Former NFL player Phillip Adams had a severe degenerative brain injury when he killed six people in April, including a family doctor and his grandkids, before turning the gun on himself, Boston University researchers found.
Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at Boston University, released findings on Tuesday that showed Adams had Stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the frontal lobes of his brain.
“Mr. Adams’ CTE pathology was different than the other young NFL players with CTE,” McKee announced on Tuesday. “It was different in that it was unusually severe in both frontal lobes.”
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Adams went on a shocking, unprovoked shooting rampage outside Rock Hill in South Carolina, gunning down family doctor Robert Lesslie, 70, his wife, Barbara, 69, and their two grandkids, Adah, 9, and Noah, 5. Two repairmen, Robert Shook and James Lewis, were also fatally shot while they fixed an air conditioner.
Scott Casterline, Adams’ agent, who described his former client as quiet by nature, told The Daily Beast that Adams had been like his “little brother,” and he remained rattled by the shooting.
“When it happened, nobody saw it coming—we’re trained to grow up in football and not report injuries, and be tough, and Phil was that way,” Casterline said. “He was just an old school football player. He certainly paid the price for it. I’m sorry what happened, happened. You can’t take that back. But I always thought there was more to this, that prompted that outburst.”
Casterline said that he didn’t know much about CTE, but knew that Adams had suffered concussions. Looking back, Casterline recalled that Adams had also struggled getting to doctor’s visits during his decline.
“If I knew he was scrambling, I would’ve been out there in a heartbeat,” he said. “I feel like it was my fault because I wasn’t around him.”
In a Tuesday statement, the Lesslies’ children—Lori Alexander, Amy Kulbok, Robbie Lesslie, and Jeff Lesslie and his wife Katie—said that they found some comfort in McKee’s findings.
“These eight months have been unimaginably difficult. Even in the midst of crushing heartbreak, we are finding some comfort in the CTE results and the explanation they provide for the irrational behaviors pertaining to this tragedy,” they wrote. “We are grateful for all of those who are working to continue to shine a light on anything that can help prevent this kind of nightmare from happening to other families.”
York County Coroner Dr. Sabrina Gast had tested for the degenerative brain disease, which has been linked to violent outbursts in some ex-athletes, with the permission of Adams’ family.
According to Gast, the NFL pro’s family had complained of “excruciating pain from his injuries,” memory problems and difficulty sleeping.
Gast said that a toxicology analysis revealed positive results for amphetamines, for which Adams had a prescription. Adams also tested positive for an over-the-counter drug known as kratom. The drug can work as a stimulant in small amounts, while acting as an opiate in larger quantities, Gast said, adding that there is no FDA-approved use for the drug.
In an interview with USA Today after the shooting, Adams’ sister Lauren said that his family had noticed “extremely concerning” signs of mental illness including a quick temper, withdrawing from friends and family, and generally “unusual behavior.”
“He wasn’t a monster. He was struggling with his mental health,” she said at the time.
She said that in the last 18 months of his life, as his mental health worsened, Adams refused to tell his family where he lived before eventually moving back in with his parents in Rock Hill, a place dubbed Football City USA due to the unusual number of residents who go on to gridiron stardom.
A graduate of South Carolina State, Adams was drafted to the San Francisco 49ers in 2010 before playing for New England, Seattle, Oakland and the New York Jets. He suffered two concussions over three games while playing for the Raiders in 2012. He ended his NFL career with the Atlanta Falcons in 2015.
Adams, 32, and his parents lived less than a mile down the road from the Lesslies, and Adams had been a patient of Dr. Lesslie’s at some point but his reason for shooting the Lesslie family remains unclear.
McKee said that Adams’ lengthy football career put him at “high risk” for developing CTE and might have contributed to his behavioral abnormalities. She said that Adams’ case resembled that of New England Patriots player, Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder in 2015 and later committed suicide.
“Theoretically, the combination of poor impulse control, paranoia, poor decision-making, emotional volatility, rage, and violent tendencies caused by frontal lobe damage, could converge to lower an individual’s threshold for homicidal acts,” McKee said. “Yet such behaviors are usually multifactorial.”
