overpass to Interstate 5 right outside of the parole office. He hops in his car. But that overpass sits in SODO, south of downtown. The Aurora Bridge lies north of the city’s urban core. His friend, without knowing it, heads out in the wrong direction.

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ut where? Where was Bret? Could he have — On Nov. 7, 2000, near the Lewis and Clark Bridge that crosses the Columbia River, Bret’s mother and stepfather looked and looked, but they found no trace of him. They decided to head back home, because maybe he might be — There. Up ahead. Riding a bike across one of the small bridges that traversed the Cowlitz River. Bret. He was alive. They drove him home. He mentioned what had occurred at the relative’s house, but said not to worry, it was no big deal. Which he probably believed until two days later, when the detective showed up at his house. Would Bret come down to the Kelso Police Station, so they could talk in private about what had happened two days prior? Bret thought that would be OK. His mother didn’t object. At the station, Bret read over his juvenile Miranda Warnings from a department-issued form. One informed him he

He told his parents what had happened at the relative’s house, but said

not to worry, it was no big deal. Which he probably believed until two days later, when a detective showed up at his house. could be tried as an adult. Bret signed the paper. He agreed to speak, even without a lawyer present. “I thought I was going to get arrested after what I did,” Bret said. He was sweating so much he had to take off his outer shirt. Tell me what happened, the detective said. So Bret told. He’d gone to an older relative’s house

on Nov. 7, 2000, and found himself in the bedroom of a younger relative, a fouryear old girl. He didn’t distinguish her as being a child, merely female. He removed the girl’s tights and her diaper. Just as he raised his hand to the girl’s— the older relative entered the bedroom. She screamed. He fled on his bike. But he hadn’t touched the girl. Oh. And he was supposed to be taking medication, but he hadn’t been for a while. And he couldn’t remember what the pills were for. After recounting the story, Bret got worried. He didn’t want to say anything that would put him in jail. The detective wondered if Bret would like to write out a statement. He didn’t. He wanted the detective’s help. So the detective settled on a “Q-nA” format, writing “Q:”, followed by a question. Next to “A:”, Bret wrote, “Yes.” Another question, another “Yes.” A third question, a fourth. “Yes,” “Yes.” In response to a fifth question, Bret wrote a sentence. To a sixth, Bret wrote another. Bret put his initials — “BW” — next to each answer and signed the statement. Then the detective gave him a ride home. A short while later, the detective returned to Bret’s house, accompanied by a sergeant. When they arrived, Bret had a bloody nose, and his eyes were red and watery. The boy had “gotten mouthy,” his stepfather said, so he’d backhanded him. Bloody nose or no, backhand or no, Bret was booked into Cowlitz County Jail for child molestation in the first degree. Bail was set at $5,000.

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n jail, Bret was an easy target. Other offenders, even those with special needs, picked on him. His vulnerability didn’t surprise the jail’s mental health official. He assessed Bret’s thinking to be on a thirdor fourth-grade level. For Bret’s safety, the jail put him into a holding tank. To ascertain his competency to stand

trial, Bret was admitted to Western State Hospital, a psychiatric institution. It was a week before his 18th birthday. The hospital determined Bret functioned in the “low average range of adult intelligence,” while posing a moderate risk for committing future criminal behavior. “At this point, [Bret] Winch could not adequately take care of himself.” Still, Western State found him competent.

In jail, Bret proved to be an easy target. His

vulnerability didn’t surprise the jail’s mental health official. He assessed Bret’s thinking to be on a third- or fourth-grade level. In determining how to sentence Bret, the court weighed two options. On one side of the scale, the standard range of confinement, ranging anywhere from 62 to 82 months. On the other, a program called SSOSA, shorthand for Special Sex Offender Sentencing Alternative. The first state program of its kind when enacted in Washington in 1984, SSOSA is offered to some first-time sex offenders. Minimal jail time is required. Of course, the victim’s future safety is taken into account. The same with the community. And the offender has to acknowledge remorse. In exchange for the shorter sentence, the offender agrees to a list of offenderspecific conditions, including paying for outside treatment. Break the conditions, suffer the consequences. For Bret, corrections officials recommended option one, with a sentence of 72 months. The victim’s adult relative who had caught Bret wanted the book

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 The BRIDGE, Continued from Page 3

the night. Police charged him with criminal trespass and theft. Still, the court didn’t revoke his SSOSA. A friend helped Bret obtain his own thrown at him. “He should have to go to apartment and attended his court hearTexas, if I had my way,” she told police. ings. But unable to attend one hearing, the “They have the death penalty and are friend asked Nancy Erckenbrack if she’d not afraid to use it the way liberals up go in his place, to offer moral support. here are.” Nancy, along with her husband, Bret didn’t want to admit guilt. After Clinton, run the non-denominational all, he’d told police he hadn’t touched Through Open Doors Ministry in the the girl. But, with a lawyer, he opted to basement of their duplex. Bret’s friend plead guilty to first degree child moleswas a member. Even without knowing tation, with a request for SSOSA. The Bret’s charge, Nancy agreed, showing judge ruled in his favor, granting him a up the next day. suspended 72-month sentence. Meeting Bret for the first time in the By the sentencing date, in early May courtroom, she thought: Like a child. This 2001, Bret had already served close to six boy is like a child. He held her hand. months. The judge deemed Bret free to Listening to all the rigamarole, the leave, but his freedom hinged on three back and forth between Bret and the years of outpatient sex offender treatjudge, Nancy began to surmise why he’d been charged. Still, she didn’t sit in judgment. She knew God was merciful. After the hearing, Bret came back to the Erckenbrack’s house — just a few blocks away from his own apartment — and Nancy fixed him a sandwich. They sat and talked. “Then we and Bret were together almost every single day,” says Nancy. Bret attended their church services, where Nancy, 68, played the electric organ while Clinton, 64, preached to the congregants in the mismatched chairs placed in even rows. Bret sat down for meals afterward at the big maple table in their dining room upstairs. He even took to calling them Mom and Dad. Not that he ever forgot his own mother. OftenNancy Erckenbrack, of Longview, WA, acted as a times, he would express surrogate parent for Bret in 2001 after his child moles- frustration to the Ercktation conviction. Meeting him for the first time, she enbracks over not being found him to be like a child. Photo by Rosette Royale with her more. But Bret, who held his tongue when it came to speaking ill of others, never ment along with six years of community said anything really bad about his stepsupervision. And he had to abide by a list father. “Except he could not stay or be of 20 conditions. Case closed. at home because things weren’t right,” But those conditions. Bret, 18 by then, Nancy admits. kept breaking them. That’s how he had wound up over at The court had ordered he have no the Community House, an emergency contact with the victim’s family. But the shelter. He’d stayed there for a while victim’s relatives happened to be his relain his late teens, after he’d been kicked tives, too. Less than a week out of jail, he out once, and met a young woman. A interacted with a family member of the troubled young woman. Bret brought her victim. One condition broken. to the Erckenbracks. He was supposed to hold down a “I don’t know if you’ve heard of steady job, and he did. For a couple people having demons,” Nancy confides, days. Unemployed, he couldn’t af“but she had them.” ford treatment, and since his parents “They talked to her,” nods Clinton. wouldn’t pay, he stopped going. He’d Bret hoped the Erckenbracks could broken a second. heal the young woman. So, while Clinton He couldn’t interact with minors. took Bret downstairs, Nancy sat right in But kids his own age struck him as too front of the young woman, talking dimature, so when he saw some 12-year-old rectly to her. Nancy specifically ignored boys he knew playing basketball, well, he the demons. That made them mad. joined in. That broke a third. They screamed and hollered, but At home, the battles with his stepNancy paid them no mind. Instead, father raged and Bret got kicked out. she invoked the name of her Savior. Homeless, he broke into the concessions In Jesus’ name, come out of her. In stand of a neighborhood park to spend Jesus’ name, come out of her. In Jesus’

“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

name, in Jesus’ name. Come out of her. And…they did. The demons left. The girl looked at Nancy and smiled, her eyes bright. Even Bret noticed it, telling them how the girl had literally changed. But that was Bret. “When someone was hurting,” remembers Nancy, “he really had—” “Compassion,” finishes Clinton. Though Bret also may have been guided by an ulterior motive: that he could benefit

Because Bret heard things. Terrible things.

Voices that told him to hurt himself. from an exorcism of the type Nancy had performed. Because he heard things too. Terrible things. Though there’s a difference between someone having demons and someone having a mental disorder. “If someone is crippled in his mind,” says Nancy, “they say he has demons.” Criticizing the person won’t help. “They need someone to love them,” Clinton offers. So that’s what they did for Bret. They loved him. And sat with him and prayed with him. Whatever they could do to help him counteract the voices he heard. The ones that told him to harm himself.

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ret didn’t tell Nancy and Clinton Erckenbrack about his treatments in psychiatric institutions when he was young. But he shared with them a diagnosis: schizophrenia. A chronic disorder, schizophrenia disrupts how the brain functions. Thoughts become disorganized. Hallucinations alter reality. Behaviors shift. Confusion reigns. Bret’s schizophrenia produced command hallucinations, which issue orders. And he told the pastor-and-wife couple something else: he’d been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. Huge mood swings, moving from mania to depression and thoughts of suicide, characterize the disorder. But symptoms of bipolar disorder can often mimic or be confused with those of schizophrenia. Taken together, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder amount to what clinicians call schizoaffective disorder. The ailment has no cure, but treatment, involving anti-psychotic medications, exist. Finding a psycho-pharmaceutical regimen a patient can adhere to, however, is a continual process of trial and error. To suppress the illness that influenced his actions and decisions, he took a range of anti-psychotic medications, and in his basement apartment, he kept a calendar. Upon it, he’d write what meds to take and when. After he took a pill, he’d mark it off. But sometimes, he couldn’t recall the prescriptions or whether he’d taken them. That happens. It’s not always easy to remember to take every pill when you’re supposed to, and consistency with psychotropic meds didn’t come easily to Bret. Neither did keeping his appointments at a nearby outpatient mental health facility. By mid-February 2002, nine months

after his sentencing, he had missed seven out of 10 scheduled appointments. Another condition broken. On the last day of February, Nancy Erckenbrack’s phone rang. It was Bret. A scared Bret. He’d overslept and missed his required daily meeting with his parole officer. Now the PO was on his way to Bret’s place. Would Nancy and Clinton come over too? Of course, no question. The Erckenbracks arrived to find Bret’s apartment spotless, like it always was. A few minutes later, the PO showed up, with a plainclothes officer. As he walked through the place, the PO kept an eye peeled for any violation. He found it in the garbage. Empty beer cans. Nancy hadn’t even seen them. The PO wondered how they got there. Bret explained that some friends had come over the night before. They brought beer, but Bret didn’t touch a drop. It turned into a late night and after cleaning up, he went to bed, forgetting to set the alarm. That’s why he missed his appointment. One of Bret’s conditions forbade him to drink alcohol. He swore to his PO he hadn’t. His PO reminded him he couldn’t possess it either. Bret felt he hadn’t done anything wrong. But when the PO looked back over the past year, he saw Bret break one condition after another. Now it was too late. Bret was beside himself. Go quietly, Nancy told him, don’t raise heck. They handcuffed him and took him to the jail. Bret sat in a cell, awaiting his sentence. The jail was only a few blocks away and the Erckenbracks visited him as much as they could. At the March 19, 2002, sentencing, the judge let Nancy speak on Bret’s behalf. The boy is struggling with so many things, she told the judge, and he’s trying to put his life right. The judge informed her Bret was a menace to society. Nancy had never heard such stuff. She and her husband, Clinton, spent weeks with the boy, so they knew.

The judge informed Nancy Erckenbrack that Bret was a menace to society. She had never heard such stuff. “More on the whole,” she said, “society was a menace to him.”

“It wasn’t that he was such a detriment to society,” says Nancy. “More on the whole, society was a menace to him.” But the judge had the final word. He revoked Bret’s sentencing alternative, reinstating the full sentence of 72 months, minus six months for time served. The Erckenbracks tried to prepare him for what lay ahead. Bret didn’t think he could handle it. But he had little choice, because three days later, on March 22, 2002, Bret put on an orange jumpsuit. Jail staff cuffed and shackled his ankles and wrists. And, aboard a white bus, he set off for a prison 85 miles away. Bret’s five and a half years in state prison had just begun. n To be continued…

Real Change



“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

What led Bret Hugh Winch to the Aurora Bridge last October? The second installment of a three-part series finds Bret doing time in state prison for a sex offense. There, while awaiting sex offender treatment, he battles with hallucinations but is buoyed by a new friendship

The Man who Stood on the Bridge Pt. 2: Waiting, on the inside By ROSETTE ROYALE, Staff Reporter

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he police station receives the call at 10:17 a.m.: A male says he’s going to kill himself. The station’s mapping program shows the Aurora Bridge. And standing on the bridge, a man. Bret Hugh Winch. It’s Oct. 17, 2007. Within seconds, the station dispatches a cruiser. The three officers inside race to the scene. Seen from a distance, the bridge resembles an overturned silver crown. Construction began in 1931 and since then, more than 230 people have leapt to their deaths from the Aurora Bridge. This makes it the nation’s second most soughtout bridge for suicide by jumping. Arriving at the half-mile long bridge, the first cruiser. It’s 10:18 a.m. One of the officers locates a man on the ledge. He wears a light blue hat and a hoodie. The officer estimates the man to be 24 years old. He’s right.

Below him, cars drive by.

He tells his friend on the phone about them. They look so small. He plans to jump on one of them. There’s not a lot of room to stand on the ledge. Barely 7.5 inches. Bret grips the rail with one hand. With the other, he holds a cell phone to his ear. Some 130 ft. below his feet lies the blacktop of N. 34th St. Along Aurora Ave. runs a pedestrian walkway. To get close to Bret, the officer must step upon it. Slowly, he approaches. But why: Why does Bret plant his feet on the western ledge of the Aurora Bridge this morning? And how long ago did he lift one leg, then the other, over the rail? Three minutes? Four? Five? People will wonder. Only one person knows. Barely two minutes have passed since the call came into the station. But there’s not a lot of time left. By 10:22 a.m., under a mostly blue sky, the ordeal on the bridge will come to an end.

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he Bluebird. That’s what prisoners call the bus that ferries them from one jail or prison to another. The Bluebird came calling for Bret Hugh Winch at the Cowlitz County

Jail on March 22, 2002, bound for the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, 85 miles away. With his wrists cuffed, his ankles shackled, and these restraints connected to a longer chain about his waist, Bret, dressed in an orange jumpsuit like all offenders during movement, boarded the bus. Then off it flew. He had a hard ride. Other prisoners on the Bluebird wanted to see Bret’s paperwork, they were interested in his charge. But he kept silent. Perhaps experience had taught him why. The year before, the then 18 year old had been convicted of child molestation in the first degree. On the totem pole of criminal offenses recognized even among criminals, nothing sits lower than child molestation. Nothing. In prison, those convicted of such crimes can fall victim to assaults, both physical and sexual. Standing 5’5” and weighing 135 pounds, Bret must have been well aware he’d be an easy target for harassment. It had already happened in the jail he just left. Bret’s charge carried a standard sentence ranging from 62 to 82 months. But a judge had granted him an alternative sentence — one designed specifically for sex offenders — involving six months of incarceration and adherence to a list of 20 conditions, including outpatient sex-offender treatment. Break the conditions, suffer the consequences. Not long after receiving the alternative, he failed to maintain a job. Unable to afford treatment, he stopped attending. He had contact with the victim’s family, to whom he was related. He played basketball with two teenaged boys when he was supposed to avoid minors. Those broken conditions, and others, none of which were sexual in nature, led the judge to revoke Bret’s shortened sentence. He ordered him to serve 66 months in state prison. That day on the Bluebird marked the start of his five-anda-half-year term. As Bret sat chained to another prisoner on a bench inside the Bluebird, he kept mum about his charge. But his refusal egged the other prisoners on. They hounded him the whole ride. When he arrived at Shelton — that’s what prisoners call the prison — he was terrified the other riders would hurt him. Or kill him. “They were going to ‘beat my ass,’” he told prison officials. Shelton, encompassing 400 acres, has four different facilities, one of them the Intensive Management Unit (IMU). The

Vehicles traveling south on the Aurora Bridge. A few feet beyond the lamppost in the foreground, Bret manuevered over the rail to the barely 7.5-inch ledge. Photo by Joel Turner unit has a mix of medium- and maximumsecurity cells. Because of the threats Bret received on the Bluebird, he was put on administrative segregation, a sort of corrections center limbo where you wait to be moved somewhere else safe. Prisoners on ad seg stay in their cells, alone, for 23 hours a day. Everyone calls it the Hole.

The Bluebird prison bus came calling for

Bret Hugh Winch at the Cowlitz County Jail on March 22, 2002, bound for the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton. He had a hard ride.

Bret had been there only a week before he underwent psychiatric evaluation. He’d already undergone an evaluation at Western State Hospital shortly after his crime, where, even though they put Bret in the “low average range of adult intelligence,” the facility viewed him fit to stand trial. As a child, he’d undergone treatment at a psychiatric institution. Or maybe it had been two institutions. Bret wasn’t sure. And he’d been prescribed a host of medications.

Bret had told friends in the months prior to entering prison that he suffered from schizophrenia. He heard voices. They told him to hurt himself. And, he’d said, he’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Yet his evaluation in prison determined he had “unspecified psychosis” — a diagnosis that acknowledged Bret’s psychotic states, but couldn’t pinpoint their origin. After his evaluation, he stayed in the Intensive Management Unit for another six weeks. Murderers, rapists, arsonists, thieves, assault-and-batterers, pushers, pimps: all state criminals, except for Death Row inmates, go to Shelton for initial processing and classification. Not long after Bret joined the rest of the population, he worked as a porter, doing his best to keep away from physical harm. Mentally, however, he struggled, and his moods gravitated from one pole to another. In the prison chapel one afternoon, Bret encountered a guard. The chapel was closed, the guard told him, so he had to leave. Where’s your ID card? the guard asked. Bret wouldn’t hand it over. Instead, he mouthed off. He got tossed back into the Hole. There, hallucinations overwhelmed him. He pressed his call button. I’m seeing and hearing things in my cell, he

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“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

THE BRIDGE, Continued from Page 5

top to pay for incarceration, 10 percent for a prisoner savings account to be paid out upon release, and 5 percent for a Victim Compensation Fund. (Though the mother of Bret’s victim had already told police, “That Victim Compensation Fund you all talk about never helped me.”) He made collect calls to the pastorand-wife couple who had helped him when he’d been kicked out of his home after his sex offense charge. Their phone bill went sky high. When he mentioned that the voices still spoke to him, they counseled him to pray to the Lord, to ask for His help. But at some point, his devotion toward Christianity waned and he felt drawn to Wicca, a religion that, depending on one’s viewpoint, is a recent creation or an ancient practice. The energy of the feminine balances that of the masculine in Wiccan beliefs, and human sexuality — a gift from the Goddess — is praised. In his cell, he kept vessels used in the pagan practice, and one day, when he returned, he found the door open: His store had been stolen. Bret had debts he owed to another offender, for fixing his radio, and, without the money, he was in a bind. To pay off the balance, Bret relinquished one of his Wiccan tools, a smudge bowl — used for the burning of sage, a cleansing herb — to stay in the black. Smudge did little, however, to cleanse the prison of those who preyed upon him. Threats continued. The staff considered placing him in ad seg again. Just as a kite had warned of a threat on his safety, Bret passed a Sept. 2003 kite on to the records department, requesting information about an incident that occurred in July. Records personnel wrote back that no reports involving that time period were in his file. There has to be a record, he kited back: “I was raped in F Unit.” He hadn’t wanted to press charges at the time, he wrote, due to fear of retaliation from the alleged perpetrator. But three months after the fact, he’d changed his mind. “Please contact the appropriate agency and inform them that I wish to file felony criminal charges for the crime committed against me.” Maybe Bret had been emboldened to speak out because he had heard what took place shortly after his rape: in September 2003, in a unanimous vote, Congress enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act. A 2004 review of criminal records by the Bureau of Justice Statistics discovered more than 5,300 acts of sexual violence had been reported in the nation’s adult correctional facilities. But those numbers, as human rights advocates assert, represent a fraction of prison sexual assaults. For Bret, the prison superintendent forwarded his assault allegations to the Intelligence & Investiagations division. Whether futher action was taken is unknown, but Bret told friends no charges against the alleged rapist were ever filed. Bret would report no other assaults, sexual or otherwise, while in the Special Offenders Unit. Other than a fighting match in Dec. 2004 that resulted in him

told a staff member. She ignored him. Again and again, he laid his finger on the button. “The dead people [are] getting mad at me,” he said over the speaker, “and telling me to—” A sergeant kicked the cell door. Stay off the button, he told him. Bret tried to explain what was happening, but the sergeant laughed. For repeatedly hitting the call button, he was written up for staff interference. Having witnessed his vulnerability and mental health struggles, Shelton transferred him, some 10 months after his arrival, to another prison, Monroe Correctional Complex, 35 miles northeast of Seattle. Like Shelton, Monroe has a number of separate institutions — five, in this case — on several hundred acres. Aboard another Bluebird, Bret set off for Monroe and the two-hour ride. Destination: the Special Offender Unit, where they house mentally ill offenders.

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any prisons, in light of shrinking mental-health services on the outside, have become, in effect, de facto psychiatric hospitals. Human rights advocates estimate the nation’s prisons house three to four times as many mentally ill people as psychiatric hospitals. In Washington state, offenders with mental health disorders often find themselves in the Special Offender Unit, a 420bed facility designed to keep vulnerable populations at a remove. Trouble was, the vulnerable, housed together, often targeted their own. This is where Bret landed. On the inside, inmates communicate to the higher ups by using a kite, a standardized slip of paper dropped into designated boxes. Officials reply on the same form. In mid-April 2003, someone slipped an anonymous kite into a sergeant’s box: A prisoner had threatened Bret’s life. The sergeant called Bret into his office. For your own safety, the sergeant told him, we’re going to place you in administrative segregation. Bret didn’t want to go. Perhaps he feared his recent experiences would replay themselves: that, alone in a cell, he would be unable

In the Hole,

hallucinations overwhelmed him. He pressed his call button. “The dead people [are] getting mad at me,” he said over the speaker, “and telling me to—” A sergeant kicked the cell door. Stay off the button, he told him. to silence his hallucinations, that he couldn’t refuse their demands. Hearing about his imminent move, Bret, seated in a chair in the sergeant’s office, yelled and cried.

A portion of the Aurora Bridge, as seen from below, near N. 34th St. Stretching 898 ft., it spans a small section of Lake Union. Photo by Joel Turner This discussion is over, the sergeant said. But Bret wouldn’t budge. I’m not going, he said. Prison staff came and, after placing him in a hold and cutting off his prison uniform, placed his rigid body in a wheelchair. They rolled him to a cell. Day turned to night, nighttime shifted to dawn. By the evening, his hallucinations grew in strength. Bret tried to get staff members’ attention. He pressed a call button. When someone showed up, he found Bret squatting on the floor of his cell. A cord from a house phone had been pulled into the cell. Take the phone cord off and give it to me, an officer ordered. Bret complied. They took him to the prison hospital, where he was placed on suicide watch. For refusing to leave the chair in the sergeant’s office, and for using the phone cord, he was given 20 days of disciplinary segregation. Nearly three more weeks in the Hole. And then…he and trouble seemed to part ways. Once he mixed back in with the general population, his interactions with staff weren’t marked by such aggression. His mental illness and their symptoms stabilized. Mental-health professionals say this can happen: that even serious mental ill-

ness, aided by treatment, can be mitigated by long stretches of relative calm. For certain individuals affected by psychotic episodes, however, periods of hallucinations or suicidal thoughts may return to pierce the bubble of serenity. Even so, perhaps Bret found hope in the future. Back when he’d pleaded guilty to child molestation, he’d requested the judge send him to Twin Rivers, another facility at Monroe. Twin Rivers houses one of the state’s sex offender treatment programs, known to offenders and prison officials as SOTP. Sex offenders expressing interest in the program must submit an application. Bret applied soon after entering prison. He already knew he’d been accepted, but offenders enter treatment 12 to 18 months before their release. Bret was still looking at a couple years’ wait. He’d enter SOTP soon, but when precisely, he didn’t know. One day. In the meantime, Bret kept in contact with the outside. Word from his mother was that things were bad at home. Much like it had been when Bret lived with her and his stepfather. She did her best to send him money, which allowed him to buy official prison goods, like radios. But each time he received money, the prison deducted 20 percent off the

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“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

THE BRIDGE, Continued from Page 6 serving seven days in isolation, he remained infraction-free. And then, the news the 22-year-old had been waiting for: He’d be going to Twin Rivers in January 2005. After waiting close to three years, Bret would begin sex offender treatment. Finally, it seemed, he faced a brighter future.

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rom where Bret stands on the Aurora Bridge on Oct. 17, 2007, Queen Anne Hill rises to the south. To the north, the buildings of Fremont stretch into the distance. Immediately to his right, a white tower crane reaches skyward. With its looming presence, it could be the mast and jib of a ghostly ship devoid of sail. In front of him, open air. Directly behind him, a waist-high rail. Bret holds onto it with one hand. Can he feel the cool metal that’s exposed through the rail’s chipped paint? Does his body sense the concrete ledge vibrate from the vehicles passing along Aurora Ave.? And his mind? How is his mental state? Does he hear the voices? Are they issuing their commands? And the visual hallucinations. Can he see— The officer. He treads the pedestrian walkway. He moves to within 30 ft. Twenty. Fifteen. Don’t come closer, Bret tells him. The officer obeys. The Aurora Bridge spans a thin section of Lake Union. People have leapt into these waters before. Even though there’s no water below Bret, the police station dispatches two divers. The time, 10:20 a.m. Two minutes left. Bret keeps hold of his cell phone. He’s called a friend to tell him he’s on a bridge. Which one? Bret won’t say. But there’s a large crane nearby.

Almost 130 feet below him, running perpendicular to the Aurora Bridge, N. 34th St. The occasional vehicle passes beneath him. On the bridge, at some point, police stop all southbound traffic. The officer can tell Bret’s upset, so he wants him on the safe side of the rail. He attempts to talk him back. Bret doesn’t respond. Instead, he tells the officer about himself. The Department of Corrections considers me on escape status…I’m a sex offender…I’m homeless…I’m unemployed. But his name: that he will not say. Below him, on N. 34th St., cars drive by. He tells his friend on the phone about them. They look so small. He plans to jump on one of them. His friend asks him not to do it. But Bret has made up his mind. That is what he will do.

Three dorm wings branch outward from a centralized day room like the extended ring, middle, and forefinger of an open hand. At the points where fingers would join to palm, thick walls of shatterproof Plexiglas reach from floor to ceiling. Imagine the wrist. Here, on an elevated platform, sitting behind another Plexiglas wall, a guard keeps watch on all activities: pool games, channel surfing, daytime showers. Bret took a cell on A Unit, C Wing, at first playing the “house mouse,” sticking close to his cell, too afraid to interact with everyone else. Other offenders

by his wit and intelligence. as he listened while Bret talked. And talked. And talked. “Bret was very happy when Bret and I were together at Twin Rivers.” If the weather proved agreeable, offenders spent free time in the Yard, shooting hoops or walking laps around the track. One afternoon, a group of offenders, taking in the sunshine, hung out on the grass in the Yard. A conversation broke out, topics changing with great ease. Someone heckled McCollum, cracking a joke about his age. Bret laughed. Come on, McCollum, 54, told him, you’ll get your turn. You’ll grow old.

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gnore the double rows of chain link fence topped with razor wire and the armed guard keeping watch in the fortified tower, and Twin Rivers, home to the Sex Offender Treatment Program, brings to mind a community college campus. On its western border, four creamcolored housing units, trimmed in marine blue, act as dormitories for roughly 800 medium-custody prisoners. Set along the eastern boundary, a prison library, infirmary, dining hall, chapel, and gymnasium. Running alongside these communal areas, a blacktop walkway stretches north to administrative buildings and south to the Yard, the outdoor recreational area. Prisoners at Twin Rivers — 60-70 percent of whom have been convicted of a sex offense — have given the walkway a nickname: the Boulevard. When allowed out of their cell, prisoners, either in their state-issued khaki clothing or prison-approved apparel from the outside, and guards, clad in dark blue enforcement uniforms, stroll the Boulevard. Near their feet, blackbirds patrol the grounds for insects. Above them, swallows delight in the freedom of open air. Bret showed up at Twin Rivers in January 2005, transported from the Special Offender Unit in a white van, ready to start treatment. But he had to wait for a vacancy. Anyone convicted of a sex offense in Washington state since 1998 can volunteer to take part in the treatment program at Twin Rivers. Space allows for only 200 participants at a time. The program is popular: The five-year waiting list stretches to 1,000 would-be participants. (A much smaller program, for female sex offenders, exists in Gig Harbor.) Active enrollees An empty cell at Twin Rivers. Bret stayed in a similar cell, live together in A Unit, the with a cellmate, on A Unit, C Wing while taking part in the layout of which recalls a giant hand, open wide. Sex Offender Treatment Program. Photo by Rosette Royale

The first time Lawrence McCollum met Bret in Twin Rivers in early 2005, he just thought of him as another prisoner. But after their second meeting, their friendship clicked. “Bret was very happy when Bret and I were together at Twin Rivers.” Photo by Joel Turner prodded him to enter more fully into the unit’s life and, after some cajoling, he did. In no time, pretty much everyone knew Bret’s name. Not that they called him Bret. Nicknames are popular inside and when prisoners hit upon one for Bret, they based it on a physical characteristic: He blinked. A lot. He would be looking at you, and for no reason, his lids — for a second, maybe a little more — would clamp shut. Practically everyone took to calling him

Grow old? That’s not going to happen, Bret

said. I’ll never see 30. I’m going to commit suicide. It’ll be by jumping, he said. Blinky, which he hated. Lawrence McCollum called him Bret . They met over dinner. McCollum hadn’t been at Twin Rivers long and, one evening, as he scanned the dining hall looking for a place to sit, he spied an open seat. Seconds after he placed his tray on the table, Bret plopped down across from him. The two chatted while they ate. McCollum didn’t think much of it. A few days later, in the Yard, Bret ran up to McCollum: He’d been looking for him. They talked some more. “And we just hit it off,” says McCollum. During free time, they became inseparable. Bret taught him cribbage, dominoes, bocce ball, horseshoes. McCollum was struck

That’s not going to happen, Bret replied. I’ll never see 30. I’m going to commit suicide. It’ll be by jumping, he said. But: What do you do, when someone says he’s thinking of suicide? Experts advise to take the threat seriously. Seek assistance. Get help. Yet the offenders in the Yard treated Bret’s admission with nonchalance. Perhaps it was because people say crazy stuff in prison and who can tell if someone’s just being funny. And Bret could be funny. Or perhaps the very notion of taking one’s own life unsettled them more than the violence they had experienced or witnessed on the outside. Whatever their reasons, none of them made much of Bret’s comment. Yet McCollum couldn’t ignore Bret’s never-see-30 fatalism. He’d stood next to Bret in the meds line while a nurse watched him swallow down pills, some prescribed to combat suicidal thoughts and depression. He knew that voices commanded Bret to jump, head first, from a tall structure. But would he really do it? McCollum didn’t act that day in the Yard. But if a situation ever arose, McCollum swore he’d tell the staff. He’d do whatever it took.

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ntellectually, Sally Neiland knew the sex offenders wouldn’t be bogeymen. But still, the men were so nice, they took her by surprise.

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Real Change

 THE BRIDGE, Continued from Page 7 She’d been working with victims of sexual assault — both women and men — for several years when Twin Rivers invited her to speak. They wanted her to dialogue with clinicians about victim empathy. Her plan was simple: just talk to the clinicians and get out. There would be no hanging around. But when she arrived, clinicians asked her to sit in on a group. She did. As the offenders talked, she watched the men. They weren’t scary-looking. And they appeared to be working on making changes in their lives. “It was like being at a PTA meeting that was all men,” says Neiland, the current Sex Offender Treatment Program director. Yet Neiland knows that in the Sex Offender Treatment Program, the men don’t sit around talking about bake sales. In groups involving 10 to 14 offenders, each participant addresses his past criminal behavior and its potential causes. Groups employ cognitive behavior therapy, a form of psychotherapy focused on how one’s thoughts impact one’s feelings and actions. The therapy also challenges distortions about vulner-

What makes a sex offender? If Twin Rivers

is an example, then no black-and-white answer exists. able victims. A trained clinician facilitates the group. Treatment also incorporates a practice known as arousal reconditioning. Here, the emphasis is to redirect a participant’s usual pathway to sexual stimulation through the introduction of an unpleasant sensation — say, a nauseating smell — prior to the initial stage of arousal. By program’s end, an offender has undergone between 350 and 500 hours of treatment, not including a varying number of one-on-one hours with a clinician. The purpose of treatment is to stop the men from re-offending again— forever. Indeed, only 1.3 percent of those who complete treatment are

A sign adorning the entrance to one of the two buildings that house the Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) at Twin Rivers. Up to 200 offenders participate in the program at a time, which lasts anywhere from 12 to 18 months. Photo by Rosette Royale

“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

convicted of another felony sex offense within five years. Bret fared well in his treatment group. He got along with fellow members and sought out his clinician for one-on-ones several times a week. Before entering the group, he’d worked with the clinician on an individual plan, which he followed. One of his issues was impulse control: When he wanted something, he would go get it. And boundaries, he had problems setting his own and respecting others’. Participants confronting mental illness — a low percentage, Neiland says, since most sex offenders aren’t mentally ill — present significant challenges. In the case of someone who suffers auditory hallucinations, a group clinician could, for example, write down what those voices say on sheets of paper. Taped to the walls of the treatment room, the other group members, prior to the mentally ill offender’s arrival, can familiarize themselves with the challenges their incoming member faces. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, janitors, Boeing executives, clergy members, cops: all of these people have taken part in SOTP. But what led these men here in the first place? What makes a sex offender? If Twin Rivers is an example, then no black-and-white answer exists. One third of the men in SOTP have been sexually assaulted. Another third report witnessing abuse in the home. “And the last third report an absence of identifiable trauma,” says Neiland. Bret seemed to fit the first two categories. As for those who offend against children, the causes can be numerous. The act may have occurred because the offender merely had access to the young victim, not because the offender carries an attraction toward all children. “Or they may be emotionally congruent with children,” Neiland says, “versus those their own peer age.” Outside of group, a community of caring people sprang up around Bret, one that extended to staff members, who enjoyed his presence. He could have them laughing in a manner of minutes. He worked in the kitchen — pay rate, 42 cents an hour — on the lunch-dinner crew. When he took off his food-service cap at the end of his shift, he’d make a beeline for Lawrence McCollum’s cell so they could hang out. Numerous times, in their conversations, Bret spoke of the voices or predicted his early death. On two occasions, he told McCollum he had to do it: He was going to jump from the interior second-floor balcony of A Unit to the ground floor. Then once more he repeated the claim. Why? McColllum asked. Because the voices are telling me to, he said. McCollum didn’t need to hear it a fourth time. With Bret’s permission, he went to the sergeant’s office. The sergeant declared a medical emergency. A Unit went on lockdown. Medical staff assessed Bret’s condition. They escorted him to a hospital within the correctional complex. What worried McCollum more than anything was that, at the time, Bret had been keeping his appointments in the meds line. He’d seen him take his pills. “If he’s doing all this while he’s medicating,”

says McCollum, “imagine what must be The man chosen to be Bret’s parole happening when he’s not?” officer on the outside, Randy Van Zandt, Bret returned to the unit days later. thought not. He felt it best to wait. After He told McCollum he was all right. Still, reconsideration, officials shifted the most people knew. Even though he acted date. Bulletins sent to sheriff offices in happy-go-lucky, they were aware, behind King and Cowlitz Counties informed law his smiles, his mental state plagued him. Yet nothing could diminish the beacon on the horizon: his release. In March of 2002, he’d been sentenced to five and a half years. That would have taken him to September 2007. The End of Sentence Review Board, after examining his file and taking into account time for good behavior, determined that Bret could be released in October 2006. They also decided, based upon a point system that factored in his single offense, he’d be classified as a Level 2 sex offender, a mid-level designation. Every day, Bret stopped by this window — the Meds Line — to A second compick up his prescriptions. A nurse would watch as he swallowed mittee deemed Bret them. Still, hallucinations plagued him. Photo by Rosette Royale a good match for a state program that assisted seriously mentally ill offend- enforcement Bret Hugh Winch would be ers upon release. The program even released on Nov. 1. contracted with a building. It seemed September passed without incident. perfect, until the committee realized In October, he completed his Sex Ofthe building sat close to a school, which fender Treatment Program, agreeing to would have broken one of his release outside treatment. When Nov. 1 rolled conditions. In short order, the program around, Bret met Van Zandt outside of secured him a small room in one of the Twin Rivers’ locked doors. It was the few Seattle apartment complexes willing first time in more than five and a half years he’d stepped on the open side of razor-wire fences and locked metal doors without handcuffs or shackles. With him, he had two boxes of belongings. Withdrawn from his prisoner account: checks totaling $42. What was he thinking as he slid into the car seat? Was he excited to finally be free? Did he worry he might screw up and find himself under the eyes of armed guards again? Or were all of his thoughts drowned out by voices commanding him to hurt himself, overpowered by creatures snarling nearby? His treatment clinician on the outside, whom he had yet to meet, would claim later that Bret would do a lot better than anyone had expected. Yet, within a year, he would be standing on the Aurora Bridge. to accept Level 2 sex offenders. McColAnd the last person he knew to see lum, who had already been released, took him before he’d clamber over the outpictures of Bret’s soon-to-be home, and side rail would be Van Zandt, the man mailed them to his friend. The room was who’d come to meet him for his journey located in a seedy building on a gritty to Seattle, where the two would take street on Capitol Hill, near downtown. part in a destiny Bret had been predictHis earned release date of Oct. 21, ing for years. n 2006 was finalized. But there was another problem: Halloween. Did it make sense to release Bret on the proposed date, when, 10 days later, the streets could be full of To be continued… trouble? Not to mention children?

McCollum had stood next to Bret in the meds line while a nurse

watched him swallow down pills, some prescribed to combat suicidal thoughts. He knew that voices commanded Bret to jump, head first, from a tall structure. But would he really do it?

Real Change



“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

What led Bret Hugh Winch to the Aurora Bridge last October? In the last of a three-part series, Bret moves into his own place in Seattle. But when he faces potential homelessness, he makes a rash decision

The Man Who Stood on the Bridge Pt. 3: Home, it’s better than prison By ROSETTE ROYALE, Staff Reporter

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few hundred feet away from him, on the Aurora Bridge, police have stopped traffic. More than 120 ft. below him, on N. 34th St., cars slow down for a speed bump. Not a lot of cars, but a few. They look so small. It’s 10:21 in the morning and Bret Hugh Winch heaved one leg, then the other over the railing at least seven minutes ago. It could be longer. But not by much. That’s around the time the ordeal on the bridge began. Some construction workers see him. They’re excavating a site just north of N. 34th. St. A white tower crane rises into the air like a toy made from an oversized erector set. Don’t do it, one of them yells. It’s not worth it. Standing 15 feet away from Bret, an officer. He’s tried to move closer, but Bret told him not to. He’s tried to get Bret to climb back over the 42-inch rail, but, no way, he won’t do it. Bret tells the officer he’s on Department of Corrections Escape Status, he’s a Level 3 sex offender, he has no place to live, he has no job. Is that why? Does this explain why he’s come here today, on Oct. 17, 2007? Are the reasons for considering suicide this easy to comprehend?

But what if Bret is wrong about being homeless? What if his PO, this very minute, is working to secure him housing?

Bret holds a cell phone to one ear, talking to a friend. The friend knows Bret is on a bridge, but doesn’t know which one. Seattle has more than 150 bridges. Hundreds of overpasses, too. The friend tries an overpass to the interstate near the Seattle Community Justice Center, the parole office. He’s about five miles off the mark. Bret left the justice center not even an hour ago. He’d been kicked out of his apartment and he needed help from his parole officer to get a new place. That’s why he tells the officer on the bridge he’s homeless. At least, this is what Bret thinks. But what if he’s wrong? What if his PO, this very minute, is working to secure him housing? Would Bret still be here?

He has a lot competing for his attention. Construction workers. His friend on the phone. The officer nearby. His own thoughts. These thoughts cause him to hear voices that tell him to hurt himself. These thoughts cause him to see demons that hiss and snarl. All of these people, these hallucinations are with Bret as he stands on the bridge. But by 10:22 a.m., everything will shift. And that moment is a mere heartbeat away.

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ret saw his new place and thought: “It definitely beats being in prison.” It was Nov. 1, 2006 and he’d just been released from Twin Rivers, a state prison that houses a Sex Offender Treatment Program. It had taken more than 12 months and several hundred hours of treatment. And now, here he was. In his own place. Randy Van Zandt, Bret’s parole officer, had met the 23-year-old at the prison’s front doors earlier that morning and driven him into Seattle. Van Zandt specialized in overseeing offenders confronting chronic mental illness and Bret fit the bill: Bret had told friends he had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A prison psychiatric exam diagnosed him with unspecified psychosis. His new offender, Van Zandt saw, was high maintenance and would require a lot of hand holding. “Bret was someone who benefited a lot with someone walking through things with him,” says Van Zandt. The two were looking at a long walk together: Bret was slated to be under supervision for four years, until 2010. The apartment was pretty small. Actually, it was a hotel room, in a 54-room notell hotel that rented by the week, even to Level 2 sex offenders like Bret. Forty-six of the rooms shared bathrooms and showers that lay at the eastern end of each floor. The rooms came with a bed, a mini-fridge, a microwave, a table, and a couple of chairs. The manager gave Bret a key to Room 107. Outside his southern-facing window, an alleyway strewn with broken bottles. In his building, drug deals took place through ground-floor windows. Prostitutes climbed through to meet their johns. Tenants left porn mags in the shared bathrooms. Out on the street, police cars, with sirens blaring, made regular appearances.

The view from the ledge of the Aurora Bridge, looking down to N. 34th St., some 130 ft. below. Photo by Joel Turner Ambulances took people away on stretchers. Arguments broke out into fistfights. But, hey: it was home. And finding a place to live as a registered sex offender is no easy feat. Most people don’t think of sex offenders as good neighbors and landlords can be skittish about renting to them. For those with meager financial resources, like Bret, housing becomes even tougher. This may help to explain why, of the nearly 4,000 registered sex offenders in King County, 400 of them are homeless. A fair number of offenders Bret had known at Twin Rivers lived in other rooms

Finding a place to live as a registered sex offender

is no easy feat. Most people don’t want one as a neighbor and landlords can be skittish about renting to one. at the hotel. In prison, they noticed he opened and closed his eyes uncontrollably, so they gave him a nickname: Blinky. Bret hated the name. But it stuck. Still, having people around proved good, because it meant Bret had company. He did whatever he could to keep anyone around, as another person nearby silenced the demons, sending the apparitions to

the wall where they stood, mute. Bret had described the demons to Lawrence McCollum, whom he’d met at Twin Rivers. They stood about three feet tall, floating just a few inches from the ground. Horns curved out of their heads. “To me,” says McCollum, “they sounded like something out of Dante.” Their faces were humanoid and they snarled and hissed from angry mouths. Whether on the bus, at Safeway, or the justice center downtown, the demons were there. They were always there. Nighttime, though: that was the worst. Alone, with no one around, the voices, the demons, they nearly overwhelmed him. Sometimes, they even invaded his dreams. He talked over his symptoms with his treatment program clinician, Judy McCullough, during a one-on-one session. She told him she’d email Van Zandt, his PO, who could forward his concerns to Sound Mental Health, where Bret went for his meds and mental health meetings. He’d mentioned the voices to Clinton and Nancy Erckenbrack, too. The pastor-and-wife couple from southwestern Washington had cared for him when Bret was in his teens, right after his first-degree child molestation charge. He wrote them a letter, thanking them for their encouragement. God Bless You. “Would you consider coming to visit me in Seattle?” he asked.

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Real Change

10 THE BRIDGE, Continued from Page 9 They wanted to, but their ministry was thriving. They couldn’t get away. So he called them around Thanksgiving. Clinton spoke to him. “Just talk to the Lord,” the pastor advised, “tell him your problems.” But in his new place, with his 24th birthday having come and gone, and with the possibility of spending Christmas with his mother and grandmother out of state growing dim, Bret stopped eating. Did he forget? Even with the canned spaghetti and junk food and soda around? His memory did fail him at times. But five days before Christmas, McCullough got a phone call: Bret had been taken to the ER in an ambulance. After pumping him with IV fluids, Swedish Hospital sent Bret back to the tiny apartment, where the ever-present demons awaited. And so the holidays came and went. Happy New Year.

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oundaries. Bret knew he had to set boundaries. But he just couldn’t seem to do it. In his room, he returned to a regular eating schedule. But the other tenants in the building kept coming by. Would he share some of his food? Sure, no problem. McCullough knew he wanted to be liked. “And with that,” she says, “he was taken advantage of.” By the time the third week of January 2007 had rolled around, he only had $1 to his name. Did he have enough food left? He told McCullough he thought he did. Still, the money. She wanted him to work on his money management. Thanks to a program called the Mentally Ill Offender Community Transition Program, his rent — $165 a week, reduced to $150 — and mental health treatments were covered. But social services only gave him $226 a month and a bus pass. Bret thought if he had another $100 a month, he’d be fine. Maybe he could donate plasma. Was that a good idea? His treatment providers worried the procedure might affect his meds. Besides, what did he need the money for? Things. Like a new pre-paid cell phone. And a used laptop. And CD’s. He already had hundreds of them, all categorized, alphabetically, in his tidy room. Of course, the dopest ones had been dropped by the Real Slim Shady himself, Eminem. Bret loved Eminem. He gave him mad props. Sometimes, with the baseball caps and hoodies, he tried to emulate the look of the hip-hop star who had attempted suicide once himself. Bret’s mother bought him a new stereo with huge speakers. He would turn the system up and let it rip. Of course, not everyone was in the mood for Eminem’s illin’ rhymes. Tenants complained, a manager warned him about the volume. So he got headphones to keep the bass line up close to his ears. All the better to drown out the voices. Though, when it came to boundaries, he had one he tried to enforce: his living space. He wanted to move. Even with the friends he knew there, the hotel wasn’t the best place for him. Stuff kept happening. A prostitute, let in the building by a john, was curious: Did Bret want a little action? In treatment, he’d addressed what appropriate sexual conduct looked

“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

like for him. A partner, with the house and the white picket fence, that’s what he longed for. The prostitute did not fit the picture, so he told her no. He dreamed of a place in the University District that took offenders, where he’d visited a friend. His PO, Randy Van Zandt, agreed to set up an appointment with the landlord. It would take time. Luckily for Bret, he’d played the waiting game before. Sure, he was impatient, even impulsive on occasion. But he’d had to wait three and a half years in various state prisons before entering the treatment program at Twin Rivers. He would have to hold on again. To keep himself occupied, Bret visited Sound Mental Health five days a week to get his meds and to take part in meetings. His Friday visit provided medication for the whole weekend. But sometimes, he suffered side effects. The pills caused him to gain weight. Occasionally, he became constipated. Worse than both of these, however, he couldn’t sleep. He’d stay up until the wee hours, playing video games. Being a night owl kept him from getting to his Sound Mental Health appointments on time. Van Zandt could see how insomnia wore on Bret. He was lethargic, forgetful. You need to start prioritizing awake time, the PO told him, so you can get things done in the day. Bret did his best.

Even though she knew of his child molestation charge, she didn’t see him as a bad person. Actually, she found him precious. She wanted to help him up the road to something better for himself. So, yes, he could stay. But Clarke had rules. Strict rules. No drugs, no drinking, no overnight guests. “We make sure the rules are obeyed,” she says. There were other tenants there, broken people, and she couldn’t jeopardize all of them for one person’s actions. In some ways, the hotel and the new place had similarities. Both had private rooms with a bathroom down the hall. But Clarke’s place was cheaper — almost by half — the rooms were bigger, and nicer, and there was a communal kitchen. One night Bret heated up some food for himself. He ate his meal. Soon after, another tenant smelled something: gas. A fire truck came and evacuated the whole house. No one could reenter for hours, until well after midnight. The manager pieced together that Bret had forgotten to turn off the burner completely. He could’ve blown the whole house up. Bret still had to attend his Monday evening treatment meetings and Sound Mental Health appointments, even though he lived two bus rides away. But he became adept at riding the bus, and he rode them to malls, down to Southcenter, up to Northgate. He decided to head to north Seattle

Randy Van Zandt served as Bret’s parole officer. He saw Bret in his office, before he headed to the Aurora Bridge. Photo by Joel Turner And then, in May 2007: his dream was answered. An apartment in the University District house had opened up. Finally, he could leave the seedy hotel and move on to something new, something better. Bret felt ready.

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ody English. That’s what Carol Clarke read. People’s body English. When Bret had come in with Van Zandt for a standard interview in March 2007, Clarke sat and watched him. For close to 20 years, she’d been renting spaces to sex offenders, including those rated Level 3, the most serious designation. Somewhere close to 100 offenders had rented from her over that time, and she’d had some wonderful successes. Maybe Bret could be another.

on a shopping trip. The bus traveled north up Aurora Ave. And there it was: the Aurora Bridge. Did he know that since it had been built, more than 230 people had jumped to their deaths from this place? That only one other bridge in the country saw more suicides? Perhaps. But when he crossed over Lake Union, he knew. This would be the place. He told a friend at the hotel about it. When Bret wasn’t out looking for something to buy, he’d head downtown and talk to people. That included his peeps at the hotel. “Hey, homeskillet,” he was fond of saying. “What’s crack-a-lating?” Yet the situation at the hotel hadn’t changed. People still sought out ways to make fast money or get the quick fix. These attitudes coupled perfectly with Bret’s desire to help out anyone he could.

That’s how he met the woman in the SUV. She pulled up outside the hotel and got his attention. Then she took him for a ride. By the time it was over, she’d drained him of more than $400, getting him to cash hot checks. “He fell for that kind of stuff,” says Clarke. Still, he befriended those he saw in need and, in August 2007, he encountered another woman, this one at Sound Mental Health. He’d gone there for a meeting. When they talked, she told him she’d gotten out of

Bret went down to the justice center and

handed over the keys to his place. He was put in handcuffs. Western State Hospital, a psychiatric institution. Bret had been there, too, right after his child molestation charge. They’d decided he was mentally competent to stand trial. The woman, released to the streets, was homeless. Bret had been kicked out by his stepdad as well. They bussed back to his place. He closed the door and they hung out for a while. Sometime later, inside his room, she started screaming she was being attacked. The police were called. Clarke doesn’t believe Bret did anything to harm the young woman. His clinician, Judy McCullough, says the consensus among his providers is that Bret was innocent of assaulting his guest. “That just doesn’t fit what you’d think of with Bret,” says McCullough. And police and staff at Sound Mental Health never identified the alleged victim. Even though Bret said nothing happened, he had broken a house rule: no uninvited guests. Add that to leaving the gas on and a few noise complaints, and Clarke was left with no choice. Even as much as it hurt her, she had to evict him. “I’ve learned the hard way,” she says. “I can’t save everybody.” By no longer having a legal address at Clarke’s, Bret violated a condition of his housing program. That meant the Department of Corrections had no choice either: Bret had to be arrested. Bret went down to the justice center and handed over the keys to Clarke’s place. They put him in handcuffs, then took him to the King County Jail. He’d been out of prison for only nine months. Now he was locked up again.

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essed up. Everything. Was weird. And messed. Up. When he got out of jail 12 days later, Bret couldn’t figure out what was happening: his mind, he couldn’t concentrate. He called his friend Lawrence McCollum. He told McCollum he hadn’t received any of his meds while in jail and couldn’t find his way home. McCollum stayed on the phone with Bret while he rode the bus from downtown. Though jail may seem like an extreme response to the violation, Van Zandt says that at least there, people could keep an

See THE BRIDGE, Continued on Page 11

Real Change

11

“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

THE BRIDGE, Continued from Page 10 eye on Bret. For him, that was better than being homeless. “He sat in jail,” Van Zandt admits, “until we found his housing.” The hotel. Bret moved back into his old room. As soon as he checked in, he went to Sound Mental Health to see his treatment provider. He had to get his meds straightened out. And as his drug regimen changed, so did Bret. For a while, he became obsessed with horizontal lines. He might be looking at someone and then, a horizontal surface — a window sill, say, or the top edge of an open laptop — would catch his eye. From the person, to the horizontal line, the person, the line. Back and forth his vision would bounce, until his eyesight would land on the horizontal surface and linger…for a second…or two…or thr — and then he’d snap out of it. Until it happened again. Mental health providers tweaked his prescription. By mid-September 2007, he still couldn’t find the right regimen. Van Zandt listened as Bret sat in his office, amped up. Bret’s hallucinations were scaring him, and the insomnia, it had gotten worse. Van Zandt suggested another visit to Sound Mental Health, along with watching his diet and sleep. When that didn’t work, Bret returned to the clinic for an emergency visit. The next day, he missed his appointment with his treatment group. For months, he’d been working on integrating back into the community. He’d reexamined the charge that had led him to prison, and established more empathy for his victim. Group was important. His clinician, Judy McCullough, wanted to know why he hadn’t shown up.

With October’s arrival,

Bret had to re-register as a sex offender, because he moved down the hall. Because, he said, he’d signed an unknown man into the building, who then accused Bret of stealing his cell phone. Bret confronted him and the man raised his hand, threatening to hit him. His stepfather used to do the same. Afraid he would be hurt, Bret dared not leave his room. Boundaries, McCullough reminded him. “You are not setting appropriate external boundaries.” His mental health case manager felt the same. With October’s arrival, Bret had to re-register as a sex offender, because he moved down the hall, into Room 111. The same size as the room he’d just left, it sat closer to the bathroom and showers. And while the room didn’t pose a problem, someone he’d met on his journeys did. A male transvestite had been harassing Bret. He told some friends about it, and they suggested he ignore him and not to let him in his room. The transvestite called Bret’s phone instead. Bret worried that the person would say he’d done something wrong, get him trouble, even wind up having Bret thrown back in jail. He told his treatment group he didn’t want that. He’d rather kill himself. Throughout that night, suicidal thoughts ran wild in his mind. When he saw Van Zan-

dt the next morning, the PO suggested Bret call the Crisis Clinic hotline, or perhaps consider hospitalization. But what about the harasser? Bret wondered. If he got in trouble, he could wind up in jail again. And might be raped. Again. Van Zandt offered to help with a no-contact order. On Fri., Oct. 12, 2007, Bret missed his meds pick-up appointment at Sound Mental Health. When his friend Lawrence McCollum spoke to him on Sun., Oct. 14, Bret was in a manic phase, going 100 mph. McCollum

Bret Hugh Winch, on Capitol Hill in April 2007. had seen or heard him in similar states, so he hoped Bret would be able to recover, the same as before. “I had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t,” McCollum says. And it seemed McCollum was right. People who saw Bret that Monday and Tuesday thought he seemed OK, normal. Except for Van Zandt. Bret came by to see him on Tues., Oct. 16. He still hadn’t picked up his meds. It had been six days. Not taking his medication amounted to a violation, Van Zandt told him. He had to do it. Van Zandt wanted him to come back in two days, to check in. Bret said he would. But Bret couldn’t wait that long. Instead, he showed up the next day.

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ednesday, Oct. 17, 2007. Bret came down to the Seattle Community Justice Center at 8 a.m. and sat in the day room. He had to talk to Van Zandt. In Van Zandt’s office, he took a seat. Something had happened at the hotel last night. Van Zandt focused on Bret, while he explained. He’d had an altercation with one of the hotel managers. They’d known each other in prison and now, on the outside, as manager, he kept bothering Bret. He had come into his room before and hugged Bret, not letting go. Another time, he lay on Bret’s bed and pulled Bret on top him. Bret had to fight to get away. Friends had told Bret to ignore the manager, so he tried. Then last night, the manager wanted to know why he was getting the cold shoulder. Bret fled to his room. The manager stormed down the hall. “I’ll beat your ass,” he shouted. The manager went back to the office. Bret locked himself in his room. The manager returned and beat on Bret’s door. Inside, afraid, Bret called 911. The police arrived.

But the hotel landlord didn’t want cops around. “It’s easier to find people to live here than it is to find people to work here,” the landlord said. That meant Bret was out. He had until noon the next day. It was the next day. By the time Bret finished the story, it was going on 9 a.m. He had three hours left to move. I don’t want to be homeless, Bret told Van Zandt. Van Zandt didn’t either. He suggested they come up with a contingency plan,

Photo courtesy of Lawrence McCollum

maybe have Bret stay in a motel for the short term. If worse came to worse, Bret offered to sleep under the overpass to Interstate 5, right outside the justice center. That way, he’d be there first thing every morning. Van Zandt was surprised. Bret seemed willing to work out the problem. Though he did appear nervous, a little distraught, it looked like Bret needed less hand-holding. But Van Zandt wanted to verify Bret’s story. If he’d really been thrown out, he could face jail time again for breaking his housing condition. Van Zandt didn’t want to arrest him. But he didn’t want to get Bret’s hopes up either and tell Bret he’d be able to move back in to the hotel. What should he do? Van Zandt decided to try find him a place to live. Fast. He couldn’t do it with Bret sitting in the office, though. So he suggested Bret hang out in the day room, even if meant waiting for hours. “We’re going to figure this out,” Van Zandt assured him. Bret seemed relieved. The clock read just past nine. Back in his office, Van Zandt got on the phone and started calling Bret’s case manager and others who had worked with him. He wanted them all on board to advocate returning him to the hotel. One of the people he wanted to speak to was Bret’s clinician, Judy McCullough, and she came to work not too long after 9 a.m. She saw Bret sitting in the day room, acknowledged him, then went to her office, around the corner from Van Zandt’s. Van Zandt told her the story. Would she work with him to put a plan together to advocate for Bret? Of course, McCullough said. In looking at the options, Van Zandt considered putting Bret in a motel. He knew of one on Aurora Ave. It wasn’t a great place, but still. “A lousy place is a place,” he says.

Around 9:15 a.m., he went out to the day room, looking for Bret. He wasn’t there. Van Zandt returned to his office to work the phones. He wasn’t worried. Maybe Bret had gone to get his meds or a bite to eat. He’d be back. Van Zandt was sure of it.

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o one sees Bret leave the justice center. No one pays attention to the clock. But sometime after 9:15 a.m., on Oct. 17, 2007, he begins his journey to the Aurora Bridge. He heads for a bus stop. There are two situated nearby and both have buses going his way. To make it in time, he boards a bus that leaves no later than 9:39 a.m. The bus heads downtown. From the corner of Fourth Ave. S. and Royal Brougham Way, near where the bus stops are located, there’s no direct route to the Aurora Bridge. Somewhere downtown, maybe near the Pike St./Pine St. corridor, he has to make a transfer. But which bus from there? Two buses travel north across the Aurora Bridge, but only one stops near its northern entrance. The 5. Maybe he catches the 5 that arrives at Winslow Pl. N. and N. 38th St. at 10:09 a.m. From here, he can walk west along N. 38th St. and pass under Aurora Ave. He can wait for the Walk signal, then cross to the sidewalk on Fremont Way N., just before the bridge’s northwestern entrance. Even with the light, the walk takes no more than a minute. Then what? The sidewalk becomes a pedestrian walkway leading to the Aurora Bridge. A plaque proclaims the bridge’s true name: the George Washington Memorial Bridge, dedicated in February 1932. A rail is the only physical barrier that keeps a pedestrian from walking right

A yellow phone box on the Aurora Bridge. Inside, buttons dial either the 24-hr Suicide Crisis Line or 911. Photo by Joel Turner off the bridge. Rising from the rail are light poles. Attached to one is a yellow phone box. Two red buttons inside dial the 24-hr Suicide Crisis Line or 911. Below the rail, a sign reads, “SUICIDAL?”, with a phone number. Further south along the walkway, another “SUICIDAL?” sign. To its left, a light pole. Ten paces south of the light pole, outside of the rail, a section of the 7.5-inch-wide ledge. The 42-inch-high rail is too tall for the 5’5” Bret to clear easily. He must have to maneuver one leg, then the other over it,

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Real Change

12 THE BRIDGE, Continued from Page 11 before he secures his footing. Does he fear he’ll slip and fall onto N. 34th St. below? The walk from the bus stop, to the bridge’s northern entrance to this section of the bridge takes just over five minutes. And when does Bret arrive here? No one knows. But at 10:14 a.m., Bret calls a friend who doesn’t answer. He leaves a message. At 10:15 a.m., Bret calls another friend. He tells him he’s on a bridge. Soon, the friend drives to the overpass near the justice center to find him. At 10:16 a.m., Bret stands on the bridge. 10:17 a.m.: The police station receives a call that a man has threatened to kill himself. The station dispatches a cruiser. 10:18 a.m.: The cruiser arrives. An officer approaches Bret along the pedestrian walkway. 10:19 a.m.: The officer gets within 15 ft. Don’t come closer, Bret tells him. 10:20 a.m.: Divers are called in. 10:21 a.m.: Don’t do it, it’s not worth it, a construction worker yells. 10:22 a.m.: Bret holds his cell phone to his ear with one hand. He grasps the rail with the other. The officer stands close by. Bret takes a look around him. He mumbles something. To the voices, perhaps? The demons? He lets go of the rail. He leaps. And falls, headfirst, into the midmorning air. One. Two. Thr— That’s about how long it takes him to fall. Not even three seconds. His body plummets roughly 130 ft. before striking the pavement of N. 34th St. He attains a speed of approximately 60 mph. Witnesses liken the sound to a bag of melons dropped from a great height. A burlap sack filled with potatoes and water and bones. A huge drum, but much louder, much more percussive than can be imagined. Like something you’d never want to hear again.

“The Man who Stood on the Bridge” June 25 - July 1; July 2 - 8; July 9 - 15, 2008

And the sight? No one wants to talk about it. Bret sustains skull, rib, pelvic, and vertebral fractures, with lacerations of the brain, lungs, liver, spleen, and aorta. No one considers resuscitation, because death comes— one, two, thr— Instantly.

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he phone rang in Randy Van Zandt’s office at approximately 10:45 a.m. He picked up to hear Bret’s case manager. A friend of Bret’s had called her to say Bret was on a bridge somewhere. That’s all she knew. Van Zandt sat in his chair and thought: But he was just here. By 10:53 a.m., the friend on the phone told police all that he knew. The police didn’t tell him Bret had jumped. Almost two hours later, Van Zandt’s phone rang again. The case manager. She’d spoken to the medical examiner. Van Zandt hung up. He prepared to meet with Bret’s treatment team to discuss the events of the day. Early that afternoon, a chaplain from the police station met with construction workers who saw Bret fall. He counseled them in a spare office in the Adobe building, on the south side of N. 34th St. On Thurs., Oct. 18, while at work, Bret’s good friend Lawrence McCollum saw a co-worker. He looked upset. What’s wrong? McCollum asked. Didn’t you hear? the associate asked. Hear what? When he told him, McCollum cried so much, his boss sent him home. Some of the construction workers were still in shock. The company brought in a grief counselor. The next week, in the chapel at Twin Rivers, home to a state prison Sex Offender Treatment Program, offenders gathered to remember Bret. On Wed., Oct. 24, Sound Mental Health held a memorial. Close to 50 people attended, including Van Zandt, Bret’s clinician, Judy McCullough, his uncle Raymond Shoquist, and Lawrence McCollum. Bret’s mother and grandmother came from out of state. His mother was so grief stricken, she couldn’t speak. The pastor-and-wife couple, Clinton and Nancy Erckenbrack, who cared for Bret in southwestern Washington after his charge, didn’t attend. They had no idea a memorial had taken place. They mailed Bret a letter at the hotel. It came back returned. They called. His number had been disconnected.

To write this series, staff reporter Rosette Royale obtained close to 600 pages of documents from the Department of Corrections (DOC) through multiple public disclosure requests. Supporting documentation was also obtained through numerous websites. Interviews were conducted with more than 20 individuals, including family, friends, former prisoners, mentalhealth professionals, and DOC personnel. Any quotes attributed to Bret derive from DOC documents where he was directly quoted by others, department forms written in his own hand, or letters he’d mailed. Thoughts attributed to him stem from descriptions others made of him, whether in interviews or as part of DOC documents. Descriptions of Longview and Kelso, WA, the Lewis and Clark Bridge, the home of Nancy and Clinton Erckenbrack come from a one-day visit the reporter made to southwestern Washington. Descriptions of Twin Rivers come from two separate visits to the prison made this past spring and summer. Descriptions of the Capitol Hill hotel he lived in upon his release are based upon numerous firsthand visits. Descriptions of the Aurora Bridge and surrounding areas are based upon multiple firsthand visits the reporter made to the site. Measurements of the bridge either come from various websites or were ascertained through measurements conducted by the reporter himself. Other descriptions of Bret or his environs are based upon the memories of those who knew him. The narrative of the last moments on the bridge stems from interviews, a police report of the incident, and a “Computer Assisted Dispatch,” a transcript of law enforcement communication in relation to the incident. The series got its genesis from a police incident report printed in the Street Watch column of Real Change last autumn. The entire reporting process lasted more than seven months.

A pedestrian walks along N. 34th St. In an area nearby, Bret’s friend Lawrence McCollum spread seeds to remember him by. Photo by Joel Turner

It took Lawrence McCollum months to muster the courage to

visit the Aurora Bridge. It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm. They began to have a bad feeling. Clinton mailed another letter to the hotel, looking for Bret. He was gone, someone replied, no one knew where. In late March 2008, a friend told the couple what had happened. Just what they had feared.

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utumn tightens into winter. Spring unfolds into summer. And the Erckenbracks haven’t stopped thinking about Bret. Yes, they knew he was needy, and yes, he had troubles and was impulsive. But he had the laughter of a 14-year-old. In their eyes, he didn’t commit suicide because he wanted to. He did it because he was scared. And, sure, some people may view his suicide as a sin, but what if he had cancer that had been eating him all up? People would understand that, wouldn’t they? Besides, Nancy knows God to be merciful. “I don’t believe God is cruel,” she says. “He never made hell for us.” Randy Van Zandt’s thoughts turn to Bret often. When he looks back, he wonders if he should have arrested Bret that day he came in, in need of a new place. He doesn’t blame himself. He feels he tried to help Bret the best he could. How could he have known he’d go to the bridge? But every once in a while, he imagines what might have happened if things had gone another way. After all, Bret had been right next to him. Just inches away. “If I had decided to arrest him,” he says, “he may be sitting in this chair with us.” For a while, Lawrence McCollum had slipped into depression. But now he’s pulled out of it. And it’s taken him months to muster the courage to visit the Aurora Bridge. A friend went with him. It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm. Under the bridge, near the water, people jogged and rode bikes. McCollum found a spot nearby and spread some seeds. Bachelor buttons and Johnny jump-ups. Then he walked on the bridge himself

and found it…not so much peaceful, but different than he expected. He thought about the people he could see below enjoying the day, close to where he’d seeded the ground. He realized they didn’t know they didn’t know Bret. They didn’t know what had happened there. But that’s always the case. Anywhere you go, he says, there’s no telling what happened before in that same place. You could be having the worst day you could imagine, while someone nearby could be falling in love. “Life goes on,” he says. “This is the case everywhere.” As McCollum left the Aurora Bridge, thinking, fondly, of Bret, the people below enjoyed their afternoon, the traffic raced north and south, drivers and passengers heading to countless destinations. McCollum holds on to the memory of that day. And life, it goes on. n