La Crosse Tribune
Aaron Glantz Center for Investigative
Reporting March 15, 2015
Others happened when prescription abuse accelerated into heroin addiction. This progression, seen around the country, contributes to a fatal overdose rate among VA patients that the agency’s researchers have pegged at twice the national average.On a clear August morning, Amish carpenter William Miller and his family climbed into their black horse-drawn buggy and headed out to the nearest big-box store, a 16-mile journey from their central Wisconsin farm that takes them two hours.
They never made it. Less than a mile from their destination, the buggy was rear-ended by a 1997 Dodge Caravan. The van wasn’t moving fast, but as it passed by, it suddenly swerved, knocking the carriage on its side. Miller and his son, John, were fine. But his wife, Elizabeth, who was cradling 6-week-old Ada Mae, was thrown from the carriage and landed on top of her daughter.
Ada Mae stopped breathing. An autopsy would list the cause of death as “crush injury to the chest.”
A year later, after the driver pleaded guilty to homicide, William Miller wrote to the sentencing judge.
“Words like grief, helplessness, anxiety, fear and lonesomeness come to mind,” he wrote. “I would have scarcely thought it possible such a small infant could have left such a void. And the consequences and results have been far reaching and long lasting.”
At first glance, the 2009 crash that killed Ada Mae would seem to have nothing to do with problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Tomah 60 miles away, which earned the nickname “Candy Land” for its skyrocketing rate of opiate prescriptions. Some veterans called its chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan, the “Candy Man.” He was in charge for nearly a decade — and was one of the hospital’s top prescribers.
But the man behind the wheel of the Dodge van that day was a Marine Corps veteran, and he was stoned on painkillers and tranquilizers from the Tomah VA. Brian Witkus was a known addict who “would fall or injure himself,” court records say, to get “more pills or a higher dose of medication.” His doctor, Witkus says, was Houlihan.
Ada Mae’s death is one of dozens of tragedies that begin to hint at how the flood of narcotics from the VA scarred this region.
It begins with the veterans themselves, who have become addled and addicted and who have overdosed. The collateral damage ranges from distraught sisters to fatherless children and dead girlfriends.
The ripples do not stop there.
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