Rash's Surname Index
Notes for John Eleuthère DU PONT
John E. du Pont, the eccentric multimillionaire who murdered an Olympic wrestler in 1996, died in a Pennsylvania prison early Thursday morning.
Du Pont, 72, died of natural causes after being transferred about a year ago to the state's prison hospital in Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania, a prison spokeswoman said.
He was serving a sentence of 13 to 30 years for the shooting death of gold-medal winner David Schultz at Foxcatcher Farm, du Pont's 800-acre estate in Delaware County.
Du Pont's arrest came after a two-day standoff with police.
A jury convicted du Pont of third-degree murder and found him mentally ill.
As recently as March, du Pont still had been appealing his conviction, saying headache medicine he obtained during a trip to Bulgaria may have been at the root of the mental breakdown that led him to shoot Schultz on Jan. 26, 1996.
Du Pont had fulfilled the minimum portion of his sentence almost two years ago, said Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan Bensinger. But his requests for parole had been denied, and no release date had been scheduled, she said.
Since his 1997 conviction, du Pont had spent time at several Pennsylvania prisons, most recently at the minimum-security SCI Mercer in the northwest corner of the state, Bensinger said.
Du Pont was transferred to SCI Laurel Highlands in November 2009 because of an unspecified illness, she said. He was found unresponsive Thursday morning and pronounced dead at 6:55 a.m., she said.
Du Pont was a great-great-grandson of the DuPont Co.'s founder, Eleuthere I. du Pont, and first cousin once removed of Winterthur Museum founder Henry Francis du Pont.
He used his wealth to pursue a wide variety of interests and community-service projects.
He almost qualified for the 1968 Olympics in pentathlon, a combination of pistol shooting, fencing, swimming, cross-country running and equestrian jumping. In 1976 and 1980, he managed the U.S. Olympic pentathlon teams, and in 1992, he was chosen to manage the U.S. Olympic wrestling team.
He used his wealth to pursue a wide variety of interests and community-service projects.
He almost qualified for the 1968 Olympics in pentathlon, a combination of pistol shooting, fencing, swimming, cross-country running and equestrian jumping. In 1976 and 1980, he managed the U.S. Olympic pentathlon teams, and in 1992, he was chosen to manage the U.S. Olympic wrestling team.
Du Pont appeared on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson and was a mystery guest on the 1960s game show "To Tell the Truth." He served as a volunteer officer for the Newtown Township Police Department.
Du Pont used his vast collections of birds, eggs and seashells to found the Delaware Museum of Natural History, which opened to the public in 1972.
In 1980, du Pont bought one of the world's rarest postage stamps -- a one-cent stamp called the Black on Magenta, printed in British Guiana in 1856 -- for $935,000 at a Philadelphia auction. Several Internet sites of stamp collectors say the stamp is locked in a Philadelphia bank vault.
In the 1980s and 1990s, du Pont used Foxcatcher Farm as a training facility for Olympic wrestlers, swimmers and pentathletes.
Schultz, who won an Olympic gold medal in 1980, was one of the wrestlers living on the estate.
Du Pont had exhibited increasingly bizarre behavior, witnesses said at the time. He heard voices in the walls, thought Nazis were hiding in the trees and called himself the Dalai Lama, they said.
Schultz's widow, Nancy, testified she saw du Pont shoot her 36-year-old husband in the driveway of their home on the estate.
As police arrived, du Pont barricaded himself in his home, where he kept a large collection of weapons. Police disabled a heater, and when du Pont entered a greenhouse to inspect it, police captured him.
du PONT
JOHN ELEUTHERE, age 72 of Somerset, PA, formerly of Newtown Square, PA, died on Thursday, December 9th, 2010 at Somerset Hospital in Somerset, PA. Mr. du Pont was a 1957 graduate of The Haverford School; he attended the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Miami, with a BS in Marine Biology in 1965. He continued his education, earning a PhD. in Natural Science, in 1971 from Villanova University.
Mr. du Pont was the Founder of the Delaware Museum of Natural History, as well as the founder of Foxcatcher Swimming and Foxcatcher Wrestling. We was a well known Omithologist, Philatelist, and a Philanthropist.
His memberships include the U.S. Modern Pentathlon Association, the American Omithologists Union, as well as the British Omithologists Union.
John is survived by his sister Jean Ellen DuPont Shehan, of Coral Gables, FL, and his step-brother, William du Pont, II, of Orlando, FL.
Services will be held privately at the du Pont Family Cemetery
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