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News 24 Sunday, May 21, 2(H6ALLAWAY AND A VICTIM'S DAUGHTERThe Orange County Register• • .V -PHOTOS: H. LORREN AU JR.. THE REGISTERQUESTIONS: Joe Almazan, left, comforts his wife, Patricia Almazan, as she faces her dad's killer, Edward Allaway, who carried out Orange County's worst killing spree in 1976.By GREG HARDESTYTHE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTERFROM PATTON STATE HOSPITALatricia Almazan reached across the table and gently nudged the black-and-white photo into the killer’s hands.“This is my father, after you shot him,” she said.Edward Charles Allaway briefly studied the bloody image of Frank G. Teplansky dying on an ambulance stretcher.He said nothing, slowly chewing gum, his mouth shut.She handed him another picture of her father as a Marine staff sergeant, and another of him smiling at his desk at Cal State Fullerton, where he worked for 11 years as a graphic artist in the campus media center.Allaway knew the face well.“Very friendly, very friendly,” the former eustodian recalled of the man who used to wave at him and say hello - the man he shot three times in the back and head.Teplansky, 51, died at a hospital squeezing his only daughter’s hand.Almost 30 years after Allaway carried out Orange County’s single worst killing spree - seven dead and two wounded - Almazan was ready to talk to the killer, face to face.She wanted to try to put to rest questions that have been tormenting her since the 1976 massacre.Why did you kill my father?That was at the top of her list.Ailaway agreed to his first-ever meeting earlier this month with a relative of a victim out of a sense ofduty, he said.“It’s the least I can do for her.”DINNER PLANSOn the morning of July 12, 1976,AJ laway prowled the hallways of the campus library with a rifle he had purchased three days earlier at a Kmart.At his trial, he said he remembered nothing except cowering in a stairwell, afraid and unarmed - as if someone were hunting him.The onetime Baptist Sunday-school teacher with a history of mental illness testified that a group of homosexual men in a bathroom hi? cleaned were plotting to kill him, and that his wife had been recruited to appear in pornographic moviesbeing shown in the library basement.A judge found Ailaway not guiltyby reason of insanity.Almazan is convinced Allaway knew what he was doing.She feels he should lie in prison instead of a mental hospital, where he can work outdoors in a vegetable garden, brt in a 10,000-title library, play tennis, swim in a pool -even have a girlfriend, while her father lies underground at Hoiy Sepulcher Cemetery in Orange, under i ... .ASENTENCE: Edward Allaway has been at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County since 1995 after stays at other mental Institutions.FRUSTRATED: Patricia Almazan met with Ailaway to get answers. After talking with him, she realized that sometimes there aren't any answers.a tree.“He loved trees,” she said.Almazan always was close to him, despite being separated from him for long periods by her parents’ divorce and remarriages.The week Ailaway killed him, Aimazan was planning to have her father over for dinner at her home in Cerritos. He loved her spaghetti.Her children, then 10 and 7, probably would have bogged him to pull quarters from behind their ears and perform other magic./Almazan would have talked to him about how things were going at her secretarial job at a firefightersunion.Maybe Teplansky would have sat down and played the piano. He could play everything from “Chopsticks” to Chopin.The last time Almazan and her father spoke to each other - he called her “ Patsy” - was three days beforehe died.“He took the time to be a good parent,” Almazan said of the former amateur boxer from New York who taught her how to spar.She was the oldest of his four children by her mother.Daddy’s girl.FACE TO FACEAlmazan and her husband, Joe, passed through the 14-foot fence topped with razor wire that surrounds Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County - Allaway’s home since 1995, after stretches at mental institutions in Atascaderoand Napa.They walked past three police guards into a conference room.Allaway sat in a chair. He wore a freshly pressed uniform of long khaki pants and matching short-sleeve shirt. He looked much younger than his 67 years.His close-cropped, mostly gray hair framed a smooth face that bore a wispy gray moustache that drooped to his chin.He briefly stood. The Almazans sat without shaking his hand.Pat Almazan took off her sunglasses.She placed a 3-inch-thick binder of papers, photos and notes on the table.She had seen Ailaway countless times from the courtroom gallery. Now, he was less about three feet away.She looked at him, then down. She cleared her throat.“What would you prefer 1 call you?” said Almazan, a single gold cross hanging from her neck.“Ed would be fine,”“I’m Pat. I’m sure you know.”Joe Almazan, a retired firefighter, sat next to his wife of 42 years, his right arm resting on her back,Did you know that my father, like you, was a Marine?”“No, Altaway said. “I had no background on any ... ”That he fought in World War II and the Korean War? And that you gunned him down?”Yes.”You shot him three times in the buck and the back of the head. And ISEE MEETING • RAGE 25\The crimeOn July 12.1976, Cal State Fullerton custodian Edward Charles Allaway. aformer Marine with a history of mental illness, armed himself with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle and roamed the halls of the campus library. shooting nine people and killing seven in a five-minute rampage. He drove to a nearby hotel where his estranged wife worked, called police and quietly surrendered.The victimsKilledStephen I. Becker. 32, library assistantSeth Fessenden 72. professor emeritus in speech communications Paul F. Herzberq 30. photographer Bruce A. Jacobson 32, equipmenttechnician ^ v ■ cDonald E. Karges, 41. janitor Deborah D. Paulsen. 25, janitor Frank G. Teplansky 51, graphic artsst * 'WoundedMaynard Hoffman, 64, supervisingcustodian \Donald W. Keran, 55, associate librarianThe outcomeAfter a 1977 jury convicted Allaway of murder but deadlocked in the sanity phase of the trial, a judge found Allaway not guilty by reason of insanity. By law, defendants found insane are committed to a mental institution until they are found sane. In 2001, Allaway’s clinical team at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County determined that his illness - paranoid schizophrenia - was in remission, giving Allaway his best shot at freedom. But in a hearing that attracted international media attention, a judge ruled that Allaway still posed a danger to society and shouldn't be released - a ruling upheld by the California Supreme Court in December 2003. .What's nextAllaway says he’s resigned to spending the rest of his life in a mental institution He is eligible to apply for release once a year, but says he will seek release only if hewins the support of the stateorganization that would monitor him. Meanwhile, Cal State Fullerton students are making a documentary about the killings as the 30th anniversary of the massacre approaches.(
Newspaper Details
Santa Ana Orange County Register
Santa Ana, California, US
Sun, May 21, 2006
Page 74
Full Page
Clipped by
Lee D.
USA 07 Jul 2023
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