Cycle of psychosis: Mental illness gripped woman accused in East Lawrence homicide

Angelica Marie Kulp

Christine Kaplan was found dead in her home in the 1100 block of New York Street on July 26, 2014. Angelica M. Kulp was initially charged with first-degree murder in connection with Kaplan's death.

Christine M. Kaplan

Angelica Kulp filed through the greeting line after a Sunday service at First United Methodist Church in early July.

Associate Pastor Kathy Williams, new to the downtown church, said Kulp was friendly, shared her name and returned to hug her more than once, the way children sometimes do.

A few weeks later, Kulp appeared in the church office with her long hair shorn off and not making sense throughout a lengthy conversation with Williams.

A few days after that, Williams encountered a disheveled Kulp on the sidewalk outside the church, walking slowly with her head down and “darkness” in her eyes.

“When I tried to engage her, she didn’t even acknowledge me,” Williams said. “She walked past me like I wasn’t even there.”

The next time Williams saw Kulp was in the newspaper.

Kulp is being charged with first-degree murder in the death of Christine Kaplan, whose body was found July 26 at her house in the 1100 block of New York Street. Police arrested Kulp several days later in Topeka, where she allegedly burglarized a house and was found hiding in the backyard with the $18.10 in change she stole stuffed into her pockets.

Kulp had been in Lawrence about a decade and was known to many. By all accounts, she was severely mentally ill. She was plugged into social services including Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, acquaintances said, but still struggled to get and stay stable.

In the months, then weeks, then days before Kaplan’s killing, Kulp’s mental health decayed enough that people who knew her said she was making them uncomfortable. None said they believed she was capable of murder, although delusional thinking made her unpredictable.

“She has a heart, but with all the mental stuff going on in her head, it was hard,” housemate Lamont Washington said. “She’s not a bad person. Something must have triggered this last episode.”

Kulp’s attorney, Jennifer Roth, said Kulp should be presumed innocent.

“We are anxious to get to work on representing her in Lawrence,” Roth said. “We are gathering records about her long history of mental illness, hospitalizations and so on.”

‘A sweetheart’

At her best, Kulp was not the woman with buzz-cut hair from the police mug shot released the last week of July.

She was loving, kind, warm and affectionate — “a sweetheart,” said her landlord Brian Blevins, also a longtime case manager and director of operations at the Lawrence Community Shelter. Kulp often bought food, soda or cigarettes for her housemates and enjoyed shopping for new clothes, Blevins said.

At one time she was slender and took a lot of pride in the way she dressed, Blevins said. She loved music, and he recalls her spending days at local festivals.

Even then, though, Kulp would have stood out, he said.

“She always had a simpler way of being,” Blevins said. “It was more just an idea for living that was not really quite on track with … most people in our culture.”

Blevins met Kulp when she arrived in Lawrence about 10 years ago, while he worked at the former Community Drop-In Center. He’s not sure why she landed here but thinks she has relatives somewhere in California, and maybe the Carolinas.

Kulp was not homeless before her arrest, Blevins said. He said she had the financial means from disability payments to rent an apartment and take care of herself.

But she failed, over and over.

Cycle of delusions

Kulp had formally diagnosed schizophrenia, Blevins said. Her breaks — or periods of delusional thinking — were ongoing.

Blevins said he’s seen Kulp walking in 4 inches of snow with no shoes. She once stole some statues from a church because she believed the congregation had taken them from the Rastafarians, and she intended to return them to their rightful owners. She had been in and out of Osawatomie State Hospital for psychiatric care multiple times, he said.

Over the past three years, Kulp lived off and on at an unofficial group home on Indiana Street, where Blevins sublets rooms to people with mental illness.

Blevins arranged for Kulp to receive monthly shots of a prescription for her schizophrenia and get a weekly pill-minder from the pharmacy for other medications. He said Bert Nash case managers visit regularly, and housemates try to hold each other accountable for taking medications and sticking with treatment. The Social Security Administration recently assigned Kulp a payee to help manage her disability checks, which curbed her spending money frivolously instead of on things she needed, he said.

Yet Kulp was very vulnerable, Blevins said. She was not an alcohol or drug addict and didn’t use on her own, but she was open to suggestion.

Mind-altering substances veered Kulp off track, he said, and trying to get her back was hard.

“It’s like pouring two chemicals together without a degree in science,” Blevins said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Greg Moore banned Kulp from the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen after she threw a glass bowl at his face about five years ago, he said.

When Moore, LINK’s director, allowed her back two years later it did not last. She was “going berserk,” he said, yelling and calling him a Nazi and a Jew-killer. He doesn’t know why.

Kulp later returned and was very sweet, told him she had taken her medicine and “practically begged” to be allowed back, he said. Moore let her in for the last 15 minutes of each day’s lunch shift but said she continued to be disruptive at times. She screamed and yelled, he said, but usually straightened up if he called the police.

This summer Kulp had been going to LINK two or three times a week, but that tapered off in the weeks before the homicide, Moore said.

“The last few times I saw Angelica she was quiet,” he said. “She would come in and eat by herself and leave.”

Familiar face

Kulp frequented more than one place of worship.

She attended services for years at the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation, where Rabbi Moti Rieber said he found her to be a “sweet and troubled woman.”

She had been to Chabad Jewish Center, too, but her behavior there was unwelcome.

Rabbi Zalman Teichtel said it was clear Kulp needed help and urged her to seek out mental health professionals. He said she left garbage and damage at the center more than once before he filed a police report, which led to her being charged with trespassing in September 2013. That case, Kulp’s only previous criminal charge in the county’s online records, has not been resolved.

Blevins said Kulp was “very religious” and had a strong belief in God. She was not Jewish by birth but at some point started associating with the faith.

“Somebody up there was probably kind to her,” he said. “If they showed her some acceptance, that would’ve been all it took.”

The day Kulp conversed with Williams in the office at First United Methodist Church, where she also attended church services, was July 22.

Arley Arkenberg, who works in the church office, initially gave Kulp some food because she said she was hungry. Arkenberg said it became clear as they spoke that Kulp was not in touch with reality.

Kulp did not seem to be a threat to her own safety or others, so Arkenberg didn’t call the police. She said she called Bert Nash and was told that if she thought Kulp needed to be checked out she could drive her to the hospital, which Arkenberg didn’t feel comfortable doing.

Williams said she talked with Kulp before she eventually left on her own, talking to herself. Kulp wasn’t making sense or responding to questions, with one exception: when Williams told her God loved her and that she was beautiful.

“At that point she looked up at me, and she smiled,” Williams said. “It was like a few seconds that I caught her. And then she reverted back.”

On the move

That same week — the one that ended with Kaplan’s killing — sheriff’s deputies were looking for Kulp, Blevins and Washington said. They were trying to serve her with a court order to return to Osawatomie.

Deputies came to the house on Indiana, but Kulp wasn’t there, Washington said.

Deputies also stopped by the shelter, Blevins said. She wasn’t there, either.

She’d only been out of the hospital a few weeks, Washington said. Her stay was two weeks, he said, while in the past, including a period of time this winter, Kulp had stayed for months.

After returning home this last time, Kulp “started acting crazy,” Washington said. “I had a feeling she was gonna attack one of us.”

Washington said he thinks Kulp knew about the court order. He said he hadn’t seen her since the week before the deputies came by.

If such a treatment order were issued for Kulp, it would not be released to the public, the Douglas County District Court clerk’s office said.

Neither police nor the district’s attorney’s office is releasing new information about Kaplan’s homicide, representatives said. Kulp is expected to be transferred to Douglas County for her first court appearance in the murder case later, after Shawnee County completes court proceedings in the Topeka burglary and theft case.

The victim, Kenneth Johnson, was a former roommate of Kulp’s and saw her the evening Kaplan’s body was reported to police.

Johnson met Kulp seven or eight years ago in South Park, where he was volunteering serving meals to the homeless with the group Food Not Bombs, he said at a Shawnee County District Court hearing on Friday. He said Kulp was homeless before she came to stay at his house in Topeka about two years ago, an arrangement that lasted nine months.

Johnson said he hadn’t seen Kulp in a long time until July 26, when she showed up at his door about 5:30 p.m. and asked to stay at his house for the night.

He said no and took her to the Topeka Rescue Mission. She came back shortly after midnight and told him the mission wouldn’t let her stay there. Johnson said he again turned her away — though he doesn’t know where she went next — and did not see her again until July 29, when she broke into his house.

It’s unclear whether Kulp knew Kaplan, but neighbors said Kaplan was known to invite in people who were down on their luck.

Hilda Enoch, who befriended Kulp at the Jewish Community Congregation, said Kulp had stayed with her in the past for a few days at a time. Enoch said she last saw Kulp after Friday night services on July 25.

“She tried very hard to manage, this time it must have been too much,” Enoch said after learning of Kulp’s murder charge. “She really has a lot of potential. I was her friend — I still am.”

— Reporter Caitlin Doornbos contributed to this story.