“Dr. Olson was in serious trouble and needed immediate professional attention,” Lashbrook wrote in an after-incident CIA report. Lashbrook told Vincent Ruwet to bring Olson to headquarters immediately. From there, the two men took Olson to a townhouse in New York City, at 133 East Fifty-eighth Street. There, Olson met with a doctor on the CIA’s payroll named Harold Abramson. Abramson was not a psychiatrist. He was an allergist and immunologist who worked on LSD tolerance experiments for the CIA, and he carried a Secret clearance of his own. Frank Olson told Dr. Abramson that he was suffering from memory loss, confusion, feelings of inadequacy, and terrible guilt. Dr. Abramson noted that Olson seemed to have a perfectly good memory and could remember people, places, and events easily on demand. In other words, Frank Olson’s problems were all in his mind.
The next morning, Robert Lashbrook and Vincent Ruwet took Frank Olson on another visit, to another CIA contract employee, John Mulholland, a semifamous New York City magician. Like Dr. Abramson, magician John Mulholland had a Secret security clearance with the TSS. Mulholland taught CIA agents how to apply “the magician’s art to covert activities.” One of his specialties was “the delivery of various materials to unwitting subjects.” During the visit, Olson became suspicious of what was going on and asked to leave. By the next day, Frank Olson was hearing voices. He told Dr. Abramson that the CIA was trying to poison him, which they already had done at least once. Vincent Ruwet returned to Maryland to be with his family for Thanksgiving; Abramson and Lashbrook decided to have Frank Olson committed to the Chestnut Lodge sanitarium, in Rockville, Maryland. Conveniently, the CIA had doctors on staff there.
Robert Lashbrook and Frank Olson spent one last night in New York City, in the Statler Hotel, on Seventh Avenue and Thirty-third Street. They were given room 1018A, on the tenth floor. After eating in the hotel restaurant, Olson and Lashbrook returned to their room to have a drink and watch television. Olson called his wife for the first time since he had left home and told her not to worry—that he’d be home soon. Then he went to sleep.
At approximately 2:30 a.m. Olson crashed through the hotel window and fell more than one hundred feet to his death on the street below. According to the coroner’s report, Olson hit the ground feet first, as if standing up, fell backward, and broke his skull. The Statler Hotel night manager, Armand Pastore, heard the impact and ran outside. He found Olson lying on the pavement, still alive. His eyes were open, Pastore told the police, and he tried to say something. But no words came out, and after a few moments, Frank Olson took his last breath.
Pastore looked up to see which room Olson had come out of. He could see that one of the window shades in a room high above was sticking out, as if the shade had been down when Olson crashed through it. Pastore noted which room it might be. When the police arrived, he took them up to the tenth floor and into room 1018A, using the manager’s passkey to get inside. There, inside the bathroom, CIA agent Robert Lashbrook sat on the toilet seat in his underwear, holding his head in his hands. Lashbrook had already made two telephone calls. The first call was to the CIA’s director of the Technical Services Staff, Sidney Gottlieb, the man who had, with Lashbrook, poisoned Frank Olson with LSD a little over a week before. The second call was to the hotel’s front desk, to report Olson’s suicide. When New York City Police detective James W. Ward arrived on the scene, he asked Robert Lashbrook several questions, to which Lashbrook responded using only the words “yes” and “no.” Lashbrook did not identify himself as a CIA agent.
Dr. Lashbrook was taken in for questioning; homicide had not yet been ruled out. At the precinct, Detective Ward asked Lashbrook to empty his pockets. Among the contents were papers with addresses for Dr. Harold Abramson, in New York City, and the Chestnut Lodge sanitarium, in Rockville, Maryland. When asked about his profession, Lashbrook told Detective Ward that he was a chemist with the War Department and that Frank Olson was a scientist at Camp Detrick—and that Olson was mentally ill. Detective Ward called Dr. Abramson, who verified Lashbrook’s story, leaving out that he also worked for the CIA.
Two days later, Detective Ward submitted Case Number 125124 to his station chief. The death of Frank Olson was determined to be a suicide. The case was closed.