Columnist Dean Juipe: Son jailed yet Casper carries on

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, April 18, 2000 | 11:11 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

If you get a chance to see Billy Casper this week, even if it means going out of your way to do it, greet him with applause or maybe a kind remark.

Casper, who is taking part in the Las Vegas Senior Classic that opens Friday at the TPC at Summerlin, can't be at the top of his golf game. Aside from being 68 years old, he has to be preoccupied by the fact one of his sons, David, is not only incarcerated in Las Vegas but is apt to be in prison for the remainder of his life.

While there are four Senior Tour players -- Jack Nicklaus, Bob Duval, Al Geiberger and Dave Stockton -- with sons who play on the PGA Tour, Casper is at the other end of the spectrum. He has a son in jail.

"It just breaks your heart," Casper has said of the circumstances that led to his son's imprisonment. "It just kills you."

David Casper, 26, received a 25-year prison term March 29 and is currently in the Clark County Detention Center awaiting relocation. He is not eligible for parole for 10 years, and, whether he is paroled or not, he is looking at an additional 40 felony charges in California that could lead to a 226-year sentence under that state's "three-strikes" law.

In an extensive profile in the Golf Plus editions of Sports Illustrated this week, David Casper isn't portrayed as your typical criminal. He doesn't hate his parents, he didn't despise his home life growing up, and he's not a particularly violent man despite routinely brandishing a .40-caliber Beretta during a lengthy crime spree that began in Southern California and concluded in Las Vegas.

In all, he and interchangeable accomplices are said to have been involved in 22 robberies within a 40-day span that concluded Nov. 12 when he was captured outside the Wild Wild West casino on West Tropicana. He surrendered peacefully, albeit surrounded by police with their weapons drawn.

The Las Vegas portion of his crime spree included two robberies -- an auto-parts store and the Bunkhouse bar downtown -- and was driven by a drug habit that clearly had raged out of control. He may not have been hooked on crystal meth and heroin, but he was injecting both and drifting toward an inevitable rendezvous with assorted law-enforcement agencies.

Given his background as the son of an elite golfer who won 51 PGA Tour events, including four majors, David Casper's adult life truly stretches the limits of believability. While he grew up in what many would say was an ideal environment, he, instead, has exhibited conduct that was at least occasionally reprehensible.

Growing up in Utah, David was one of 12 children and one of six who was adopted by Casper and his wife, Shirley. The Caspers were so magnanimous that they also took in eight other children, for various periods of time, who were coming from troubled backgrounds.

Everyone turned out fine except David.

This would be devastating for any father, let alone a famous father who, based on all outward appearances, is exceptionally loving and caring. But for all his good works, Billy Casper has a burden to carry.

It's one golf fans, as well as his colleagues, can barely comprehend. It's one he'll never escape.

It's one that changes everything about Billy Casper.