Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Murder suspect’s dad: ‘Something went wrong’
About the time he started his freshman year at Florida State University last year, Austin Harrouff used his phone to jot down notes resembling reminders and to-do lists.
But by this August, his iPhone had become a near-daily outlet for statements and poems that often centered on his purpose in life. He typed phrases such as “keep running even when they say you crazy” and “I don’t want to be worshipped but I know that I will be.”
Harrouff is charged with first-degree murder in the brutal face-biting killings of a Jupiter couple. Hundreds of pages of recently released court documents give a more detailed account of his troubles before the mid-August attack.
Last summer, when the 19-year-old college student was home on break in South Florida, his erratic behavior had gotten
so serious his family considered getting him evaluated for his mental well-being. It didn’t happen.
He had gone from being a youth whom friends knew as quirky to a teen making claims of immortality and being half-animal, according to authorities’ interviews with his friends and family.
On Aug. 15, authorities say Harrouff killed John Stevens, 59, and Michelle Mishcon, 53, at the couple’s Jupiter home. The first Martin County sheriff’s deputies on the scene reported that Harrouff was found biting the husband’s face.
A ‘great upbringing’
Harrouff was born Dec. 21, 1996, in Palm Beach Gardens and while growing up he lived in northern Palm Beach County, records show.
It was a “great upbringing,” his parents Wade and Mina Harrouff would tell an investigator on Aug. 19, according to Martin County sheriff ’s documents.
Wade and Mina Harrouff divorced in 2010. By August of this year, the family said, each parent had a significant other, but Mina Harrouff’s fiance said the split family got along. At that time, the two parents lived in separate homes in Jupiter, documents show, and Harrouff ’s primary residence was with his mother.
Wade Harrouff declined to comment for this article and a man who answered the door at Mina Harrouff ’s home also declined to comment. Others close to Austin Harrouff similarly declined.
The son of a dentist and pharmacist, Austin Harrouff hoped to enroll premed at a four-year university and one day earn a doctorate, according to his test reports in high school. He took a test three times to improve his scores to meet college-prep benchmarks.
Harrouff’s grandfather was a doctor in a number of states, before moving to Tavares, northwest of Orlando, an obituary shows.
While enrolled at Suncoast Community High School in Riviera Beach, Austin Harrouff never got a grade lower than a C through his participation in the International Baccalaureate program, which offers advanced classes that can lead to college credit. He took courses in biology, chemistry, statistics and math analysis.
Harrouff noticed his penchant for science. He wrote in an undated journal entry that he loved “science because it never stops; even though I may not be great at it yet.”
That balanced with another academic passion: art. As early as 2014, Harrouff recognized his own creativity while taking IB art classes at Suncoast. He got all A’s in those courses, records show, and later told his mother he could write music to make money.
“I also see myself as creative,” Harrouff wrote in a January 2014 essay that may have been a school-type assignment. “I love imagining aything [sic].”
While studying exercise science and participating in the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, records show Harrouff had no disciplinary history at FSU. He had a 3.2 GPA at FSU, just shy of a B+ average.
Harrouff had at one point worked at a dentist’s office in Broward County, his family told investigators.
On a September episode of “Dr. Phil,” Wade Harrouff called his son an “extremely nice, gentle person” who “cared a lot about people.”
Then “something went drastically wrong,” the elder Harrouff said.
Self-analysis and self-doubt
Speaking with investigators shortly after the killings, family members said Harrouff had been acting erratically. He wouldn’t sleep. He was obsessing over helping people.
And he even walked in front of a moving car earlier in the day of the killings, said his sister, Haley Harrouff, 18.
Harrouff’s behavior was enough to alarm college friend Davis Yates, who said Harrouff was already somewhat prone to act strange. “For people that don’t know him, he seems kind of really odd to begin with,” Yates told an investigator.
Yates said he believed Harrouff had been smoking marijuana because he couldn’t sleep — a habit Yates suspected Harrouff had recently quit.
Another friend, Samuel Polacek, called Harrouff a “funny, goofy kid” who “liked to make people laugh.”
Haley Harrouff told investigators something similar about her brother’s everyday persona.
“He usually says weird s---,” she told them, though she and Yates cautioned that Harrouff had been acting stranger than normal.
But the teenager long exhibited some of the behavior that concerned his family late last summer, his phone and journal records show.
A recent phase his mother said bothered her was Harrouff’s interest in performing rap songs. Records of notes on his phone show Harrouff for months wrote songs and poems, which his mother called “disgusting.”
A number of his raps, writings and even internet searches dating weeks, months and in one case two years earlier, have common themes of his self-doubt and interest in self-improvement.
In the January 2014 essay, he expressed a desire to be someone different.
“What I want to be is to become more confident, and social,” Harrouff wrote. “I also want to be more well known because right now I feel as though I am unknown.”
In one poem written on his phone between January and June this year, Harrouff said he wanted to figure out what he wanted in life.
“Some people have it all planned out,” he wrote. “But me man I’m just filled with doubt . ... It’s like sometimes I wish I was something more.”
Of the 53 videos posted to Harrouff’s YouTube account throughout 2016, a handful show him focusing on fitness tips and sometimes expressing his distaste for steroids. Others feature raps and Harrouff covering songs, such as “Hound Dog,” and the Beatles’ “Let it Be.”
In the month before the killings, records from Harrouff ’s phone display his internet searches, such as “common traits of great people,” “i want something so bad it hurts” and “how do i know im [sic] not crazy.”
Family worries
On the day of the killings, Harrouff told his sister and a friend he was “immortal” and a “half-human, halfhorse,” according to an interview with Polacek included in records.
The behavior was troubling to his sister, who told investigators “he made me uneasy because he was just being a different person.”
She told her brother he should undergo some professional therapy, she recalled when talking to investigators. Other family members were making similar plans to help Harrouff, records show.
Wade Harrouff said on “Dr. Phil” that he consulted with a psychologist. The fiance of Harrouff’s mother told investigators the family had thought about evaluating him under Florida’s Baker Act, which allows someone whose mental health is in question to be detained by health professionals or authorities for up to 72 hours.
Austin Harrouff’s attorney, Nellie King, has said in a news release her client has “severe mental illness.”
She pointed out that FBI lab tests determined Harrouff was not under the influence of flakka — a highly addictive rock-like substance that can cause erratic behavior — or hallucinogens known as bath salts.
Documents show tests did find minimal amounts of THC, the main psychoactive component in marijuana, in his system, along with drugs that were “medically3w introduced,” or given to him at the hospital.
Wade Harrouff said on “Dr. Phil” the family has a history of mental illness, including schizophrenia.
In a 911 call the night of the killings, Harrouff’s mother said her son was acting like he had schizophrenia. “It seems like he’s a little delusional,” she told a dispatcher.
Haley Harrouff said her brother was receptive to her conversation about therapy the day of the killings.
That evening, Harrouff abruptly left his dad and others at a Duffy’s Sports Grill, according to court documents, and made it to his mother’s house. Mina Harrouff drove him back to the restaurant on Indiantown Road, she’d later tell an investigator.
When he returned, according to Martin County sheriff’s documents, Harrouff got into a dispute with his father.
After Wade Harrouff grabbed him by the shirt and questioned him about his behavior, Harrouff positioned himself to seemingly punch his father, according to Martin County sheriff’s documents. Haley Harrouff said her brother had been “slightly aggressive” and was “threatening” Polacek, his friend, that day.
Moments later, Harrouff was gone from the restaurant.
“I’m so sick and tired of doing what I’m told,” Harrouff had written in a note on his phone 10 days earlier, according to records of his phone. “I’m going to leave my mark before I get old.”