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34. A Troubled Family
Unfortunately, the CIA’s scheme to play Cupid did not lead to a happy ending. Susan Cabot grew mentally ill in the 1980s, and became a recluse. Her son, Timothy, who was born with dwarfism, inherited mental issues from both his mother and father – his grandfather, King Talal, had been deposed because he was schizophrenic. Timothy’s mental problems were worsened by growing up in a dysfunctional home with a mother who raised him in squalor.
The kid grew up in a decaying Encino estate, surrounded by rotting food and stacks of ancient newspapers, guarded by a semi-feral Akita. Things were further exacerbated by Cabot’s ill-advised decision to treat her son’s dwarfism with experimental hormones extracted from the pituitary glands of dead people. The treatment, which was discontinued in the 1980s after it was discovered that it gave some patients a degenerative brain disease, did not cure Timothy of dwarfism. Instead, it might have left him with lifelong severe mood swings.