A deadly encounter

On January 7^th 1999, the Webdale family said good-bye to Kendra and began their journey through what’s been called “the long tunnel of grief.”

Patty Webdale, Kendra’s mother: Everything that I feel joy about is now diminished because of Kendra’s death.

Ralph Webdale, Kendra's father: We’re certainly still a close family but there’s something missing. We’ll all miss her always.

Mingled with their sorrow was anger. How could Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic man—who had been hospitalized for mental illness so often, who had attacked so many people, who had asked for help so many times—wind up on that subway platform where he pushed Kendra to her death??

Kim Webdale, Kendra’s sister: People say there are cracks in the system.  But there are huge gaping holes in the system. Andrew Goldstein should never ever have been out on the streets in the first place.

In the midst of their grief, the Webdales would get a crash course in the treatment of the mentally ill. They’d hear about hospital closings and the lack of beds, about problems keeping schizophrenics on their medicine. And how even someone with a long, well-documented history of violence like Andrew Goldstein could wander the streets where we live.

James Stone, former commissioner of New York Office of Mental Health: Many people spent a lot of time and a lot of resources in working with Andrew Goldstein.  The tragedy of it is failed. It just didn’t work.

James Stone was the commissioner of New York’s Office of Mental Health at the time of Kendra’s death. Stone told Dateline that in Goldstein’s case, there was too little coordination among the state licensed hospitals and clinics that cared for him—that in effect, the system lost track of him.

Stone: That’s the chief lesson that we have to do a much better job in coordinating services.

At the time, the state had 500 intensive case managers specifically assigned to monitor the kind of problem patients Goldstein had proven himself to be, and keep them off the streets.  But a case manager was never assigned to him.

Edie Magnus, Dateline correspondent: Do you know any reason why Andrew Goldstein, who was in the system for 10 years, never got an intensive case manager? 

Stone: He was never referred for a case management program.

Magnus: And why is that?

Stone: I don’t know.

Magnus: Can you understand how people would look at this and say, “The system isn’t working.”

Stone: The only response to that is to be horrified. it was a terrible tragedy for the Webdale family.

Still, it wasn’t the mental health care system, but Andrew Goldstein who was charged with second degree murder.  If he was convicted, he would be sent to prison for 25 years to life. During the month-long trial in October, 1999, the defense told the jury about the failure of the mental health care system to treat Goldstein.  His lawyer admitted that Goldstein had pushed Kendra in front of the train, but said that he was insane at the time—that he didn’t know right from wrong—when he attacked Kendra. 

Key to the case: How the jury would view Goldstein’s videotaped statement to police—recorded just hours after Kendra’s death?

Andrew Goldstein (in videotaped statement to police): I shoved her, not knowing which direction I was going, coming or going.  And then, she falls onto the track. And then, I went into shock and horror. I saw the body go under. And then I walked away. And I said, “I don’t know.”  I threw my hands out.  “I don’t know.”

Goldstein told investigators he hadn’t meant to do it. Then he felt he had lost his mind down on that subway platform.

Goldstein: You feel like something’s entering you, like you’re being inhabited.  I don’t know.  And then, and then it’s like an overwhelming urge to strike out or to push or punch. And then, I feel like it’s not there, that sensation.  Now I’m sane again.  Then I’m normal. And then, it’s there again and then, it’s not. 

Michael Winerip, NY Times reporter: I see that tape and I see schizophrenia.

Journalist Michael Winerip, who has written extensively about Goldstein and other schizophrenics—says he finds Goldstein’s account believable—precisely because, as he puts it, the craziness is subtle.

Winerip: Andrew Goldstein killed a woman he didn’t even know and he shows no signs of any emotional trauma from that horrific thing he did.

But prosecutors argued that Goldstein acted—not because he was mentally ill, but out of rage and anger towards women.  A psychiatrist for the prosecution testified Goldstein “knew what he was doing was wrong, and he knew the consequences of what he was doing” when he pushed Kendra in front of the subway. After six days of deliberations, the jurors told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked.  A mistrial was declared.  The case would have to be tried again.

And in the meantime would come a painful anniversary.  Days into the new millennium, January 3, 2000 was the one year anniversary of Kendra’s death.  The Webdales were without their beloved daughter and without closure to the case of her killer. 

Patty Webdale: An anniversary itself is an awful reminder. It’s like the calendar, and the calendar is saying to you, “Okay, your loved one has been gone for a whole year.” And you don’t want the year to come, because it moves you further away. It moves you on, while they stay where they are.

As prosecutors redoubled their efforts to convict Goldstein, his new defense team was putting together a no-holds-barred strategy to get him acquitted.  They were plotting a move both dramatic—and potentially dangerous.

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