Psychiatrists review flaws in Strohmeyer's complaints

Convicted child-killer Jeremy Strohmeyer's argument that his genetic background fueled a desire to commit murder isn't very convincing, area psychiatrists said Wednesday following his sentencing.

Strohmeyer, in a prepared statement, said he inherited the genetic traits for mental illness and addiction (from his mother) and wasn't aware of them because he was adopted.

"For some of us who were adopted, not knowing whom or where we came from can wreck our lives," Strohmeyer said. "It can make us walking time bombs, full of rage we don't consciously experience, full of the false belief in a dark and evil nature that we may unwittingly set out to prove the existence of ..."

Strohmeyer said these inherited "risk factors" contributed to his raping and killing 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson on May 25, 1997, in a Primm hotel-casino women's restroom.

But Dr. David Rosin, a psychiatrist, addictionist and medical director of the state Division of Mental Health/Mental Retardation, says no scientific research exists that genetic risk factors play a part in people's actions.

Rosin said there is proof that certain genetic traits, such as mental illness and alcoholism, are passed on to siblings. However, he said, scientists haven't been able to measure the percentage, or whether it contributes to deviant behavior.

Strohmeyer said he was recovering from the influence of methamphetamine when he and a friend, David Cash, entered the Primm Valley hotel-casino. He said he proceeded to get drunk and blacked out when he killed Iverson.

"For some of us who have birth families, like mine, with long histories of alcoholism, not knowing leaves us unprotected," he said. "What happened to me that morning was a culmination of all the unsuspected risk factors in my life that I did not know how to recognize or address."

Dr. Norton Roitman, a Las Vegas child and adolescent/adult psychiatrist, thinks Strohmeyer should have had more control over his actions because the teenager implied in his statement that this wasn't the first time he had blacked out.

"People have free will," Roitman said. "A responsible person goes ahead and gets some help."

Nevada law, according to adoption attorney Ishi Kunin, currently requires that any seriously diagnosed medical history of the birth parents must be reported to the adoptive parents. But that wasn't the way it was 18 years ago, Kunin added.

The adoption of Strohmeyer, 19, may have occurred before the law was changed in most states, Kunin said.

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