[ Dr Helmer R Myklebust ]

Language disorder expert Dr Helmer R. Myklebust examined Lang and reported that the young man could not - or would not - perform simple childish tests.  He declared Lang mentally defective.

[ Mute from Infancy ]

After the killing of Ernestine Williams, Lang was held in a hospital for the criminally insane.  He showed signs of being dangerous when in contact with women.


His family called him Donny.  He was born on 15th January 1945 in the black ghetto on the South Side of Chicago.  No one was quite sure how he got his handicap, but at 5 weeks little Donny had a bad bout of chicken pox, and around the same time the bottom fell out of his home made crib and he crashed to the floor.  For a time his mother, Julia just thought the little boy was unusually quiet, but eventually she took him to a doctor, and he was diagnosed as totally deaf.  'Nerve deficiency - hopeless' was what the doctor wrote on the card.


Normal school wouldn't take him.  Donny had five weeks at the Parkman Deaf-Oral School, before they declared him to be mentally retarded or brain-damaged or brain-damaged and unteachable.  That was the end of Donald Lang's schooling.


At 10 he started to hang out at the Chicago Market, and by the time he was 20, he was earning good money, using his great physical strength to load and unload trucks.  He could also drive and service a fork lift.  No one ever explained how this was possible if he was so retarded.


Doctors and social workers remained undecided to the end about his condition.  Some believed him to be suffering from sensori-neural deafness, which had led to his never learning to speak properly.  Others thought he might have aphasia - a brain disorder resulting in an inability to understand or repeat words.


Lang seemed to function perfectly well in an all-male environment, but it was observed in various institutes that he became disturbed and difficult when there were women around.  Apart from his family the only women of whom he had any experience were prostitutes.  Hookers who knew him said he would insist on having sex with them four or five times in a row, when he had only paid for once.  If thwarted he could become violent.


Lang's mother died only weeks before the murder of Ernestine Williams.  After her death some said Donny changed.  He stayed out more at night, drank more.  Perhaps her death was the trigger that caused two murders.