Suspect and girlfriend fought mental trauma prior to killings

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Posted 8:09PM on Thursday, May 30, 2002

LINEVILLE, ALABAMA - Donald Ray Wheat and a woman accused of joining him in a deadly crime spree both had suffered severe physical pain and were fighting mental trauma, family members said. Wheat, while taking anti-depressants, lived on disability checks, tended his garden and performed odd jobs for neighbors and friends in Clay County, according to his ex-wife, Bovine Wheat, 46, of Ashland. The 48-year-old Wheat is charged with capital murder in the slaying of four men at a video rental store in Anniston. The killings May 15 capped a 12-week robbery spree that also left a Georgia man dead and two Alabama women injured. Tina Hooper Duke, 43, identified by authorities as Wheat's girlfriend, is also jailed in two of the holdups. Bovine Wheat said her former husband spent much of his time bedridden from pain after back surgeries failed to correct injuries he suffered as a farmhand in 1988 and the early 1990s. The inactivity and confinement fueled depression, she said. In 1999, a year after the two separated, he tried to take his life by overdosing on Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, Bovine Wheat said. He now takes Zoloft and Valium for his depression and nerves and sees a therapist, she said. After Christmas, Wheat told his ex-wife he had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and didn't have long to live. ``This is just crazy to me,'' Bovine Wheat told The Birmingham News in a story Thursday. ``I don't understand what is going on.'' Wheat's mother, 75-year-old Nellie Mae Wheat of Ashland, said her son was convicted in 1971 of manslaughter for stabbing his 20-year-old cousin, Larry Holcombe, but he had tried to rebuild his life after being paroled. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on that conviction, then received two more years for committing a burglary in Talladega. After a two-day escape in 1973, he was sentenced to another year and a day. He was paroled June 23, 1975. ``It's hard. I don't believe he is capable of doing this,'' Nellie Mae Wheat said. ``I will never be able to believe it.'' Duke also lived on disability checks, said her mother, Mary Mullally, 61, of Chambers County. After battling cervical cancer about five years ago, Duke started having increasingly severe panic attacks. She stopped holding yard sales to sell homemade crafts because she feared people would steal her money, Mullally said. Sometimes she would stay awake for days. Other times, she couldn't wake up. Duke saw a therapist once a week and took medication for her mental problems, Mullally said. Mullally learned recently from relatives that her daughter claimed to have a brain tumor, like Wheat. ``She was sweet. Ain't no way in the world she would hurt nobody,'' Mullally said. ``I know deep in my heart, she could not have done it.'' A handgun left at the scene of the Blockbuster slayings was traced to Duke. She told investigators she had given the gun to Wheat, authorities have said.