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DEAK MURDER SUSPECT HAD BEEN FOUND PARANOID
By SELWYN RAAB
Published: November 21, 1985
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The woman accused of murdering the head of the Deak-Perera foreign-exchange company and a receptionist in Manhattan was diagnosed by psychiatrists three months ago as paranoid and schizophrenic, according to court records.
The psychiatric report last August also found that the woman, Lois E. Lang, was incompetent to stand trial on criminal charges in Washington State and unlikely to be competent to stand trial in the future.
More details about her background came to light yesterday. Court and school records disclosed that she grew up in the lumber-mill town of Longview, Wash., graduated from Washington State University and got a master of science degree in physical education from the University of Illinois.
Miss Lang, who is 44 years old, has been charged with the fatal shootings Monday of Nicholas L. Deak, the chairman of Deak & Company, and a receptionist, Frances Lauder. Deak-Perera is a subsidiary of Deak & Company.
Mr. Deak, 80, who helped found the company, and Mrs. Lauder, 58, were slain in the main offices of Deak-Perera at 29 Broadway. The police said Miss Lang had no connection to the company or the victims but was under the delusion that she was a part-owner of Deak-Perara and was owed money by the company.
From November 1982 to last August, Miss Lang was arrested at least five times in Seattle on charges of trespassing, petty theft and resisting arrest.
Released After 14 Days
Court records in King County, which includes Seattle, showed she was examined at a mental hospital, Western Washington State Hospital in Steilacoom, where she was found to be paranoid and schizophrenic. The report did not say whether she was considered to be dangerous to herself or others.
After 14 days in the hospital, she was released and a charge of possesion of stolen credit cards was dropped.
The psychiatric report said that she was born in Seattle and that her parents were divorced when she was 8 years old. It said she later lived with her father, Harold Lang, who has since died, and a stepmother in Longview, a town in southwest Washington.
Miss Lang graduated from high school in Longview in 1959 and attended Lower Columbia Junior College and then Washington State University in Pullman. She obtained a bachelor's degree in physical education from Washington State University in 1963 and a master's from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1968.
The psychiatric report said she had been married for five years, had no children and was divorced in 1969. The report added that Miss Lang had said she had taught physical education at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the 1960’s.
University officials said no faculty records before 1974 were available and they could not confirm her statement.
At the University of Illinois, a retired professor of physical education, Thomas Cureton, who was Miss Lang's thesis adviser, said she visited the campus three weeks ago. Mr. Cureton described Miss Lang as under ‘’great stress.’’ He said she had a leg injury, was shabbily dressed and ‘’looked as if she had been hiking on the road.’’
He said she told him that she needed money and requested a fellowship scholarship. ‘’She seemed lost,’’ he said. ‘’She didn't know where she was going or what she was going to do.’’
According to the city's Correction Department, Miss Lang is being held under a suicide watch at the Women's House of Detention on Rikers Island.
Much appreciation for the comparison.