Manuel Babbitt

Diagnoses

Passions

Vocation

Notable

Traits

American homicide: a former Marine and Vietnam veteran who was executed for murdering a 78-year-old woman in her home. Babbitt came from a troubled family and had only a sixth grade education. Suffering from mental illness since his youth, his defenders said he cracked under the pressure of combat in 1968. On the night of the brutal murder in 1980, he spent most of the day drinking. He and an Asian-American pal, also a Vietnam Veteran, teamed up for substance abuse and ranting. By the time he reached the senior citizen’s complex where Leah Schendel was watching television, probably a war movie, he was drunk and stoned. The night was foggy. These factors combined, said his attorneys, to send his mind back into a combat scenario, where he somehow believed he had to kill Schendel or be killed. Bill Babbitt, Manuel’s brother, turned him in to authorities. With remarkable irony, Manuel received a Purple Heart while on death row for injuries sustained during the war. This rare death row ceremony infuriated the victim’s family who pushed through legislation banning such presentations in the future. Babbitt died by lethal injection just after midnight on 5/04/1999, a day after his 50th birthday, in San Quentin, California.