The Disturbing Story of The Asylum That Released a Serial Killer: Napa State Hospital

Napa State Hospital hired a former patient named Earle Nelson as a maintenance worker in 1926. He had a history of violent escapes. Within months, police connected him to a string of murders across San Francisco. He went on to kill at least 22 people across the United States and Canada before he was caught. He remains one of the most prolific serial killers in North American history. But Nelson is only one chapter in a 150-year story. Napa State Hospital opened in 1875 in California's Wine Country as a model of humane treatment. The state sent a doctor on a tour of 149 institutions across the United States and Europe to study every approach to mental illness that existed. He came back believing in moral treatment. California purchased nearly 200 acres of ranch land in the Napa Valley and built a four-story Gothic Revival building with seven towers, made from ten million red bricks. Locals called it the Castle. The hospital opened with optimism. It had its own dairy farm, orchards, bakery, and an underground rail system. On Friday nights, they held dances inside the Castle. Townspeople and patients danced alongside each other. That did not last. Within three years, the 500-bed hospital was already full. By 1900, it held over 1,500 patients and a local newspaper ran a headline that captured the crisis: The Army of Insane. As overcrowding worsened, the treatments grew darker. In 1909, California passed a forced sterilization law, and Napa became one of the primary facilities where it was carried out. Over three thousand people were sterilized statewide, many of them at Napa. Then came the lobotomy. Doctors drilled holes in patients' skulls or hammered surgical picks through their eye sockets to sever connections in the frontal lobe. Most were left unable to speak, eat, or recognize their own families. Today, Napa State Hospital holds approximately 1,255 patients. More than 90 percent have criminal histories. In 2010, a psychiatric technician named Donna Gross was murdered on hospital grounds by a patient with a history of armed robbery and attempted murder. Five years later, the hospital reported more than 1,800 physical assaults in a single year. Staff pulled emergency alarms between 11 and 17 times every day. It has been 150 years. The Castle is gone. Over 8,000 patients are buried in unmarked graves on the grounds. But the hospital is still there, still struggling, still sitting quietly behind its fences while the tourists drive past on their way to the next tasting room. Topics covered: Napa State Hospital history, Earle Nelson serial killer, California asylum system, forced sterilization eugenics program, moral treatment movement, lobotomy history, deinstitutionalization, Donna Gross murder, psychiatric hospital violence, unmarked patient graves, Wine Country California, Castle demolition, mental health history Sources: California Department of State Hospitals. Napa State Hospital 150th anniversary records. California State Archives, sterilization program documents. Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. Harold Schechter, Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster. Napa Valley Register archives. Department of Justice consent decree filings (1990, 2006). SEIU Local 1000 staff safety reports. Cal/OSHA inspection records. Napa County Historical Society. --- WARD FILES explores America's abandoned asylums and forgotten institutions. Subscribe for more investigations into the places America wants you to forget. #napastatehospital #napaasylum #earlenelson #serialkiller #winecountry #california #abandonedasylum #mentalasylum #darkhistory #wardfiles #documentary #psychiatrichistory #americanhistory #lobotomy #eugenics #forcedsterilization #kirkbride #deinstitutionalization #donnagross #unmarkedgraves #asylum #truecrime #californiahistory #napavalley