Growing up, Adam Charles Peterson was introverted and shy often relying on his twin brother Eric to make friends and socialize when the pair attended Stillwater High, his father said.
Going off to college only seemed to compound Adam Peterson’s social awkwardness. Peterson, 20, once a good student, dropped out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 2007. Peterson’s parents feared he was depressed and desperately unhappy. The situation turned so dire that Peterson was hospitalized for a week after a psychotic outburst and then moved back home to his mother’ s house in Grant to attend “psychological and psychiatric counseling,” his father, Melvin Peterson, said.