by Hoda Kotb
“I was in shock,” he says softly.
The doctor told Patrick that his white blood cell count was manageable, but the amount of human immunodeficiency virus active in his bloodstream was off the charts. He was a very sick thirty-five-year-old man.
“I didn’t talk to anyone about it, which was a huge mistake.” He shakes his head. “I was ashamed. There’s still an enormous social stigma that’s attached to HIV, even within the gay community. It’s something you have to live with the rest of your life. Growing up when I did, you had a sense of shame about your sexuality. It took me so long to gain the comfort of being openly gay and being accepted for who I am. It was a struggle, ever since I was a teen, and then to contract HIV on top of it—it was devastatingly difficult.”
Patrick’s doctor immediately prescribed a drug cocktail so the virus would be held at bay. What was not minimized was Patrick’s overwhelming sense of embarrassment, fear, and hopelessness. Those emotions were full-blown; they dominated his mental being. He was struggling with the idea that his body was being invaded by a preventable illness, and that the consequence could be deadly. When an acquaintance suggested Patrick try methamphetamine to control his anxiety, the guy who never did drugs, who’d tried marijuana in college but didn’t like it, smoked his first glass pipe full of crystal meth.
“Within a week, I had the HIV diagnosis, I had won two Emmys, and I had tried crystal meth.” He pauses. “The highest high, the lowest low.”
Patrick says he was addicted from the first hit. His searing humiliation was replaced with euphoria.
“I forgot every care I had in the world. Loved it,” he says. “I thought, I’m dying now anyway, who cares?”
The producer extraordinaire was now an illegal-drug user. Patrick says the term “binge user” would describe his pattern. He’d get high on Friday after work and use throughout the weekend.
“I was very disciplined. I was a high-functioning user. I would never take it while I was working,” Patrick explains. “I needed something. I was living in such pain, and that was the drug I chose. And I was hooked from the first minute because it worked.”
His close friend Margaret Bailey, a fellow producer for Eye to Eye, was living in New York City when Patrick learned of his HIV and when he began taking drugs. On the opposite coast in L.A., Patrick could hide the dark side of his life from Margaret and talk to her as if everything was okay.
“We had other friends who were concerned, but it was very hard to get a handle on it,” says Margaret. “Friends had noticed Patrick had lost weight and that he did not stay in touch regularly. I had little bitty kids, I had a life full of distraction, and I was worried and far away, and I felt very powerless.”
Despite doctors telling Patrick they were managing the virus, he was convinced he was dying and that he was damaged goods. After he and his partner broke up in 2000, Patrick began to see less of his friends and use more of the meth. He eventually had to share with his bosses at Dateline that he’d tested positive for HIV.
“I was missing work a lot. I said I wasn’t feeling well. Blamed it on my HIV. I used that as an excuse,” he admits, “and when you have that, y’know, no one’s gonna challenge you.”
In 2003, Patrick’s superiors at NBC were concerned enough about his performance that they coordinated an intervention. His mom and a family friend were flown to L.A., and in the home of dear friends, they confronted Patrick about his drug use. The plan worked; he agreed to get treatment. Patrick says NBC could not have been more caring and accommodating. His family was just as supportive. Everyone was willing to pave the way for Patrick’s road to recovery.
Nearly two thousand miles away, in northwest Wisconsin, Patrick’s sister Sue was battling her own demons: alcohol and a physically abusive relationship with her longtime boyfriend, Peter Whyte. Patrick’s parents, who had divorced when he was in college but were still close friends, had tried for years to convince Sue to leave Peter. So had Patrick and his sisters. Still, she remained with him, her first and only boyfriend. They lived together in a cabin at the hook of the Apple River, about twelve miles from her mother’s cabin on Paulson Lake.
“I thought he was a jerk. I knew right away,” says Patrick with disdain. “How he spoke to her, how he treated her. Big, lumbering, muscular guy.”
Sue very rarely reported to authorities the injuries she sustained over the years at the hands of Peter. When she sought treatment for her broken ribs, and other injuries too horrific to share here, Sue hopscotched to various area hospitals to avoid developing a consistent charting of abuse. The family was aware of Sue’s bruises and black eyes, and continually begged her to leave Peter. The abuse would abate for several years and then, literally, kick back in.
Peter’s presence strained Sue’s relationship with Patrick and the rest of the family. In the years before and during Patrick’s addiction, he’d argue with Sue about the family’s precious time spent together.
“There would be fights about the fact that I didn’t want Peter at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I told him, ‘I don’t want you around. We love our sister and we just can’t have you around,’ ” he remembers. “Then she would say, ‘No, no, please. I just want everybody to get along.’ Y’know, I’d come home for four days and I was like, ‘Okay.’ ”
Patrick’s personal life was just as erratic. His work-sanctioned stints in rehab became a roller coaster of success and failure. He’d spend weeks in an isolated rehab environment, then opt instead for an outpatient program. He was in and out of twelve-step programs. For six months he’d beat the meth, but then succumb again to its numbing allure.
“There is something to be said for the theory that you can’t force someone to get clean until they’re ready,” he explains.
In early 2005, Patrick was “clean” and back at Dateline to produce stories surrounding the trial of pop superstar Michael Jackson, who had been accused of child molestation. Patrick was convinced he could do the work. But, again, he had misjudged the power of the drug. Patrick says his “sick brain” convinced him that NBC and his friends were “better off without this piece of shit.” He couldn’t imagine why they would be angry if he didn’t stay at work or keep in touch. Patrick further withdrew from his life.
Margaret and other close friends had no idea Patrick was living with such a heavy burden. He had disconnected from the very people who would have reached out to help. But the addicted Patrick could not believe that. Why would people want him in their life now? He felt the only thing acting in his best interest was meth. He didn’t need anyone else.
“I used to always come back to this metaphor in my head, that I was a balloon on a tether,” he says as his fingers strum the air, “and I was plucking off the ropes, one by one, and then I would just float away.”
And float he did. Patrick took yet another extended leave of absence from Dateline. In December 2005, the company offered a buyout to various employees, and Patrick took it. His leave had now become permanent. The wily addiction pounced. Patrick stopped smoking meth and began to inject it.
“I learned it in rehab; go figure. I didn’t know you could do that! Fantastic!” he says sarcastically. “I can get really high now!”
The high is faster, and eventually, deadlier.
“It’ll kill you,” Patrick confirms. “It’s one hundred percent terminal.”
Hopeless and blinded by his addiction, Patrick was acutely aware of the bizarre path his life had taken.
“I kept a clean house, I still had my nice car, but I was a wreck. I was connecting with drug dealers in locations that would be drug dens that you think of in a movie. I had covered these stories. I knew what I was doing. I acted like a producer,” he says, throwing his hands up in amazement, “and I knew I was killing myself.”
Patrick says at the time, he was actually okay with the reality of certain death. He had tried everything to get clean. Trying to have hope seemed hopeless.
“I could not imagine that my life could ever get bac
k to the highs of where it was. I had blown it.” He says the dialogue in his head was, What does it matter anymore? This is the only relief I can find.
Patrick’s addiction was draining, spiritually and financially. He was spending substantial amounts of money on drugs and material things. Looking back, he says the splurging was perhaps an attempt to reassure everyone that he was doing well.
In May 2006, Patrick decided to spend $25,000 renovating the kitchen in his mother’s house on Paulson Lake in northwest Wisconsin, just a dozen miles from the cabin where Sue lived with Peter. Patrick thoroughly enjoyed spending time with his mother and Sue, and he valued the chance to stay busy with a creative project. Summer days at the lake were productive and meaningful, but when Patrick traveled back to L.A. every few weeks, he continued to get high. Despondent, he also stopped taking his HIV medications.
“I just didn’t even care,” Patrick says. “That was the saddest part.”
One month later, in June, some positive news came. Sue had finally found the courage to leave Peter. They’d been together for nearly two troubled, alcohol-fueled, abusive decades.
“She had just finished a nursing program and was working at a nursing home,” Patrick explains. “She had started to develop enough outside relationships where she felt secure enough. And he seemed okay with it.”
Sue moved in with their mom, and for the first time since they were kids, Patrick and his sister spent quality time under the same roof. They negotiated who got what room and shared a closet. Renovations on the house, and ideally Sue’s life, were in full swing.
“In August, I was home for the last sort of wrap-up stuff on the kitchen, and I couldn’t believe how civil everyone was,” Patrick recalls.
Sue and Peter were in the final stages of separating their finances and belongings. The pair talked frequently but agreed he should not see her. Things seemed so good that threats of filing a restraining order against Peter were dropped. Patrick reached out to him.
“I left a message for him saying, ‘Thank you. I’m impressed with the way you’ve handled things, and I’m glad to hear you’re at peace with it.’ ”
In mid-August, Sue agreed to go on a group camping trip with Peter and friends. The pair had a peaceful, platonic trip.
A few mornings later, on the front porch of the lake house, Patrick, Sue, and their mom were enjoying coffee. Patrick decided to pull out an article he’d brought, never thinking they’d have time to discuss it. He’d had it for months and popped it in his briefcase before leaving L.A. The story was titled “Life Is Empty and Meaningless.” He thought the deeper meaning of the story—that you make life full and meaningful—would encourage Sue to continue her healthy direction. The topic sparked a uniquely open conversation; the three told each other what mattered to them and how much they valued one another.
“We got to say, ‘I love you, your life is meaningful, I’m so happy,’ ” Patrick says.
That Thursday, August 18, Patrick returned to L.A. Sue called him the next day, ending the phone call with, “I love you, Pat.” He now considers the chance to say, “I love you, too, Sue,” a gift. He would never talk to his sister again.
Sue, sitting on the dock at her house along the Apple River. Somerset, Wisconsin, 2006. (Courtesy of Patrick Weiland)
On Saturday, August 20, Sue went back to the river cabin to pick up a few of her remaining belongings. Friends were boating on a dammed section of the river, enjoying the afternoon; she joined in. So did Peter. The relaxing gathering turned into a day of drinking. That evening, Sue and Peter ended up in their cabin. A neighbor heard them arguing in the early-morning hours.
“At two o’clock in the morning, they got into an argument,” Patrick says with disdain, “and he slit her throat. He stabbed her nineteen times, one time for every year of their relationship.”
The horrific scene inside the trashed cabin indicated a long and violent struggle. Sue, nine inches shorter than Peter and half his weight, had fought back. While the autopsy indicated Sue had a black eye, broken nose, and eight fatal stab wounds, Peter told the 911 operator that Sue had attacked him. He was sitting in a chair when authorities arrived at 7:20 Sunday morning, claiming injuries to his wrist and abdomen proved he’d acted in self-defense.
That Sunday morning, Patrick’s unknowing mother was enjoying the lake view from her porch with friends.
Patrick recalls, “The sheriff’s deputies were walking up the driveway and she knew.” He snaps his fingers. “She picked up the phone and called me and said, ‘Sue’s been murdered.’ ”
Patrick spent the next twelve hours calling his sisters, father, friends, and relatives. He immediately enlisted journalist friends in the Minneapolis market to cover the story of his sister’s murder.
“Because I knew—rural homicide, domestic,” he explains from the perspective of a veteran news producer. “If it doesn’t get coverage, the police don’t thoroughly investigate.”
Patrick then called the county sheriff to give him the family’s permission to talk to the local news media. His goal was to enlist the help of the state crime lab instead of the local coroner, who often has limited resources to process lab work. As the family would learn over the months, the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory was also understaffed, causing a four-month delay in the trial, and horrifically, a thirteen-month stay in the county morgue for Sue’s body. The Weilands wanted desperately to bury Sue but also wanted her body to be available if additional evidence needed to be collected.
“My parents couldn’t bury their daughter. It was like watching them get beaten with baseball bats,” Patrick says. “It was torture. Absolute torture.”
Patrick’s mom, Mary, expressed her anguish to the Minneapolis newspaper where Patrick’s father had worked, the Star Tribune. An excerpt from the article reads, “ ‘I’m falling apart about this,’ said Weiland’s mother, Mary. ‘But we don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the prosecution.’ ”
The scheduled May trial was delayed until September. Patrick continued to travel back and forth between L.A. and Wisconsin. He says he never used drugs during his stays in Wisconsin; his focus was to exhaust every opportunity to advocate for his sister.
“That’s the one thing I felt I could do. That was my purpose,” he says. “I think that’s what kept me alive during that time.”
But Patrick was closer to death than ever, by his own hand. He was not taking his HIV drugs and during trips back to L.A. was often bingeing on meth, the drug that so expertly soothed his pain.
“I was in a free fall. I would have periods of clarity and periods where I was very on, but then I would binge and disappear from everyone for six weeks in L.A.,” he says. “I’d go to AA meetings, I’d stay clean for a week or three weeks, and then I’d get home and I’d lock myself up in the house and use. I don’t know how I survived it. It was bad.”
Finally, in September 2007, thirteen months after Sue’s death, the trial of Peter G. Whyte began. Each morning, the Weiland sisters put one sunflower, Sue’s favorite, in a vase outside the courthouse. After two weeks of proceedings, the jury made its decision.
“I’ve never been so tense in my life,” Patrick says, shaking his head with raised eyebrows. “It was hell.”
The jury did not believe Whyte had acted in self-defense and convicted him of second-degree intentional homicide. A first step toward justice for Sue.
The family’s next pressure cooker was the sentencing. A month later, KARE-TV, the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, covered the sentencing hearing. Videotape shows Sue’s sisters and one of her nieces describing their loss to the presiding judge. Middle sister Anamaria simply says, “We remain devastated.”
The judge imposed a sentence that ensured that fifty-four-year-old Whyte would most likely be incarcerated until he died: forty years in a maximum-security prison in Wisconsin.
“After the conviction, I went into a one-month . . .” Patrick’s palm glides downward. “I don’t even know what happened. I remem
ber vividly after a binge, with bloody arms, and being sick, I remember lying there thinking, Okay, when I close my eyes the next time I’m not going to wake up. I think I’m gonna go. This is the knife’s edge.”
Patrick says it was on that proverbial edge that, oddly, his mind became sharp for an instant. Sue entered his thoughts—his beautiful sister, whose death was preventable. In the days ahead, he would realize that he and Sue had been living a similar story.
“She could not escape for whatever reason, and I couldn’t escape. I was just like a battered woman with the drug,” he says. “I was in the same helpless, hopeless, powerless situation, but my attacker was the drug I was doing.”
Patrick said that for the first time, his thinking changed. He realized he could not put his family through another catastrophic loss.
“It saved my life, in the end. In the end, on that knife’s edge, I knew that watching my parents and the people who love my parents suffer from Sue’s death,” says Patrick, “I knew that I could not die.”
In January 2008, Patrick set about the business of living, with no savings remaining and no medical insurance to buy HIV medication. He was in very rough shape: weak, extremely thin, no appetite.
“I moved home to my family and lay in my mother’s house for months,” Patrick says. “I had no strength to summon all of the wreckage I had caused in my life, and the tremendous loss of Sue. But I was never going to use again. I was determined.”
After four months, Patrick sought medical help from a community center in Minneapolis. Staff there made it possible for him to see a doctor who prescribed a series of HIV drugs. He told Patrick his chances for survival.