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Wife grappled with with mate's decline

The mental state of the man charged in a weapons hoax seemed to deteriorate over several years, she says.

By NICOLE JOHNSON
Published January 24, 2005

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Lisa Vice neatly packed her husband's black suit, shaving kit, sweat shirt and socks in a suitcase Thursday night knowing full well this may be the last time she would see him alive.

"I think he thought, "If I do all these things, they'll shoot me for sure,"' she said Sunday in the living room of her home in Oldsmar.

Instead of going to Atlanta to make a presentation for Cingular Wireless, as he told his wife he would, David P. Vice terrorized the city of Oldsmar on Friday by planting letters with white powder in neighbors' mailboxes, placing a fake hand grenade at a post office and placing a suspicious package at a nearby rental car company, authorities say.

The 41-year-old was captured Saturday night in the back yard of his home at 520 Cypress View Drive. He's charged with knowingly manufacturing a hoax weapon of mass destruction, and was held without bail.

A neighborhood on edge exhaled with relief with Vice's arrest.

Lisa, 37, has been trying to figure out how it had gone this far.

Life wasn't always this chaotic for the Vices and had once been quite normal.

The couple became fast friends after meeting at the Church of Christ Student Center while attending Western Kentucky University. He was studying for a degree in general studies, she was studying nursing.

The two wed in 1988 and had their first son, Nathaniel in 1989. By 1995, the couple would have three more sons.

In 1998, after a failed attempt at starting his own Internet service provider company in Kentucky, David landed a job with GTE Wireless in Florida.

The job meant more money and a new home for the family.

They easily fitted into the close-knit Oldsmar neighborhood, The Preserve at Cypress Lakes. The kids attended local public school.

"All the neighbors out here knew each other and talked and got along," said former homeowner association president Diane Clark. "The Vices were no exception."

But all was not well, Lisa recalls.

She noticed her husband developing an unquenchable thirst for status.

"It was like he was always trying to get to this certain place, but could never get to it," she said.

Although Lisa wasn't working, her husband bought a Corvette and a Hummer. The family took trips to Disney World. They racked up more than $200,000 in debt over the next few years.

To make matters worse, in 1999 David resigned from his job with GTE shortly after its merger with Alltel.

The next year, Lisa said, CitiBank served the couple with a lawsuit for $6,000.

"It wasn't a life, we were both fed up, we were in a mess here," she said.

The couple packed up their four boys and headed west on Labor Day, 2002. They didn't stop for good until they found a free campground site in Moab, Utah.

"No bills, no phones ringing ... all you had to worry about was your next meal and who was going to start the fire," she said.

When the Utah winter hit, the family decided to return to Oldsmar. They arrived on Thanksgiving Day 2002 to a neighborhood of leary glances and rumors.

The glances weren't completely unjustified.

The Vices brought home Allen, a homeless man they'd met in Arizona, and his dog.

"We all eventually accepted Allen," said Clark, who lives two doors down from the Vices. "But in the beginning all we knew was there was this weird guy walking around with a half-wolf dog."

David seemed even more disconnected after the trip. He began calling neighbors and giving them "daily sermons."

"He'd call me and do one of his revivals," said Brenda Leone, a neighbor. "He only did it to the people who would listen."

The family's financial situation was getting worse, too. In early 2003, the family filed for bankruptcy and applied for food stamps. Lisa took a job as a nurse with Palms of Pasadena Hospital and would sometimes work 48 hours a week. Neighbors reported the family to the Department of Children and Families when they noticed the children hadn't returned to school since the Utah trip.

But what people didn't know, Lisa said, was that she was trying to connect with David and had made some progress.

The couple spent a lot of time talking. She learned that David's father, who died in May 2004, had been a manic-depressive and had self medicated with alcohol. They applied for medical assistance and David was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.

But in early September 2004, the progress halted. Lisa took another trip to Utah, this time just she and the kids.

When asked if she was trying to leave her husband for good, she answers: "I knew something was wrong with him, something really wrong, and I didn't want to be here for it."

On Sept. 11, 2004, David rammed his car into a gate at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, got out of his car and held up two suitcases. He was charged with fleeing and eluding a police officer and given probation. Lisa returned home.

After that incident, she said, David's life consisted of sitting on a white, leather couch in their living room, reading the Bible and prophesying.

Israel would be bombed on Dec. 22.

Manhattan would be destroyed on Dec. 23.

With every failed prophesy he got worse, Lisa said.

"He was devastated, he was let down, he felt like if his prophesies didn't come true, he was a false prophet," she said.

So why wouldn't a registered nurse do anything about her husband's visibly deteriorating mental condition?

Lisa couldn't give one answer. Instead she described a mix of devotion, fear and denial that lead to her actions.

The couple shared views on child rearing. They also harbored resentment for the, "injustice and unrighteousness," that played out in the corporate world. And their shared religious beliefs made it hard for her to completely disregard her husband's prophesies, she said.

"Dolphins and whales washing up on shore and then after the terrible tsunami hit, you start to think, well maybe some of this is true," she said. "Nobody knows what it's like to deal with this type of thing unless they've been in it, living it with this person day in and day out."

Sunday morning in the living room of her dimly lit home, Lisa described how she took her husband's suits to the dry cleaners last week when he told her he was going for a trip.

"I always pack his stuff for him," she said. "I made sure to include a sweat shirt and jeans because it wouldn't dawn on him to take something to relax in."

She also remembers that he hadn't slept.

On Friday morning, he called and threatened his wife for the first time in her life, she said. Minutes later she called the police.

"I really think he hoped this was a means to an end," she said.

[Last modified January 24, 2005, 07:55:22]