On October 27, 1985, sometime around 2:30 A.M. in my home village in Vermont, Ronald Amadon, a food service worker at the local college, walked from one of the village’s two bars to his parents’ home about a quarter of a mile away. He had worked during the big Oktoberfest on campus and followed that with some celebrating at the bar. As he approached his parents’ home, he was attacked with a knife by John Kugler, a young man from a New York town just over the border who had recently escaped from a mental facility in New York and was now renting a mobile home in my village.
The Rutland Herald reported that a neighbor heard someone call out, “Help me! Help me!,” but the neighbor was too frightened to go outside. “[Amadon] was screaming his head off,” the neighbor said, “He was very hysterical.” Another neighbor said the victim “sounded like a woman,” while a third heard Amadon cry, “Oh my god!”
Amadon went to a nearby friend’s house, bleeding from his stab wounds, and asked his friend to call the ambulance. The friend asked who had stabbed him, and Amadon replied, “I don’t know who he is, but I’ll never forget his face.”
After calling for help, the friend reached out to Amadon’s parents, who lived just down the road. Amadon’s mother joined him in the ambulance on the way to Rutland Regional Medical Center. Tragically, he would not survive the journey.
Ronald Amadon died at 4:21 A.M. of one stab wound to the chest and one to the abdomen, as well as having cuts on his hand and lip.
Police initially stopped Kugler for a motor vehicle violation before arresting him for the murder. According to the Herald, Kugler said to a reporter, “Forgive me.”
In a later affidavit for the court, police alleged that Kugler told them “he killed Amadon when Amadon came walking past him acting like a homosexual.”
Amadon’s murder was not the only act of homophobic violence in the Rutland region in the mid-eighties. Two days later, a Herald story ran with the headline, “Rights Activists Decry Violence Directed At Gays.” The activists noted the homophobic slaying of a Brandon man in February 1984, whose “body was found on the ice at the base of a 120-foot-deep West Rutland marble quarry.”
On January 25, 1986, the Herald reported that a District Court judge ruled that, following a psychiatric assessment, “Kugler was incompetent to stand trial.” The psychiatrist found Kugler to be “suffering from delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, and possibly the scars of severe drug and alcohol abuse.” The psychiatrist reported that, as a teenager, Kugler used to sniff gasoline “until he nearly keeled over.” He later moved on to harder drugs, such as heroin and PCP.
Kugler was committed to the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, where psychiatrists expected him to spend the rest of his life.
Before his attack on Amadon, Kugler had been arrested in New York for assaulting another man with a large rock and a tire chain. Authorities placed him in the Capital District Psychiatric Center in Albany, but he later walked out without being stopped. Despite knowing his whereabouts before his attack on Amadon, Rutland County law enforcement could not return him to New York due to a loophole in Vermont’s laws. As the Herald reported at the time, “Vermont law has no provisions for Vermont officials returning an uncommitted mental patient to another state, as they can with criminal fugitives… With no pending criminal charges, extradition was impossible.”
Six years after the murder, in January 1992, the Herald reported that two psychiatrists found Kugler “was no longer insane and did not pose a threat to himself or others.” A judge ruled that he could be released back into the community but had to remain in state custody.
In July 1994, the Herald reported Kugler escaped from the Arroway halfway house in Burlington and “may be headed back to the Rutland area.” About ten days later, police changed their mind and said he “may be headed to New York.” The police expressed concern that Kugler could “become violent if he is no longer taking his medications” for “paranoid schizophrenia.” He later turned himself in.
But in August 1995, Kugler again escaped from psychiatric confinement, walking away from the state hospital in Waterbury. He had been staying in an unlocked ward and was allowed to roam the grounds. One day, he did not return. Kugler “turned up a week later near Philadelphia, where he was stopped by police for allegedly driving drunk.”
Meanwhile, Ronald Amadon remained murdered, dead at the age of 22, because he “acted like a homosexual.”
As you may know, June is Pride Month. It commemorates the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York, which became the catalyst for the modern LGBT movement for civil rights. As President Biden noted in his proclamation yesterday, “Pride is a time to recall the trials the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) community has endured and to rejoice in the triumphs of trailblazing individuals who have bravely fought — and continue to fight — for full equality.”
According to the Herald, Ronald Amadon “was thoughtful, quiet, and well-liked…a gentle man.” At Amadon’s funeral, Rev. Marshall Hudson-Knapp recalled, “Ron had a love for everyone he knew,” and he recited the lyrics of a song that Ronald had written as a boy, “My name is R-O-N-N-I-E. I’ll love you if you’ll love me. For that’s the way it’s meant to be.”
A friend recalled outside of the funeral, “He was a really special guy. He had a lot of friends.” He also loved antiquing and frequently stopped at area shops to browse. One store owner said, “I remember Ronnie stopping by just a few days before he died. He was a gentle and wonderful boy.”
As my village celebrates Pride for all the LGBTQ+ individuals we call our friends, family, and neighbors, we ought not to forget the ugly, homophobic tragedy that once occurred on our streets. Let us remember the life and death of Ronald Amadon.
Thanks to Monica Allen, who first reported on the case for the Rutland Herald in the 1980s, and to Liz Anderson, who followed up on the case for the Herald in the 1990s.