Wealthy man’s murder by mentally ill son exposes our broken system

In 2005, exactly 10 years before shooting his wealthy financier father to death, Thomas Gilbert Jr. told a psychiatrist he planned to buy a gun. The doctor made a note about it and wrote, “He is clearly a very disturbed young man.” 

In early 2012, Tommy, then 27 and blonde, blue-eyed and 6-feet-3-inches tall, informed his latest psychologist, Dr. Susan Evans, that he was again thinking about buying a gun. Now delusional, he had become convinced that his best friend and roommate was hacking into his phone to steal his secret hedge fund algorithm.  Several months later, he told Dr. Evans that he had started searching for guns on the Internet. She was so concerned that she referred it to Dr. Michael Sacks, the professor of psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College, who had been treating Tommy for many years for an array of mental conditions.