When the Voices Took Over

She wanted him to kill her. The voices — her voice — had said so. It was her voice that helped him pick out the eight-and-a-quarter-inch butcher’s knife, and had him sharpen it. And he would do what the voices told him to do because he always listened to them, even though they had ruined his life.

It was some life.

James Beck Gordon had been, quite simply, one of the greatest drummers of his time. In the Sixties and Seventies he had played with John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, Judy Collins, Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne and Joan Baez. But the gigs had long since come to an end, and on June 3rd, 1983, there was nothing on his mind except killing his mother.

The voices told him what to do next. One said to hit her with a hammer first, so she would not suffer when he stabbed her with the knife. He would obey. He packed the hammer and the knife in a small leather attaché case and that afternoon drove his white Datsun 200SX the five miles from his Van Nuys condominium to his mother’s small North Hollywood apartment. When he got there, she was not in, so he went home and waited. At about 11:30 that evening he returned. A light was on inside, and when he knocked on the door, he could hear Osa Marie Gordon shuffling across the floor in her slippers.

When his mother opened the door, the six-foot-three Gordon stared down at the heavyset seventy-two-year-old gray-haired woman for only an instant. “Jim,” she said, in that eternally irretrievable moment before he hit her. As she screamed, he struck her with the hammer three more times, then as she fell to the floor he plunged the knife into her chest three times, and left it there – dead center.

At his trial in Los Angeles last spring, James Beck Gordon was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to sixteen years to life. The defense had argued insanity – but a tough new California law makes it almost impossible to prove that anyone is legally insane. Still, no one — neither the prosecution nor the presiding judge — disagreed with the diagnosis of the five defense psychiatrists that Gordon was an acute paranoid schizophrenic. No one, that is, except Gordon.

“They call everybody that,” he said last August in a heavily secured prison meeting room at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. While talking, Gordon, 39, had trouble getting the hang of rolling a cigarette, and he smiled at his frustration. It was a warm, ingratiating smile that was as much a part of his being as the fact that he had brutally murdered his mother.

“I really don’t feel that crazy,” he added. “I get along with people. I think I’m pretty normal.”

Gordon spoke softly and calmly. He was taking a powerful antipsychotic drug daily, and it seemed to help him feel better about himself, but he also appeared to believe what he said. It was, of course, all part of the delusion. So much had happened that it spilled out in great torrents from fellow musicians, friends, doctors and Gordon himself. The murder of his mother was only the final act of madness. Throughout his life there had been a series of disturbing eruptions that gave clear signs of the psychosis destroying his mind. And yet many of them were minimized or overlooked by those around him. The business of making music had much to do with it. In that maddeningly creative, nomadic world where geniuses, superstars, impresarios, fakers, freaks and free spirits vie for the spotlight, Gordon’s was just another act. That no one cried out before the disaster was just one of the many tragedies in a life that was, for a long time, “pretty normal.”

With his Curly Blond Hair and beefy build, James Beck Gordon was a California golden hunk in an Ozzie and Harriet family. Home was a small house in Sherman Oaks, a quiet bedroom community in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. It was a neighborhood where boys like James and his older brother, John, mowed the lawn, shined their father’s shoes and minded their manners. When either brother spoke, it was always “Please,” “Thank you” and, on the phone, “Gordon residence.”

When the decorum was shattered, it was in gentle Fifties sitcom fashion. At age eight, Gordon made a set of drums out of trash cans and held his musical debut in the room he shared with his brother. But, instead of throwing the cans out, his parents paid for music lessons. Both parents were solid breadwinners. His father was an accountant, while his mother was a nurse in the maternity ward of a local hospital. By twelve, Gordon had his own set of drums and, after additions to the house, a room of his own to play them in.

There was only one stain on this picture-perfect scene from suburbia, and it was hidden from view. When Gordon was a boy, his father was an alcoholic. It was his mother’s strength that held the family together until the children reached adolescence and her husband joined Alcoholics Anonymous, stopped drinking and became a full-time father again, happily managing his sons’ Little League team and playing the role of neighborhood chauffeur.

“They were good parents,” Gordon says simply.

Yet, even within the relative tranquility of his family circle, there were warnings of the nightmares to come. Although he played frequently with his brother and was treated as the baby of the family by his parents, he says he felt left out. Eating made him feel better, but it only added to his insecurity; he was heavy, and sensitive about his weight. There was only one comfort to which he could turn: the voices. He seemed to need them then. They were his friends, a child’s companions — someone to talk to — safe, loyal, kind.