A Closer Look at Michael Schiavo

This is a partial transcript from "On the Record," March 25, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: At this hour on Friday, Terri Schiavo’s body is slowly shutting down. She’s showing obvious signs of dehydration, and she is near death. Michael Schiavo (search) has been battling Terri Schiavo’s parents for seven years now. We know where Michael stands in the fight over Terri’s life, but what’s he really like? And what kind of relationship did he have with Terri before she collapsed in 1990?

Associated Press correspondent Allen Breed joins us from Pinellas, Florida. Allen, where did Michael and Terri meet? How did they meet?

ALLEN BREED, ASSOCIATED PRESS: They met in about 1981 at Bucks County Community College (search) out of Levittown, Pennsylvania, where he was brought up. And I believe they were in a sociology class together.

VAN SUSTEREN: And how soon after did they marry?

BREED: They were engaged after five months and they were married in 1984, and then they moved down here to Florida in 1986.

VAN SUSTEREN: Why did they move to Florida?

BREED: Michael Schiavo’s family has told me that he had always sort of wanted to move to Florida. Terri got a job here with the insurance company she was working with. And Michael also knew that his parents wanted to move down here to retire, which they eventually did in the early 1990s.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. In the course of your work for the AP, you’ve talked to — I know you’ve talked to a number of people about the relationship. But one of the people you talked to was a guest we have on tonight, and I’ll talk to her in a moment. But Jill Schad (search) is a person you spoke to. What did she tell you about Michael and Terri?

BREED: She was a nurse who worked — who helped care for her for a while, and Michael — Mr. Schiavo was one of her preceptors, I guess, is sort of a teacher. And she said that he was very loving. He would caress her and kiss her, and he was — she just saw him as a very compassionate, loving husband who cared about what was happening to his wife.

VAN SUSTEREN: Was there ever — and besides Trudy Capone (search), who I’m going to speak to again in a moment, was there anyone else that you spoke to that had any comments about — in terms of whether Michael was attentive to his wife or inattentive?

BREED: Well, I’ve heard that in the nursing home, he was very — almost rabid about making sure that she was cared for and that she didn’t get bedsores. At one point, he made sure that she was made up every so often to look nice. But I’ve also heard from a friend who said that before she got sick that — she had been very heavy when she was younger and had lost a lot of weight before they got married and continued to lose weight after they got married, and that he supposedly told her at one point, after seeing a picture of her as a chubby young woman, that if she ever got that fat again he would divorce her and leave her, and that upset her quite a bit.

VAN SUSTEREN: In terms of the people at the hospice who thought that he was very sort of — very interested in her care, did some people — some of the people that worked there just not like him because he was aggressive in terms of wanting to make sure she got care?

BREED: Yes, I’ve heard that he was considered sort of, you know, your worst nightmare, I guess, that he was very loud and aggressive about her care. I’ve also heard that he, for instance, would insist that she got pain medication. Now, I know that some medical people have said that she shouldn’t feel pain, but apparently, he insisted that she have pain medication, especially around the time of her menstrual cycle.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, thank you, Allen, very much. I appreciate it.

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