Lisa Nowak was an astronaut for 11 years. She qualified as a robotics specialist and logged
13 days in outer space. On 7th March, 2007, she became the first astronaut to be fired by NASA.
That tends to happen when you try to kidnap someone.
NASA astronauts have always been seen as heroes. We place them on pedestals as the
best of the best, the ultimate specimens of humanity in the scientific age.
And to a large extent this is deserved. Not only does the NASA astronaut program demand
peak physical fitness, but also the finest minds capable of carrying out scientific research,
nuanced engineering tasks, incredible self-discipline and professional calm in
the most remarkable and inhospitable frontier known to man: outer space.
On the surface, Lisa Nowak was the epitome of this image.
Born Lisa Caputo on May 10th, 1963 in Washington D.C., Nowak was a straight-A student,
an observant churchgoer, a competitive and ambitious perfectionist who nevertheless,
according to her childhood friend Claudia Kalb, was “a cheerful person with a ready smile”.
Always aspiring to be an astronaut, she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1985
with a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering, at a time when women made up
only 6% of students and had to endure harassment from both students and professors. She went on to
get a Masters in aeronautical engineering, and as a commissioned ensign in the Navy,
she was assigned to flight training - even though women were banned from combat roles.
Already an overachiever, in 1996 she powered through the competitive selection process at
NASA and became an astronaut on the shuttle program. On July 4th, 2006, she made her one
and only trip into space, spending 12 days, 18 hours and 36 minutes beyond Earth as the
robotics specialist on board Discovery, a journey which included several spacewalks.
In 1988 she married Richard Nowak, an officer in the Naval Air Reserve and a contractor for NASA,
with whom she had three children. A dedicated wife and mother, she was known for her hosting
abilities and her hobby as a competitive cyclist, as well as her hard-working career.
As she said herself, "It’s definitely a challenge to do the flying and take care of
even one child and do all the other things you have to do. But I learned that you can do it."
In 2004, she unwittingly set on the path that would lead to her disgrace.
By now a captain in the U.S. Navy, Nowak met fellow astronaut William Oefelein.
Known as “Billy O.”, he joined the shuttle program four years after Nowak,
According to author Diane Fanning, they grew close on an eleven day training
mission in Canada for cold-weather survival. Their relationship soon became a romantic.
Like Lisa Nowak, Oefelein had been married for sixteen years,
but unlike Nowak, he was in the process of getting a divorce.
At work, they filed forms and trained together in the Johnson Space Center in Houston,
including flying together. Outside work, they were on the same cycling team and trained for
races together. When Billy left his wife, he got his own apartment and gave Lisa a key.
It was an intense sexual affair. Nevertheless, Billy only described their
relationship as “somewhat exclusive”. In November 2006, he met Colleen Shipman during a training
mission in Florida, where she worked at Patrick Air Force Base testing hardware for spaceflights.
The two traveled between Houston and Cape Kennedy to see each other on weekends.
Colleen made sure that Billy ended his relationship with Lisa.
Though he insisted to Colleen that he had broken up with Lisa,
he waited until the middle of January 2007 - after his mission on the shuttle in December 2006 - to
tell Lisa that it was all over and that he was in a serious relationship with Colleen Shipman.
According to Billy, Lisa took the news well. She “seemed a little disappointed” but accepted the
break-up. He assumed they could stay good friends. They continued cycling and flying together,
worked out at the gym together, had lunch in his apartment, where he even let her keep her bike.
But Lisa thought differently. She contacted him every day, making over one hundred calls,
which he didn’t always answer. Then one day,
Lisa used the key Billy had given her to enter his apartment while he wasn’t there.
She accessed his computer and read the very personal emails between Billy and Colleen.
Including one email from Colleen of her flight itinerary between
Houston and Orlando on an upcoming weekend visit.
Lisa, having never met Colleen,
now knew exactly where and when her love rival would be on February 4th, 2007.
Armed with all this information, Lisa printed a map of Colleen’s home neighbourhood,
a map of the Orlando airport and a map of a driving route all from Houston to Orlando.
Lisa was going on a road trip.
She handwrote a list of 24 things she would take on her journey - including latex gloves,
glasses, makeup, sneakers (black, size 8-9),
black sweatpants, binoculars, a baseball cap, food, water, and a cooler for the car.
On February 4th she drove over 950 miles in 14 hours all the way from Houston to Orlando airport,
in time to meet Colleen Shipman’s flight arriving at 1 a.m. on the 5th February.
Lisa then put on a black wig, red-rimmed sunglasses, black sneakers and a hooded
trench coat and watched. The airport was mostly deserted, so it was easy to spy on
Colleen as she waited at baggage collection for nearly two hours as delayed luggage arrived.
Colleen then took a bus to airport parking. Lisa got on the same bus. Her bizarre appearance
caught Colleen’s attention. Concerned, Colleen hurried off the bus and to her car.
She got in and locked the door just in time to see Lisa in disguise, running at her.
Lisa slapped the window and begged for a ride,
crying. Colleen wound down the window a couple of inches… and Lisa pepper sprayed into the car.
Colleen drove off and called the police. They arrived minutes later
and saw Lisa throwing a bag into the trash.
Inside this duffel bag, police found a two-pound mallet,
a 9-millimeter semi-automatic replica BB gun, a Gerber folding knife and surgical tubing.
In the car, they found $585 and £41 in cash, her computer, a floppy disk and two USB drives
filled with bondage photos, and 4 brown paper bags containing 69 unidentified orange pills.
Orlando Detective William Becton also found up to thirty unused diapers in the car, and
two used ones. He said, “I then asked Mrs. Nowak why she had the baby diapers. Mrs. Nowak said that
she did not want to stop and use the restroom, so she used the diapers to collect her urine."
Lisa’s arrest was a media sensation. The press - and talkshow hosts - seized upon
the diapers in particular, reporting that she had spent the entire 14-hour drive
wearing the Maximum Absorption Garment - or adult diapers - issued to astronauts during missions.
Lisa and her lawyer would later dispute this and insist that the diapers had been
in the car since her family had been evacuated from Houston during Hurricane Rita in 2005.
But Colleen Shipman didn’t care. She said,
"I don't mean to be offensive or anything but that's pretty superficial. … The woman
committed a crime and the headlines are saying that she wore a diaper."
“She was going to kill me. It was in her eyes:
a blood-chilling expression of limitless rage and glee.”
Charged with attempted kidnapping, battery, attempted vehicle burglary with battery,
destruction of evidence, and attempted first-degree murder,
Lisa was released on $25,500 bail to await trial under the condition
she wear a GPS tracking device and not contact Colleen Shipman.
A month later, NASA fired her. In their official statement, they explained,
"NASA... lacks the administrative means to deal appropriately with the criminal charges
pending against Nowak. Because Nowak is a naval officer on assignment to NASA,
rather than a NASA civil servant, she is not subject to administrative action by NASA."
In other words, NASA could have just suspended her until she was proven innocent or guilty.
Instead, they handed her back to the Navy.
According to historian Roger Launius, this made Nowak the first astronaut to be fired by NASA,
and the first one on active duty to be charged with a felony.
Nowak’s lawyer initially submitted an insanity plea.
Eventually, thanks to some good lawyering, she pled guilty to burglary and misdemeanour battery
on November 10th, 2009. She was sentenced to two days in jail, a year of probation, 50 hours of
community service and counselling. She also had to submit a written apology to Colleen Shipman.
To her credit, Lisa apologised publicly in person.
In March 2011, she successfully petitioned the court to seal the
record of her criminal proceedings, to keep the fine details forever secret.
But I have to wonder,
why did such a straight-laced overachiever like Lisa Nowak do something so extreme?
Well, there may be something to her insanity plea. After her arrest she underwent several
psychiatric evaluations. She was diagnosed with severe depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
insomnia, and a "brief psychotic disorder with marked stressors" at the time of the incident.
It’s certainly true that she was under stress when she went after Shipman.
In January 2007 she separated from her husband and three children, planning to divorce after 19 years
of marriage. Furthermore, NASA told her that she wouldn’t be assigned to another shuttle mission
after her crewmates complained that she wasn’t a team player. In hindsight, this isn’t surprising.
Before her trial, she was also diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, tallying with Claudia Kalb’s
claim that as a child “she was...reserved and private and somewhat impenetrable. We
took classes together, celebrated birthdays together, but I can’t say she ever confided.”
In the midst of this personal turmoil, she pinned her hopes on Billy Oefelein.
A letter she wrote to his mother that month says,
“Billy is absolutely the best person I’ve ever known and I love him more than I knew possible…
I am in the process of completing all the official divorce paperwork. It is long overdue,
but it is finally here and I am very much looking forward to getting to know you even better.”
Then Billy told her he was leaving her for a woman who was 13 years younger than her.
Yet even then, Lisa might have dealt with all of this if it
weren’t for what happened on February 1st, 2003.
That day, space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry after a piece of foam broke off and
hit the ship's wing. The seven astronauts on board died, including Lisa's close friend Laurel Clark.
Lisa became the unofficial grief counsellor for Clark’s family.
She never gave herself time to grieve.
Therefore, it may not be a coincidence that Lisa attacked Colleen Shipman just a few
days after the anniversary of the Columbia disaster.
NASA, for its part, pointed out that all potential astronauts face rigorous psychological screening
before they are accepted, which is true. But Lisa hadn’t been tested since 1996,
and she knew that if she’d admitted any mental health struggles to her bosses,
she’d have been taken off the shuttle program.
Add to the fact that her first and only mission in
outer space happened merely months before her epic drive to Orlando,
and you have to wonder if the stresses of space travel were the real cause of Lisa’s breakdown.
In the fallout of this PR disaster, NASA launched an internal review into how it treated the mental
health of astronauts. Then it launched a review into the review after it suggested
astronauts might be coping with the psychological stress of spaceflight by drinking before takeoff.
In the end, NASA reacted to the Nowak incident by changing its policies.
Flight surgeons would receive additional training in psychiatric evaluation,
and would be present during the pre-mission suit-up activities. And for the first time in
NASA history, an official "Code of Conduct" was published in October 2008.
This code of conduct includes pledges like,
“We will maintain our professional standards in… relationships in both the work and social
environments. We will protect and balance the best interests of our co-workers, families, and NASA.”
“We will strive to avoid the appearance of impropriety and
readily acknowledge the limits of our expertise.”
and
“Astronauts will respect and uphold the law and their duties as citizens. Each of us
accepts personal responsibility for our conduct.”
Lisa Nowak was demoted and given an “other than honorable” discharge from the U.S. Navy in 2011.
As of 2017, she lived in Texas and worked in the private sector, and was doing well.
She refuses to give press interviews.
Billy Oefelein was “released” by NASA on May 23rd, 2007. He married Colleen in 2010. They
moved to Alaska where they live with their son and run a children’s writing business. In 2016,
Colleen was asked whether or not she forgave Lisa. She said, “She committed a crime, she
was convicted, she finished her sentence. I’m not sure there’s anything really for me to forgive."
I don’t know about you but that’s one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard
in the entire history of NASA. I was flabbergasted when I came across. But what do you think? Please
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