Ten Years Later (14 page)

His close friend Margaret Bailey, a fellow producer for
Eye to Eye,
was living in New York City when Patrick learned of his HIV and when he began taking
drugs. On the opposite coast in L.A., Patrick could hide the dark side of his life
from Margaret and talk to her as if everything was okay.

“We had other friends who were concerned, but it was very hard to get a handle on
it,” says Margaret. “Friends had noticed Patrick had lost weight and that he did not
stay in touch regularly. I had little bitty kids, I had a life full of distraction,
and I was worried and far away, and I felt very powerless.”

Despite doctors telling Patrick they were managing the virus, he
was convinced he was dying and that he was damaged goods. After he and his partner
broke up in 2000, Patrick began to see less of his friends and use more of the meth.
He eventually had to share with his bosses at
Dateline
that he’d tested positive for HIV.

“I was missing work a lot. I said I wasn’t feeling well. Blamed it on my HIV. I used
that as an excuse,” he admits, “and when you have that, y’know, no one’s gonna challenge
you.”

In 2003, Patrick’s superiors at NBC were concerned enough about his performance that
they coordinated an intervention. His mom and a family friend were flown to L.A.,
and in the home of dear friends, they confronted Patrick about his drug use. The plan
worked; he agreed to get treatment. Patrick says NBC could not have been more caring
and accommodating. His family was just as supportive. Everyone was willing to pave
the way for Patrick’s road to recovery.

Nearly two thousand miles away, in northwest Wisconsin, Patrick’s sister Sue was battling
her own demons: alcohol and a physically abusive relationship with her longtime boyfriend,
Peter Whyte. Patrick’s parents, who had divorced when he was in college but were still
close friends, had tried for years to convince Sue to leave Peter. So had Patrick
and his sisters. Still, she remained with him, her first and only boyfriend. They
lived together in a cabin at the hook of the Apple River, about twelve miles from
her mother’s cabin on Paulson Lake.

“I thought he was a jerk. I knew right away,” says Patrick with disdain. “How he spoke
to her, how he treated her. Big, lumbering, muscular guy.”

Sue very rarely reported to authorities the injuries she sustained over the years
at the hands of Peter. When she sought treatment for her broken ribs, and other injuries
too horrific to share here, Sue hopscotched to various area hospitals to avoid developing
a consistent charting of abuse. The family was aware of Sue’s bruises and
black eyes, and continually begged her to leave Peter. The abuse would abate for several
years and then, literally, kick back in.

Peter’s presence strained Sue’s relationship with Patrick and the rest of the family.
In the years before and during Patrick’s addiction, he’d argue with Sue about the
family’s precious time spent together.

“There would be fights about the fact that I didn’t want Peter at Thanksgiving or
Christmas. I told him, ‘I don’t want you around. We love our sister and we just can’t
have you around,’ ” he remembers. “Then she would say, ‘No, no, please. I just want
everybody to get along.’ Y’know, I’d come home for four days and I was like, ‘Okay.’ ”

Patrick’s personal life was just as erratic. His work-sanctioned stints in rehab became
a roller coaster of success and failure. He’d spend weeks in an isolated rehab environment,
then opt instead for an outpatient program. He was in and out of twelve-step programs.
For six months he’d beat the meth, but then succumb again to its numbing allure.

“There is something to be said for the theory that you can’t force someone to get
clean until they’re ready,” he explains.

In early 2005, Patrick was “clean” and back at
Dateline
to produce stories surrounding the trial of pop superstar Michael Jackson, who had
been accused of child molestation. Patrick was convinced he could do the work. But,
again, he had misjudged the power of the drug. Patrick says his “sick brain” convinced
him that NBC and his friends were “better off without this piece of shit.” He couldn’t
imagine why they would be angry if he didn’t stay at work or keep in touch. Patrick
further withdrew from his life.

Margaret and other close friends had no idea Patrick was living with such a heavy
burden. He had disconnected from the very people who would have reached out to help.
But the addicted Patrick could not believe that. Why would people want him in their
life now? He felt the only thing acting in his best interest was meth. He didn’t need
anyone else.

“I used to always come back to this metaphor in my head, that I was a balloon on a
tether,” he says as his fingers strum the air, “and I was plucking off the ropes,
one by one, and then I would just float away.”

And float he did. Patrick took yet another extended leave of absence from
Dateline
. In December 2005, the company offered a buyout to various employees, and Patrick
took it. His leave had now become permanent. The wily addiction pounced. Patrick stopped
smoking meth and began to inject it.

“I learned it in rehab; go figure. I didn’t know you could do that! Fantastic!” he
says sarcastically. “I can get really high now!”

The high is faster, and eventually, deadlier.

“It’ll kill you,” Patrick confirms. “It’s one hundred percent terminal.”

Hopeless and blinded by his addiction, Patrick was acutely aware of the bizarre path
his life had taken.

“I kept a clean house, I still had my nice car, but I was a wreck. I was connecting
with drug dealers in locations that would be drug dens that you think of in a movie.
I had covered these stories. I knew what I was doing. I acted like a producer,” he
says, throwing his hands up in amazement, “and I knew I was killing myself.”

Patrick says at the time, he was actually okay with the reality of certain death.
He had tried everything to get clean. Trying to have hope seemed hopeless.

“I could not imagine that my life could ever get back to the highs of where it was.
I had blown it.” He says the dialogue in his head was,
What does it matter anymore? This is the only relief I can find
.

Patrick’s addiction was draining, spiritually and financially. He was spending substantial
amounts of money on drugs and material things. Looking back, he says the splurging
was perhaps an attempt to reassure everyone that he was doing well.

In May 2006, Patrick decided to spend $25,000 renovating the kitchen in his mother’s
house on Paulson Lake in northwest
Wisconsin, just a dozen miles from the cabin where Sue lived with Peter. Patrick thoroughly
enjoyed spending time with his mother and Sue, and he valued the chance to stay busy
with a creative project. Summer days at the lake were productive and meaningful, but
when Patrick traveled back to L.A. every few weeks, he continued to get high. Despondent,
he also stopped taking his HIV medications.

“I just didn’t even care,” Patrick says. “That was the saddest part.”

One month later, in June, some positive news came. Sue had finally found the courage
to leave Peter. They’d been together for nearly two troubled, alcohol-fueled, abusive
decades.

“She had just finished a nursing program and was working at a nursing home,” Patrick
explains. “She had started to develop enough outside relationships where she felt
secure enough. And he seemed okay with it.”

Sue moved in with their mom, and for the first time since they were kids, Patrick
and his sister spent quality time under the same roof. They negotiated who got what
room and shared a closet. Renovations on the house, and ideally Sue’s life, were in
full swing.

“In August, I was home for the last sort of wrap-up stuff on the kitchen, and I couldn’t
believe how civil everyone was,” Patrick recalls.

Sue and Peter were in the final stages of separating their finances and belongings.
The pair talked frequently but agreed he should not see her. Things seemed so good
that threats of filing a restraining order against Peter were dropped. Patrick reached
out to him.

“I left a message for him saying, ‘Thank you. I’m impressed with the way you’ve handled
things, and I’m glad to hear you’re at peace with it.’ ”

In mid-August, Sue agreed to go on a group camping trip with Peter and friends. The
pair had a peaceful, platonic trip.

A few mornings later, on the front porch of the lake house, Patrick, Sue, and their
mom were enjoying coffee. Patrick decided to pull out an article he’d brought, never
thinking they’d have time to discuss
it. He’d had it for months and popped it in his briefcase before leaving L.A. The
story was titled “Life Is Empty and Meaningless.” He thought the deeper meaning of
the story—that you
make
life full and meaningful—would encourage Sue to continue her healthy direction. The
topic sparked a uniquely open conversation; the three told each other what mattered
to them and how much they valued one another.

“We got to say, ‘I love you, your life is meaningful, I’m so happy,’ ” Patrick says.

That Thursday, August 18, Patrick returned to L.A. Sue called him the next day, ending
the phone call with, “I love you, Pat.” He now considers the chance to say, “I love
you, too, Sue,” a gift. He would never talk to his sister again.

On Saturday, August 20, Sue went back to the river cabin to pick up a few of her remaining
belongings. Friends were boating on a dammed section of the river, enjoying the afternoon;
she joined in. So did Peter. The relaxing gathering turned into a day of drinking.
That evening, Sue and Peter ended up in their cabin. A neighbor heard them arguing
in the early-morning hours.

“At two o’clock in the morning, they got into an argument,” Patrick says with disdain,
“and he slit her throat. He stabbed her nineteen times, one time for every year of
their relationship.”

The horrific scene inside the trashed cabin indicated a long and violent struggle.
Sue, nine inches shorter than Peter and half his weight, had fought back. While the
autopsy indicated Sue had a black eye, broken nose, and eight fatal stab wounds, Peter
told the 911 operator that Sue had attacked him. He was sitting in a chair when authorities
arrived at 7:20 Sunday morning, claiming injuries to his wrist and abdomen proved
he’d acted in self-defense.

That Sunday morning, Patrick’s unknowing mother was enjoying the lake view from her
porch with friends.

Patrick recalls, “The sheriff’s deputies were walking up the driveway and she knew.”
He snaps his fingers. “She picked up the phone and called me and said, ‘Sue’s been
murdered.’ ”

Patrick spent the next twelve hours calling his sisters, father, friends, and relatives.
He immediately enlisted journalist friends in the Minneapolis market to cover the
story of his sister’s murder.

“Because I knew—rural homicide, domestic,” he explains from the perspective of a veteran
news producer. “If it doesn’t get coverage, the police don’t thoroughly investigate.”

Patrick then called the county sheriff to give him the family’s permission to talk
to the local news media. His goal was to enlist the help of the state crime lab instead
of the local coroner, who often has limited resources to process lab work. As the
family
would learn over the months, the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory was also understaffed,
causing a four-month delay in the trial, and horrifically, a thirteen-month stay in
the county morgue for Sue’s body. The Weilands wanted desperately to bury Sue but
also wanted her body to be available if additional evidence needed to be collected.

“My parents couldn’t bury their daughter. It was like watching them get beaten with
baseball bats,” Patrick says. “It was torture. Absolute torture.”

Patrick’s mom, Mary, expressed her anguish to the Minneapolis newspaper where Patrick’s
father had worked, the
Star Tribune
. An excerpt from the article reads, “ ‘I’m falling apart about this,’ said Weiland’s
mother, Mary. ‘But we don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the prosecution.’ ”

The scheduled May trial was delayed until September. Patrick continued to travel back
and forth between L.A. and Wisconsin. He says he never used drugs during his stays
in Wisconsin; his focus was to exhaust every opportunity to advocate for his sister.

“That’s the one thing I felt I could do. That was my purpose,” he says. “I think that’s
what kept me alive during that time.”

But Patrick was closer to death than ever, by his own hand. He was not taking his
HIV drugs and during trips back to L.A. was often bingeing on meth, the drug that
so expertly soothed his pain.

“I was in a free fall. I would have periods of clarity and periods where I was very
on, but then I would binge and disappear from everyone for six weeks in L.A.,” he
says. “I’d go to AA meetings, I’d stay clean for a week or three weeks, and then I’d
get home and I’d lock myself up in the house and use. I don’t know how I survived
it. It was bad.”