The Story of Blaec Lammers
BALDWIN: At first blush, this next story will found familiar. Police avert mass murder by a young man who purchased two assault-style weapons. The young man is convicted and sent to prison. His name is Blaec Lammers. He didn't hurt anyone. His parents called police after finding a receipt for a gun. And our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, dug deeper into this one and he found there is actually much more to Blaec Lammers' story, and it speaks volumes about the fear of another Aurora, Colorado, or Sandy Hook tragedy, the legal system, and a family trying desperately to deal with mental illness.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like other new inmates, he's locked up 23 hours a day. Blaec is 22 years old and I met him at the Jefferson City Correctional Center, the maximum security prison in Missouri that he now calls home. (on camera): What did you do to get here?</s>LAMMERS: I bought two A.R.s. I didn't tell my mom. She found a receipt in my pocket and then she called the sheriff's department and they came and found me.</s>GUPTA (on camera): The interrogation, you were asked lots of questions?</s>LAMMERS: Yes.</s>GUPTA: At some point, you said you had intended to cause people harm?</s>LAMMERS: Yes. And the detective, he came out of nowhere and said I was going to threaten a movie theater. I just started agreeing with him because I knew, either way, he would charge me with something.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Police eventually did charge Lammers with making a terrorist attack, first-degree assault, armed criminal action. (on camera): Would you have hart anybody?</s>LAMMERS: No.</s>LAMMERS: I would hurt myself before I hurt someone else.</s>GUPTA: Whole it's impossible to know what was going on inside Blaec Lammer's mind when he bought those guns, we do know, in this incident, he didn't hurt anyone. No doubt, he's had a troubled past. In 2011, he pled guilty to an assault at his co-worker in a mail facility. In 2009, he was arrested in Walmart carrying a butcher knife. He told a psychologist he had thought about killing a woman there.</s>TRICIA LAMMERS, MOTHER OF BLAEC LAMMERS: He said, I just want to get on with my life.</s>GUPTA: His parents, Tricia and Bill Lammers, say that was in the past and they agreed to talk about it, including the day they called the police on their own son.</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: I gathered up his clothes from the bathroom floor and came upstairs and was going through his pockets and I found a receipt from Walmart that he had bought a weapon for $865. I immediately went out in the garage. I called Bill. I said, what do we do?</s>GUPTA (on camera): Was that the concern that he was going to hurt somebody?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: My concern is he would take the guns and kill himself.</s>GUPTA: You decide to call the authorities?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: The next day, Thursday morning, I went to the sheriff's department with the receipt.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): According to police documents, Blaec's mother was concerned that her son would shoot people in a movie theater. She says, not true, that they had twisted her words. She claims all she said was that the gun looked like the one used by James Holmes in the Aurora, Colorado, shooting. She told me she wasn't worried about a mass homicide but rather a lonely suicide. (on camera): What did they say to you?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: They said, OK, thank you for coming. He didn't seem like he was too concerned. Said, OK, thank you.</s>GUPTA: Why did they put him in jail?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: They said they were doing a well-being check so they picked him up at sonic and said we need to take you to the police station for questioning.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): And in an instant, the lives of this family changed forever. Within minutes of meeting Blaec, you can feel and hear and see the cause of his parents' worry. He was a broken kid. Lots of smiles but lots of pain.</s>LAMMERS: Trying too hard to fit in with other people. At one point, my sophomore year in high school, for a whole semester, from August to September, I ate my lunch in the bathroom because I didn't know anybody. I didn't know anybody that ate lunch at that time.</s>GUPTA: It's sad.</s>LAMMERS: Looking back, I should have at least tried to talk to people but I was shy in high school. I was afraid to talk to someone because of what I would say and how it would come out.</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: He played football and basketball and karate.</s>GUPTA: Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, he struggled in school but he eventually succeeded. By ninth grade, he made the Deans List and was a 4.0 student. And seemingly overnight, it all went downhill and fast.</s>BILL LAMMERS, FATHER OF BLAEC LAMMERS: Within six months, it went from wonderful to, what is going on? We've got a serious problem.</s>GUPTA: Soon, he was in and out of hospitals. Within just a couple of years, he was diagnosed with a dozen different psychiatric illnesses, mood disorder, major depression, schizoid personality. So when he bought the guns, his parents felt they had to step in. They saw their son as a patient, but authorities saw that same troubled boy and concluded he should be a prisoner.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have homicidal thoughts?</s>LAMMERS: I did when I was 16.</s>GUPTA: His mother thinks Blaec was a gullible kid and easily led because of his mental illness. But prosecutors say he had a real plan to kill. He just didn't get a chance to carry it out. They believed they prevented a tragedy. Psychologist John Phillips treated Blaec at this hospital when he was 17. (on camera): Were you concerned that he was a threat?</s>JOHN PHILLIPS, PSYCHOLOGIST: In the four months he was at the hospital, he was the model resident.</s>GUPTA: Did you ever feel that he was potentially a harm to others? That was the concern it seemed.</s>PHILLIPS: I never once felt that he would ever try to hurt anyone on purpose. He wasn't a malicious child. I think that he never acted out any of those threats. He never once was violent in any way.</s>GUPTA: How do you distinguish the kid who was just talking, being a teenager, versus some one who can go out and do some serious harm?</s>PHILLIPS: You have to find out what is going on in their head and you have to be able to assess whether their behavior is neurologically based and based on an environmental reaction, or whether they are actually sociopathic where they actually don't care about anybody. They just care about what they want.</s>GUPTA: Is that the distinction you see with Blaec?</s>PHILLIPS: Oh, absolutely.</s>GUPTA: He's being treated as a criminal mind --</s>PHILLIPS: Exactly.</s>GUPTA: -- but he has an autistic mind.</s>PHILLIPS: Exactly. I think because of his history of threatening, they kind of put it all of the way to the other extreme and really never gave him a chance to be rehabilitated. And where he is now, there's no chance of him being rehabilitated.</s>GUPTA: Do you think prison is the right place for him?</s>PHILLIPS: Absolutely not.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Blaec also saw a psychiatrist who had concerns.</s>UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHOLOGIST: We kept a very close watch on him.</s>GUPTA: He told us his relationships were falling apart and he often talked about violence. Even so, he agrees that Blaec does not belong in jail. Neither of these men that treated him were asked to testify at his trial. Would it have made a difference? We'll never know. His parents have been shouting from the rooftops that their son is mentally ill and belongs in a hospital, not a prison.</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: I went to the authorities for help and for them to just keep an eye on my son. I did not go there for the intention of him to be arrested.</s>GUPTA (on camera): Do you think that Blaec would have hurt anybody with these guns?</s>BILL LAMMERS: No.</s>GUPTA: Do you think that could have ever happened?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: No.</s>GUPTA: Did Blaec blame you because you went to the authorities?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: No.</s>GUPTA: What are conversations like with him?</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: I have a letter he wrote me. "I have nothing but time. We both can get through this. Just don't lose hope. This is a very important time in our lives. We can do this together so promise me you'll stop blaming yourself for all of this."</s>GUPTA: Lucid, compassionate, thoughtful.</s>TRICIA LAMMERS: Yeah.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Just one hour with a person isn't enough to really understand what's running through their mind. But as jarring as it is to say out loud, it seems entirely possible that Blaec's only crime here is having a mental illness. (on camera): Your life now here in this prison, is there anything about it that makes sense to you?</s>LAMMERS: This place is supposed to help you. I don't think it is. I think prison is supposed to keep you away from society because society is scared of you.</s>GUPTA: Should they be scared of you, Blaec?</s>LAMMERS: For what I said? Yes. For actual me, me. No. I didn't do anything to harm anybody out there. I was just an average 20-year-old kid living in a small town.</s>BALDWIN: Sanjay Gupta. In case you were wondering, Blaec's attorney did not attempt an insanity defense, too hard to pull off. They told Sanjay there was much more to the story. Set your DVR right now for "Sanjay Gupta, M.D.," this weekend, Saturday, at 4:30 p.m. eastern, and Sunday at 7:30 in the morning, right here on CNN for more on his story.