By AP/KWMU
Miami, Fla. – A doctor who killed his two young sons by throwing them over a hotel balcony and then jumped to his own death seemed to be hallucinating and sounded paranoid in a phone call two days earlier, according to the man's father.
Oebele Van Dyk, 86, said he talked to his son the day before Edward Van Dyk flew to Miami to be with his wife and two sons, who were already staying at the Loews Hotel where the incident occurred Saturday.
"He was very distraught. I think he was seeing things that didn't seem to be real," Van Dyk told The Miami Herald on Sunday in a telephone interview from his home in New York.
Van Dyk described his son as a "peaceful guy," who "never, never fought" and said his son did not have any history of mental problems.
He said he and his wife did not learn of the deaths until Sunday, when his daughter-in-law called him.
Edward Van Dyk was a radiation oncologist at Alton Memorial Hospital in Illinois. He became head of the hospital's cancer center 18 months ago after the family moved from New Mexico, where he had practiced at the New Mexico Cancer Center in Albuquerque, hospital officials said.
Police in Grafton didnot find a suicide note at Van Dyk's home, but they did confiscate a computer as part of their investigation.
The sons who died were Spencer and Carl, ages four and eight.