Murderer’s Mother Remembers Son Who “Wanted to Be So Good”

by Terre Haute (AP)

The words jolted Shirley DeKoff as she read a March 7 newspaper article about an upcoming news conference connecting her son, Larry Eyler, to the brutal murders of 21 young men. Less than 24 hours after Eyler had died of AIDS-related complications in the Pontiac Correctional Center at Illinois, she learned Eyler’s attorney, Kathleen T. Zellner, planned to release information contained in 21 different homicide confessions she extracted from her client over a 3-year period. “I couldn’t believe what I read,” DeKoff said, as tears spilled onto her cheeks from red-rimmed eyelids.

For 13 years while police tried to link her son to numerous slayings, she said she believed he was innocent. “I was shocked when Larry confessed to the Steve Agan murder,” she said, referring to the 23-year-old Terre Haute man killed in 1982. “That was more pain than I thought I could bear. I knew Larry had knowledge of 20 other killings, but I didn’t know he was involved in them personally.” The day before Eyler died, DeKoff sat beside his bed in the prison infirmary and held his hand. She said he was so weak he could barely talk above a whisper.

“Just before I left he touched my cheek and said, ‘What happened to the person who wanted to be so good, Mom? What happened to that little boy?’ ” Eyler was the youngest of DeKoff’s four children. His sister and two brothers are pillars in their respective communities. Both of his brothers are educators. One is an instructor at a community college, the other a teacher at a junior high school. His sister is a probation officer.

Ill Prepared Mother

DeKoff said she was ill prepared when she was younger to nurture and care for four children. “I was a spoiled child who married at 18, who had had little discipline and was unprepared for four children in 6 years. I was emotionally insecure to the degree that I sometimes turned to drink and men as a solution.” DeKoff’s first marriage ended when Eyler was 2 years old, leaving the family struggling with finances, although DeKoff worked two jobs to keep ahead of the bills. DeKoff married and divorced three more times before 1974, when she met and married a gentle and kind man, Irv DeKoff. By then her children were adults and lived away from home.

She said her youngest son, who had been abused by male relatives, resented his father and all other stepfathers except Irv. Eyler’s emotional problems increased, prompting his mother to seek the help of their family physician when he was 10 years old. The doctor referred her to a child guidance clinic, where Eyler was treated for about 18 months before his psychiatrist recommended, he be placed in a special school for emotionally disturbed children, she said. “Larry stayed in that school for about 6 months when he begged to come home with his family, so I brought him home,” she said. “Later, he told me he felt that I’d abandoned him.” Eyler quit school during his senior year and entered a monastery in Canada, where he remained 3 days before returning home, she said.

He worked at odd jobs and then completed his general-equivalency degree and signed up for classes at Indiana State University. In 1973, Eyler moved into an apartment with a male friend, his mother said, and she learned he was homosexual. “This man was abusive, and his last lover was abusive. He went from one person hitting him to another.” DeKoff said she did not physically abuse her children, and she said the children never hit each other or even had heated arguments. “When he and his older brother had differences or if he was angry with me, he never raised a hand,” she said. “He struck out with verbal abuse.”

The Sweet Side

DeKoff said Eyler was close to his family and made family gatherings a priority. “He liked to do things to make other people happy,” she said. “That was the sweet side of Larry that his family knew.” The backlash from Eyler’s deeds has been felt by every relative. Dekoff said her other children and grandchildren were still subject to the ire of the public simply because they are related to Eyler. “Most people talk about it behind my back,” she said.

“It’s been terrible for my children and their families. Each of the other children worked their way through college and are good upstanding citizens. You can’t say anything bad about any of the rest of them.” A specialist in child psychology notes that parents have no control over the future of their child who has destructive behavior. “The majority of kids who are abused do not become criminals,” clinical psychologist Stanton Samenow, author of Before It’s Too Late wrote in a book for parents. He maintains that destructive behavior escalates over time, and some children use control and power for their own sake.

He said they “have no concept of injury to others and rely on deception, coercion, intimidation or brute force.” Parents can do nothing to keep this type of child out of trouble, Samenow contends. He is firm in his belief that in special cases by the age of 8 or 10 some children already “think of themselves as the hub of the wheel and everyone else as spokes.” Erna Finger, director of the Vermillion County Victims Abuse Program, said the pain and suffering that Shirley DeKoff and her family have experienced was just as intense as that of the relatives of victims who died by his hand.