A mad scheme to kill a scientist

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2010760752_scientist11.html

A brilliant mathematician with a grave mental illness, Walter Sartory was the perfect victim, and his sad and lonely death was a shocking example of exploitation of the elderly, and of the mentally ill — a sad but growing trend.

Originally published January 10, 2010 at 1:45 PM | Page modified January 11, 2010 at 12:02 AM

By Bob Drogin

Los Angeles Times

HEBRON, Ky. — Like the disturbed genius in the book and movie "A Beautiful Mind," Walter Sartory was a brilliant mathematician with a grave mental illness. It made him the perfect victim.

Sartory worked for 30 years at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was built in secret for the atomic-bomb project and became the nation's largest science and energy lab.

Sartory's work on nuclear weapons remains classified, but he published pioneering papers on reactor design, medical centrifuges and other subjects. He won a top award at the lab and held three patents.

"You only played chess with Walt two or three times because you were always humiliated," said John Eveleigh, a British biochemist who worked at Sartory's side. "And I played chess for Oxford, so I wasn't an amateur." snip

When Sartory retired in 1992, he shut himself in a tiny apartment and used algorithms to invest on Wall Street. The savant built a $14 million portfolio before the stock market crashed last year, records show. snip

Deputies noticed March 4 that the garage door was unlocked and entered the house.

They discovered the scientist had converted his living room into a monitoring station for extraterrestrial life: Six powerful computers were running a program that analyzed radio signals from outer space.

[HuckleB]

1. What a horrific story.