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Man hangs self day after sentencing

The 73-year-old Hudson man faced 11 years in prison for setting fire to his neighbors' mobile home while they slept in it.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published October 30, 2006

NEW PORT RICHEY - William H. Brown was 72 years old when he nearly killed two people, 73 when he learned the price of his violence.

Eleven years in prison was a price he might have been too old to finish paying. But Brown won't even start.

Less than 24 hours after he was sentenced Friday for attempted murder and arson, he used a bedsheet to hang himself in a shower stall at the New Port Richey Jail.

"He realized he'd never get out of there alive," said his wife, 75-year-old Loretta Marchant, of Tallahassee.

A deputy found Brown's body shortly after 7 a.m. Saturday during a routine check of general population inmates, the Pasco Sheriff Office said Sunday.

Brown gave authorities no indication he was suicidal and was under no special watch, authorities said. The death remains under investigation.

Brown called his wife on Friday after his sentencing hearing. Marchant moved to her native Tallahassee after Brown was arrested in August 2005 and could not attend the hearing Friday because of failing health.

He hardly said a word during their conversation, she recalled.

"I was yelling and crying and said, 'You just threw away your life,' " she said. "He didn't say anything. But his voice was down."

Brown, she said, had been convinced that he would not serve any time at all.

"He was thinking he was going to get out. He just felt like he didn't deserve to be there," she said. "I said there's no way they're going to let him out."

A retired carpenter and painter, Brown was arrested after he admitted to setting fire to his neighbors' mobile home and Winnebago in Hudson in June 2005.

The couple, Don Morrell and Donna Schick, were asleep in their mobile home at the time but managed to escape.

By the couple's and Marchant's account, the act of vengeance stemmed from a grudge: Brown thought Morrell had stolen his beloved dog, a Shih Tzu named Scooter that disappeared a few months before the fires.

"He said I stole his dog," Morrell, 74, said Sunday, adding that he did not take Scooter. "They never did find his dog. Cute little dog."

Morrell and Schick attended last Friday's hearing. Brown apologized to them. But they felt 11 years was not long enough.

"I'm sorry for him, but he tried to kill us," said Schick, 51.

"So he hung himself, huh?" Morrell said Sunday. "I put nothing past that guy."

Life with Brown was not easy, his wife of eight years acknowledged. He drank too much. He rarely had money of his own, so he often used hers.

"Everybody thought I should hate him," said Marchant, a retired state employee. "But I couldn't do that. He loved me to no end. When I had my heart operation, he waited on me hand and foot.

"I just wish I could've talked to him. Loving me as much as he did, he should've stayed alive, for me."

Jodie Tillman can be reached at 727 869-6247 or jtillman@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 30, 2006, 00:45:00]