Readers question doctor's hammer killing in 1986

Many readers have called, written and emailed the Daily Inter Lake regarding a letter published as a paid advertisement in Monday’s paper.

Doctors, teachers, parents and other community members have expressed concerns with Dr. Peter Barran, the author and financier of the advertisement, particularly because he invited the public to write in his name for Flathead County superintendent of schools.

Among reader concerns was a startling incident from Barran’s past: In 1986 he used a hammer to bludgeon his housemate to death.

That led to prison time for voluntary manslaughter and challenges in Barran’s career as he was turned down for a medical license in several states, but he eventually was licensed in Montana and currently works at the Veterans Affairs Clinic in Kalispell.

“I do think I’m a different man, but most people don’t,” he told the Inter Lake on Tuesday. “It doesn’t matter that it happened 30 years ago; I’m a second-class citizen. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel remorse for [the crime]. If I could go back, I would trade my life for his.”

At the time, Barran, a young resident in anesthesiology at the New England Medical Center, was taking a medication known as ephedrine to increase energy and lose weight.

Barran was living with Richard Brummett, a fellow doctor and his boyfriend of several years.

In a 1992 affidavit, Barran claimed Brummett had been criticizing his weight and appearance and announced he was leaving Barran. Barran — who had been using ephedrine for a month — was disconsolate. He testified that to escape his mental anguish, he took several antihistamines, several narcotic painkillers and drained half a bottle of whiskey on Oct. 6, 1986.

High and drunk, Barran, 26, a Stanford University Medical Center graduate, found a claw hammer in the couple’s home and attacked Brummett, inflicting grievous wounds to the head.

“Brummett died after being struck several times in the head with a hammer,” an Associated Press story said at the time.

After the murder, Barran took his dogs to his mother’s home, took out money from several ATMs and fled to Oregon, Brummett’s home state.

“It wasn’t until 48 hours later, when I found myself 60 miles away from Richard’s parents’ house in Portland, Oregon, that I began to take notice of my surroundings,” Barran said in the 1992 affidavit.

Once sober, a panicked Barran turned himself in at the police station in Eugene, Oregon, and he was extradited back to Boston.

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Barran was sentenced to 12 to 20 years for voluntary manslaughter as part of a plea bargain after spending more than two years in a state mental hospital. The doctor spent the next four years incarcerated and receiving counseling and therapy.  

In 1992, he asked for a revised sentence based on the defense of ephedrine-induced psychosis. Barran, representing himself, argued that although the medication had been touted as a safe health supplement, the drug was never safe. He presented evidence that ephedrine’s side effects included violent psychotic episodes.

According to Barran, Massachussetts Superior Court Judge Cortland Mathers read the motion for an amended sentence, declared a recess for three hours, and then told Barran he was a free man. His initial defense had not included evidence about the dangerous side effects ephedrine could cause in some patients. The judge said he felt with this new information, Barran had served his sentence and the killing was an unfortunate incident taking the life of one promising doctor and destroying the life of another.

“I actually had to be driven back to the jail, because I had no other clothes,” Barran said. “Six hours later, I was eating pizza in a friend’s kitchen.”

His license to practice medicine had been revoked in Massachusetts and his applications for medical licenses were turned down in Pennsylvania and New York, but Barran found licensure in Montana.

He was a family physician in Conrad and Cut Bank for 13 years before taking a government position at the Kalispell VA clinic in 2013.

Barran, now a father of three children, said he has been cleared to practice medicine.

In 1998, the Montana Board of Medical Examiners commissioned a three-day psychiatric evaluation for Barran during his application for a Montana medical license.

“We are of the opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical and psychiatric certainty, Dr. Barran does not currently suffer from a major psychiatric illness,” wrote Stafford M. Henry, the medical director at Rush Behavioral Health in Chicago. “There is no evidence he suffers from an active psychiatric disturbance of thought, mood or behavior. Similarly there is no evidence Dr. Barran suffers from a disorder of chemical dependency or abuse.”

The Chicago evaluators also considered the 1986 crime and concluded: “He is not currently considered at risk for dangerous and/or criminal behavior.”

Barran had letters of support from doctors who had worked with him in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and California. Many of them expressed surprise at Barran’s skill and temperament “in light of his past.”

For readers, Barran wants to make clear he is a different man today than he was on one fateful night in Boston 28 years ago.

“I opened myself up to scrutiny by writing that letter,” he said. “But if they want to sling mud rather than address the issues, that’s their right. Either way, I plan on being a thorn in the side of the school district.”