PORT ANGELES — The former emergency room doctor who bludgeoned his wife to death will remain at a state mental hospital for at least a few more weeks following requests from his wife’s family that he undergo a third-party psychiatric evaluation.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge George Wood was expected to sign an order Wednesday that would allow Bruce Rowan to move into his own apartment from the Western State Hospital campus, where he has lived since a jury in 1998 found him not guilty of his wife’s murder by reason of insanity.
The conditional release was set into motion under a 2002 court order, and Rowan’s next stage of independence comes at the unanimous recommendation of the hospital’s Risk Review Board.
But during a Wednesday morning court hearing, Wood was presented with a letter from Deborah Fields Rowan’s parents and siblings asking for an independent psychiatric evaluation of Bruce Rowan to determine whether he may be released into the community without “substantial danger” to others or “substantial likelihood” of committing criminal acts.
“It is a mystery to us how, given that Mr. Rowan initially committed such a heinous act without warning, the hospital can appear so cavalier about Mr. Rowan’s likelihood of re-offending,” the letter says.
Wood said he will likely make a decision on whether to grant the evaluation during the week of March 7, after he returns from a scheduled vacation and has reviewed written arguments from both Rowan’s attorney and state prosecutors.
Remains in hospital
Until Wood does sign the order for Rowan’s next stage of release, Rowan will remain in his current living conditions on the hospital campus in Steilacoom, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lauren Erickson said.
Rowan, 41, a former physician at Olympic Memorial Hospital, was committed to Western State in November 1998 after a Superior Court jury found him innocent of murder by reason of insanity.
It was never contested that he bludgeoned Deborah, 33, at the couple’s Port Angeles home with a baseball bat and the blunt end of an ax in March 1998, on the day her $500,000 life insurance policy went into effect.
During his trial, Rowan described putting his wife’s body into a car and rolling it down Mount Pleasant Road.
Prosecutors argued he tried to conceal his wife’s death as a car crash to get her money, while defense attorneys said Rowan was clinically depressed and experienced a major psychotic episode the night his wife was killed.
Rowan was sent to a locked hospital ward for three years until his treatment staff in early 2002, saying his mental state had improved, asked the court for a “conditional release” that would allow Rowan’s eventual move into the community.