Weston was committed to a Montana mental hospital later that year but was released with a prescription and a bus ticket to his native Illinois. "Greyhound therapy," as they say.

Wedekind denies his hospital would have left Lyon at a bus station without appropriate plans for continued treatment. "It would be really unusual for us to do that kind of discharge planning," he said. "It certainly wasn't Greyhound therapy with our discharge plan."

Los Angeles, like Washington, receives many of the victims of what mental health workers call "Greyhound Therapy," Farr said.

"Across the country community governments will give mental patients or convicts a one-way bus ticket anywhere they want on the day of their release," he said