Dr. Horacio Fabrega Jr. was a healer who understood pain.

The psychiatrist, professor and medical anthropologist sought to explore, define and mend emotional strife wherever he found it — even at times within himself.

“He had a lot of turmoil in his life,” said his son-in-law Jerry Rudisin, of Salt Lake City. “Just seeing things differently set him on the path of psychiatry. He loved getting to know and understand people.”

Dr. Fabrega, known as “Peter” to friends and family, died Feb. 21 of late-onset ALS — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — in Salt Lake City, where he and his wife recently moved to be closer to family. He was 88.

Although he was born in Philadelphia, Dr. Fabrega grew up primarily in Panama, where his paternal grandfather, Capt. Frederick Fanning Stewart, piloted the first tugboat through a newly constructed Panama Canal in September 1913.

When he was 13, Dr. Fabrega found himself at a shipping dock, being abruptly informed by his mother that he was leaving for Miami, where he would attend boarding school.

“He was being sent off by himself on a ship to Miami,” Mr. Rudisin said.

In Miami, Dr. Fabrega perfected his English and discovered a real talent as a baseball player, with an impressive batting average of .500 by his senior year.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Fabrega again took up a bat, but in the end, his son-in-law said, he chose a career in medicine over baseball.

“He loved baseball, and he was very good at it,” Mr. Rudisin said. “He got offers from two minor-league teams, but he decided to go to medical school.”

At Penn, Dr. Fabrega met Joan Sporkin, who was studying art history and French literature. The couple married in 1957.

After Dr. Fabrega earned his medical degree at Columbia University in 1960, two other very significant things happened.

During an internship at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City, Dr. Fabrega underwent intensive psychotherapy sessions to learn the practice and examine the demons in his own life.

“He always said the most important professional experience in his life was the deep psychoanalysis that he had five days a week. He learned so much from that,” Mr. Rudisin said. “A lot of modern psychiatry is oriented to drugs and pharmaceuticals, and there’s a role for that, but he wished medicine would afford more time to listen and learn.”

Dr. Fabrega found himself further drawn into psychiatry as a specialty when he joined the U.S. Army medical service as an officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“He served active duty, and he was stationed at Walter Reed, which he really enjoyed,” Mr. Rudisin said. “He loved being a psychiatrist. He loved getting to know people, helping people, analyzing people. It was his passion.”

After a residency at Yale Grace New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, Dr. Fabrega took his young family to Mexico, Peru and England for field work and research. He also worked as a professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University in Lansing from 1969 to 1977.

The family came to Pittsburgh in 1977, where Dr. Fabrega accepted a faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh and started a private practice.

He served as an expert witness in several high-profile trials, including that of Ronald Taylor, a Black man accused of going on a shooting rampage in Wilkinsburg in March 2000.

Dr. Fabrega defended Taylor, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, in the shootings of five white men, three of whom died.

Taylor, who had previously been diagnosed several times as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, felt his actions were a righteous response to what he viewed as racial hatred directed toward him, Dr. Fabrega said.

“He was compelled by a psychotic storm. He was compelled and driven by it,” Dr. Fabrega testified at Taylor’s trial in November 2001.

Taylor was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. He remains imprisoned at the state correctional institute in Montgomery County.

Another facet of Dr. Fabrega’s career was medical anthropology, a discipline that intrigued him so deeply that he wrote several books on the subject, Mr. Rudisin said.

“He was interested in historical and cultural psychiatry and looking at the differences between people in different cultures,” he said. “He was interested in mental illness in primates and early man and continued pursuing it after retirement as professor and doctor.”

But, it wasn’t all work all the time with Dr. Fabrega.

“He loved movies and psychoanalyzing the characters,” Mr. Rudisin. “We’d go out to the movies all the time when they came to visit.”

Watching the 1991 movie “The Silence of the Lambs,” featuring the fictional psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter — played by Anthony Hopkins — was a terrifying treat for his father-in-law, Mr. Rudisin said.

“He loved that movie,” he said, laughing. “We talked about it many times.”

A lover of travel and fitness, Dr. Fabrega also played competitive squash until the age of 50 and often went on rock-climbing adventures with his wife.

Throughout his life, Dr. Fabrega never stopped learning, writing and observing.

“He was very, very funny, very opinionated,” Mr. Rudisin said. “The psychiatrist part always peeked through — he was always probing people. He might ascribe some great meaning to the smallest gesture from a store clerk or server in a restaurant. He always loved getting to know people, and he was inquisitive about the lives of others. We miss him and loved him so much.”

Along with his wife and son-in-law, Dr. Fabrega is survived by his daughters Andrea Fabrega, of Salt Lake City, and Michele Fabrega, of Foster City, Calif.; and three grandchildren.

Per his wishes, Dr. Fabrega’s body was donated to the University of Utah to further medical education.

Memorials may be made to the ALS Association Western PA Chapter, 416 Lincoln Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15209.

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com.

First Published: March 31, 2022, 11:00 a.m.