Peter’s Delusional Disorder

Special Installment: Maundy Thursday

Peter insisted more than once that he’d never betray Jesus, even if it meant death, and even though everyone else might betray him. The man was delusional.

On October 5, 1998, Margaret Mary Ray, 46, ran onto the railroad tracks of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in a green valley in western Colorado, assumed a kneeling position and within seconds was struck by an oncoming train. Her death was reported two days later in The New York Times.

Ray suffered from a serious delusion. She believed she and late night comedian and talk show host David Letterman had an intimate connection. Sometimes she insisted that she was his wife. She was arrested on numerous occasions and confined to a jail cell or a wing in a psychiatric hospital.

Letterman said that he had great compassion for her, often declining to press criminal charges against her. “I wasn’t comfortable with the humanity of that.” And upon news of her death, Letterman offered a sympathetic response to the “sad end of a confused life.”

Fans of the show Frasier will recall the episode in Season 2, “The Candidate.” In a local...