Transcribed For Your Listening Pleasure - Chapter One of Columbo's Hostage

Columbo’s Hostage - Chapter One

 

This particular road just outside of Clarkston, Michigan looks like any other county road in the area, freshly paved, lines freshly painted, wide paved shoulders and a steep, deep ditch on both sides.  The affluent taxpayers of Northern Oakland County pay dearly to keep the local paving companies in business, but it’s a small luxury to keep their Lincoln’s, Caddies and Porsche’s from bouncing around too much. 

The road in question leads nowhere, exactly, or more precisely, it loops around the Skilman Institute, gently inviting people in and then gently shoving them back out again.  The locals don’t use this road of course, unless they have friends or family at the Skilman.

This particular road just happens to deliver you to one of the foremost private psychiatric hospitals in North America.  Forget about the Betty Ford, forget the Mayo, at the Skilman, if you have a family embarrassment, money talks, and money also keeps it quiet.  The Skilman will cure “Uncle Joe” of his pedophilia or bleed your bank account dry trying.  A monument to private health care and the best family “Laundromat” in the world according to the rich and famous.

There was, at least years ago, an unwritten agreement between the Skilman, the area newspapers and the police department regarding it’s clients:  No news is good news, and no news is good reporting.  It is a generally accepted practice around the country that police departments and newspapers don’t publicize the extra-curricular happenings and mishaps of mental patients, unless of course their actions end up hurting others.  The files at police headquarters are thick with reports detailing the unbroadcast and unreported tragedies involving mental patients who decided to walk from an institution and jump off the nearest train bridge and kiss the on-coming Amtrak goodbye.  Hundreds of files, each with a story, each with a family coping with the aftermath, and in some cases, finally having the burden lifted from their shoulders.  After being personally involved with several of these cases, it came as no shock when the families of the wayward mental patients reacted to the news with a feeling of relief.  Was it relief from the financial strain, or the feeling that the big family problem was finally gotten rid of?

The Skilman Institute is a series of several buildings spread across forty acres of Michigan’s finest greenery.  Divided into administrative, research, secure and open access, the buildings and landscaping are reminiscent of the 60’s TV show, The Prisoner.  And perhaps that is an appropriate comparison, as you will soon read.  The excerpts from various doctor’s and aide’s notes, that make up portions of the narrative of this “too true” tale, introduce you to the VIP of Skilman Institute guests, Mr. Nat Clarke.  The transcripts of Mr. Clarke’s doctor interviews and the log of his personal attendant have not been edited for grammar or altered in any way. 

So let us jump head first into Nat Clarke’s world…