The Story Behind 'Foxcatcher': Inside The Local Murder Case
By Natasha Brown
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Inside the real life local murder case that captured headlines.
"Foxcatcher" is out in limited release Friday night.
CBS 3 Eyewitness News goes deep inside the case as reporter Natasha Brown talks exclusively with key players who were in the middle of it all.
In January 1996, John du Pont, an heir to the du Pont company chemical fortune, drove to the guesthouse on his sprawling estate known as Foxcatcher Farm in Newtown Square, and shot and killed 36-year-old David Schultz.
Schultz, an Olympic wrestling gold medalist, lived there with his family and had trained like hundreds of other athletes at the estate run by du Pont.
It's a moment that brought Richard Shoulberg, a swimming coach with the Foxcatcher program at the time, to his knees.
"he said Dick, 'John du Pont shot and killed Dave Schultz,' and I fell to the ground," Shoulberg said.
Stunned to collapse, Richard spent 10 years coaching at the world class athletic facility built by du Pont. A Team Foxcatcher banner still hangs on the wall at Germantown Academy where he has coached swimming for four decades.
"I loved the guy because he helped so many kids," he said. "I love Dave Schultz so on that day I lost two really close friends."
The world would come to know a very different John du Pont in the days following the murder. An increasingly eccentric man who held police at bay during a two-day tense standoff at Foxcatcher Farm.
Joe McGettigan and Dennis McAndrews were co-prosecutors on the case.
"We have an extraordinarily wealthy multi, multi-millionaire, expert marksman, barricaded in a 47-room mansion on a hundreds of acres estate with high-powered weapons, an armored personnel character in the garage and perhaps a .50 caliber machine gun, I thought, this is not going to be good," Joe McGettigan said.
WATCH: WEB EXTRA: Eyewitness News Speaks With Prosecutors In Local Case
Du Pont was finally lured out. He was found to be mentally ill, but competent to stand trial despite what prosecutors considered an elaborate act at faking insanity.
"He, to me, was a total participant in setting up an insanity defense by parading him looking crazier and crazier, more unkempt, with each court hearing," Dennis McAndrews said.
A heartbroken Nancy Schultz followed the proceedings intensely. Her tragedy now transformed into a Hollywood movie with Steve Carell portraying du Pont, Mark Ruffalo as her husband David Schultz and Channing Tatum portraying David's brother Mark, also a wrestler training at du Pont's facilty.
Nancy told CBS3 Eyewitness News anchor Ukee Washington on "Talk Philly" about the big screen transformation of her darkest day.
WATCH: Ukee Washington Speaks With Nancy Schultz
"John du Pont was a very controlling person. He wanted to have the attention of, or actually, you know, the quality that other people gave like Mark and Dave, and he couldn't have that. So it was a strange dynamic and in the film, Dave, you know, tries to get in between, Mark and John are having a lot of difficulty working with each other, so Dave gets in the middle and it creates a lot of animosity and tension between the two of them," she said.
WATCH: Ukee Washington Talks With Director Of 'Foxcatcher'
Du Pont died in prison in 2010, but those who know this case intimately hope the life he took, David Schultz's life, will be the lasting memory behind this saga.
"What a genuinely great person David Schultz was to all of those who knew him as I never did. But from them I get so many stories about his, you know, just genuine qualities as a good human being," McGettigan said.
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