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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Geese Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. On February twenty first, nineteen ninety two, twenty
Speaker 5: two year old Brian Bechtold walked into a police station
Speaker 5: in Port Saint Joe, Florida, and confessed that he'd shot
Speaker 5: and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Speaker 5: He said he'd been possessed by the devil. He was
Speaker 5: eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and ruled not criminally responsible for
Speaker 5: the murders on grounds of insanity. But after the trial,
Speaker 5: where did the criminally insane go? Makita Brotman reveals Brian's
Speaker 5: inner life leading up to the murder, as well as
Speaker 5: his complicated afterlife in a maximum security psychiatric hospital where
Speaker 5: he is neither imprisoned nor free. During his twenty seven
Speaker 5: years at the hospital, Brian has tried to escape and
Speaker 5: been shot by police, and has witnessed three patients on
Speaker 5: patient murders. He's experienced the drugging of patients beyond recognition,
Speaker 5: a sadistic system of rewards and punishments, and the short
Speaker 5: lived reign of a crazed psychiatrist turn docker in the
Speaker 5: tradition of one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Couple Found
Speaker 5: Slain is an insider's account of life in the underworld
Speaker 5: of forensic psych wards in America and the forgotten lives
Speaker 5: of those held there, often indefinitely. The book that we're
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Couple Found Slain After a Family
Speaker 5: Murder with my special guest, author and psychoanalyst, Keita Brotman.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for
Speaker 5: this interview. Makeita brock thank you, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. This is an extraordinary, extraordinary book.
Speaker 5: As I mentioned to you, especially in regard to its uniqueness.
Speaker 5: Let's tell our audience how you came to be the author,
Speaker 5: why you wanted to write this book, How you became
Speaker 5: to be the author of Couple Found Slain.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm glad that you think it's unique, because that's
Speaker 6: really what I was going for. And to tell you
Speaker 6: about how I how I came to write it is
Speaker 6: I really need to say a little bit about my
Speaker 6: own interest in true crime, which I've always been an
Speaker 6: interest of mine, but I'm not so interested in genre
Speaker 6: true crime. I'm much more interested in the stories that
Speaker 6: don't get told for the you know, the stories of
Speaker 6: the story sort of around the periphery of the actual
Speaker 6: crime itself. And that's something that interested me for a while.
Speaker 6: And in twenty thirteen, and my ordinary day job is
Speaker 6: a professor at the college, and I was ontobratical that
Speaker 6: year and I did some volunteer teaching. I taught in
Speaker 6: a prison, and I taught in a forensic psychiatric hospital
Speaker 6: called Clifton Perkins in Maryland, and I taught fiction. So
Speaker 6: the group in Perkins, the psychiatric hospital was for pretty
Speaker 6: high functioning patients to help them to have discussion groups,
Speaker 6: to read, to help develop empathy and so on, and
Speaker 6: to to help just an activity, give them something to do.
Speaker 6: So Brian was one of the members of the groups
Speaker 6: right from the start, and I was I mean they
Speaker 6: were all. This was a maximum security facility, so all
Speaker 6: the patients have committed serious crime. But I was surprised
Speaker 6: how how high functioning they were. That Brian in particular,
Speaker 6: because he was so he was eager to join in.
Speaker 6: He's very helpful, he was articulate, he was a genial
Speaker 6: he was interesting, and I started to wonder. I didn't
Speaker 6: know what the patients had done or what the diagnosis were,
Speaker 6: but I started to wonder about Brian, you know, what
Speaker 6: he was doing there. And then one day, after another
Speaker 6: patient had left, a young girl, we were talking about
Speaker 6: her and Brian said that he would, he would. He
Speaker 6: wanted to ask her out, but then he found that
Speaker 6: she was she was born in Nice, eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 6: And I asked him, well, were you in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 6: and he said he was. He was there at Perkins,
Speaker 6: and in fact, he was closer to getting out than
Speaker 6: he is today. And I realized that he'd been there
Speaker 6: for over twenty years. And then I became very curious,
Speaker 6: because you know, all the patients have committed serious crimes,
Speaker 6: but hardly any of them stays out length of time.
Speaker 6: The average stays around seven years, I think, and often
Speaker 6: a lot less. So he told me that he'd killed
Speaker 6: his parents, which is, you know, it's a terrible crime,
Speaker 6: but among schizophrenics who commit murder, killing one's parents is
Speaker 6: not uncommon. I think there's a I've read different estimates,
Speaker 6: but you know, at least three hundred such murders a
Speaker 6: year in the US, which is, you know, it's not
Speaker 6: a lot, but sort of crimes that seems so unusual.
Speaker 6: It's not uncommon. So many of the other patients in
Speaker 6: Pokins had also killed their parents or one of their parents,
Speaker 6: and so I started to learn more about Brian's story
Speaker 6: and his history and his background. Eventually I realized, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm always kind of looking out for the new subjects
Speaker 6: to write about, and I realized that Brian's was a
Speaker 6: very interesting story, and it's a story that doesn't normally
Speaker 6: get told. It's about true crime. It's about crime, but
Speaker 6: it's a different part of the true crime narratives that
Speaker 6: people don't normally get to hear. And I realized that
Speaker 6: since Brian was so helpful and articulate and ready to
Speaker 6: give me his you know, his psychiatric notes, his and
Speaker 6: his court records, and I learned from him that those
Speaker 6: twenty seven years have actually been in some ways full
Speaker 6: of drama. Even though the day to day life in
Speaker 6: the hospital might be just ordinary bureaucracy and not much
Speaker 6: going on, over time, there's been some really fascinating events.
Speaker 6: So I decided to write the book, and Brian, you know,
Speaker 6: gave me all the information about his life, and I
Speaker 6: interviewed other people who involved, and yeah, I just wanted
Speaker 6: to tell that side of the story that doesn't very
Speaker 6: often get told.
Speaker 5: Let's get to the rest of that other part of
Speaker 5: the story, but let's first go back to the original
Speaker 5: horrendous crime point. Say Joe, Florida, February twenty first, nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety two, and there's a officer, Timothy high Tower. He's
Speaker 5: at the police headquarters and a young man walks in
Speaker 5: and this is Brian. What does Brian say to this officer?
Speaker 5: What is the story that he tells them? What does
Speaker 5: he tell them?
Speaker 6: He tells them that he kills his parents and that
Speaker 6: he was possessed by the devil, and the officers are dubious.
Speaker 6: They interview him for a while. They then they Brian
Speaker 6: thinks that they suspected he was on drugs, or they didn't.
Speaker 6: They really didn't seem to believe him, and partly because
Speaker 6: his parents had a vacation home in Florida, although they
Speaker 6: lived in Maryland, and that the police assumed that perhaps
Speaker 6: the parents were the vacation home, or that Brian was mistaken,
Speaker 6: or Brian was confused because he didn't know when he'd
Speaker 6: killed them. He thought it was maybe ten days, two weeks.
Speaker 6: He wasn't sure. He had a very clear memory of
Speaker 6: what happened, but he also said that he wasn't sure
Speaker 6: if he dreamed it or if he imagined it. And
Speaker 6: so he seemed very in some ways, very determined and clear,
Speaker 6: in other ways, very much out of touch. The police
Speaker 6: in Florida made calls to the police in Maryland. Well,
Speaker 6: first they called Brian's home and there was no answer.
Speaker 6: Then they called the local police in Maryland where Brian lived.
Speaker 6: And as you said that we have a young man
Speaker 6: down here who says he's killed his parents, do you
Speaker 6: have a record of an elderly couple, retired couple who
Speaker 6: have been killed? And they said no, not at all,
Speaker 6: but they said they would do a wellness trick anyway,
Speaker 6: just in case. They went to the house and they
Speaker 6: found that actually Brian was telling the truth. He had
Speaker 6: killed his parents. He'd shot them both, and then he
Speaker 6: had immediately stolen the family car and took his dog
Speaker 6: with him and driven. He intended to to drive across
Speaker 6: the borders to Mexico, but he ended up actually, you know,
Speaker 6: kind of going in circles and eventually he picked up
Speaker 6: a hitchhiker, and he was very delusional all this time,
Speaker 6: but he had a revelation. He was at the campsite
Speaker 6: in Portant Joe, Florida for a while, he read the
Speaker 6: King James Bible. He heard a show on the radio
Speaker 6: religious show and had this revelation that he had been
Speaker 6: possessed by the devil and that he needed to turn
Speaker 6: himself over to the police to be forgiven, which is
Speaker 6: what he did. And so that's kind of where where
Speaker 6: the story begins.
Speaker 5: Police when they do the illness check obviously find even
Speaker 5: through the window, the officer can see that there's someone
Speaker 5: sitting in a chair and obviously dead. What is the
Speaker 5: condition of his parents in that home found by police
Speaker 5: at that time in Maryland.
Speaker 6: Well, they've been he shot them. I think it was
Speaker 6: a fifth over a week earlier. And so obviously there
Speaker 6: you know, the bodies and is decomposing and in a
Speaker 6: bad state. But then so is the rest of the house.
Speaker 6: I mean the I begin that the book with a
Speaker 6: description of the scene that the police finds, because the
Speaker 6: house is it's really now I've seen the police photographs,
Speaker 6: it's really a wreck. There's trash, everywhere. It's it looks
Speaker 6: like the home of hoarders, and there's just you know,
Speaker 6: there's food all over the kitchen. It looks like it
Speaker 6: doesn't look lived in, but the fact the parents were
Speaker 6: living there and and her Brand's mother had cancer breast continer.
Speaker 6: She was using an oxygen tech. The television was on
Speaker 6: when the police went in upstairs, that the house was
Speaker 6: not so messy, but there were really strange signs all
Speaker 6: over the house that clearly, you know, something has been
Speaker 6: wrong in this house for a very long time. And
Speaker 6: there was like writing on a TV guide it's had
Speaker 6: to go to how there was a strange kind of
Speaker 6: birthle in the floor in the basement. There were a
Speaker 6: lot of karate prophies in an upstairs bedroom and bullet shells,
Speaker 6: and they found the box for swe off shotguns. So
Speaker 6: they were kind of putting the story together as they
Speaker 6: as they stooded the house and photograph the house and
Speaker 6: converts to the autopsy that this was clearly a house
Speaker 6: where things had not been right for some time, and
Speaker 6: they and they were right.
Speaker 5: You in your book go back and tell the story
Speaker 5: of Brian Anthony beck Told and his parents, George and
Speaker 5: Dorothy tell Us a little bit about who these people
Speaker 5: were and and tell us how they lived.
Speaker 6: The Bechtels were family. The parents that goes into a
Speaker 6: big grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and like many families,
Speaker 6: there was a history of mental illness in the family,
Speaker 6: although it wasn't necessarily called mental illness. You know, there
Speaker 6: was an uncle who wasn't right in their head, and
Speaker 6: you know, people have different euphemisms for it, but clearly
Speaker 6: there was a history of mental illness in the family.
Speaker 6: And the parents married fairly fairly young, and George was
Speaker 6: doing his PhD in electrical engineering, and Dorothy became a
Speaker 6: housewife pretty quickly. And it seems that right from the
Speaker 6: start they.
Speaker 4: Were in this match.
Speaker 6: It seems that George was very distant and cold and
Speaker 6: didn't really seem to be interested in his family or
Speaker 6: didn't really have an ability to show a section was
Speaker 6: a very were drawn kind of person. And because they
Speaker 6: were Catholics, they had a number of children in succession.
Speaker 6: They four children while George was still finishing his PhD
Speaker 6: and then moving around the country as he worked at
Speaker 6: different like he worked at the Weapons Center and then
Speaker 6: he got a job at Martin Marietta in Orlando, Florida,
Speaker 6: and that was a big move up in the world
Speaker 6: for the family, and they moved into a more prosperous
Speaker 6: house and it seemed like things were really kind of
Speaker 6: steppling down. But the dynamic between the parents, George and Dorothy,
Speaker 6: was just getting worse and worse, and they became you know,
Speaker 6: they weren't the most abusive parents, but they certainly began using,
Speaker 6: using their punishing their children, especially George Junior, the older boy,
Speaker 6: and being very physically hands on and neglecting them for
Speaker 6: long periods of time. So they were certainly neglects and abusive.
Speaker 6: And then when the family seemed to be falling apart,
Speaker 6: Dorothy sand she was forty two, she found that she's
Speaker 6: pregnant with Brian, and the last day the family needed
Speaker 6: was another child. They were ill prepared to deal with
Speaker 6: the four children very hat but for some reason, George
Speaker 6: did not want to Swat have an abortion, even though
Speaker 6: she wanted one, and so Brian was more into this,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 4: Very.
Speaker 6: Like hot house, you know, this terrible situation where he
Speaker 6: really didn't have a chance right from the start, you know,
Speaker 6: he was not really welcomed.
Speaker 5: Yes, so he to say he had a dysfunctional family
Speaker 5: life was to say the least, and with siblings much
Speaker 5: older than him, and a couple of the siblings trying
Speaker 5: to get out of the house from this dysfunctional family
Speaker 5: life itself. But there was particular you talk about George Sr.
Speaker 5: Being abusive and cruel to his wife and family, but
Speaker 5: then he had an accident and he quit drinking, and
Speaker 5: then he was even more more aggressive and verbally abusive,
Speaker 5: wasn't he.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And it's interesting because people think again, like you
Speaker 6: tell a narrative and someone gives up drinking, and they
Speaker 6: seem to you know, that she usually the turning point
Speaker 6: and they were car But in fact George seems to
Speaker 6: have been using alcohol to you know, to help him
Speaker 6: and to make him feel more affectionate, to help them sleep.
Speaker 6: And there was three years when he was sort of
Speaker 6: versically drying out from his alcoholism, when he was even colder.
Speaker 6: And then his wife Dorothy got breast cancer and she's
Speaker 6: very sick, and he didn't seem to have very much
Speaker 6: shemverthy towards her at all, And so the dynamics of
Speaker 6: the family descended even further. And yes, I mean one
Speaker 6: of the daughters attempted suicide many times. Both of the
Speaker 6: daughters were in an ad of psychiatric hospital of one
Speaker 6: ran after join a cult. They basically did everything they
Speaker 6: could to get out of this devastatingly abusive family situation,
Speaker 6: and Brian for a while found release in martial arts.
Speaker 6: He joined taking martial arts with and he became very
Speaker 6: close to his martial arts teacher and made a good
Speaker 6: friend there at at the karate studio. And for a
Speaker 6: while it seems as though that was kind of he
Speaker 6: was found a path that was going to be more accepting.
Speaker 6: But after that things really went downhill. He dropped out
Speaker 6: of school, he started using drugs, and really he went
Speaker 6: to college for a while, but then he was on
Speaker 6: probation for a drug offence and then his father stopped
Speaker 6: paying the tuition. So so yeah, things when it seemed
Speaker 6: as though things were getting better, things were getting worse.
Speaker 6: And Brian really didn't know the two older siblings afore.
Speaker 6: They were, you know, fifteen years and seventeen years older
Speaker 6: than him, so they were really far apart. And after
Speaker 6: the older siblings home, Brian was still young, he was
Speaker 6: still a young boy, and he was left at home
Speaker 6: with these older parents who really had no interest in
Speaker 6: him and didn't really want him there. So it's unsurprising
Speaker 6: that his depression became pathological.
Speaker 5: Was any religion an element in this? You talk about
Speaker 5: that he later or soon would say that he was
Speaker 5: possessed by the devil, But how much was religion and
Speaker 5: influence on what religions was he looking at in particular?
Speaker 6: Well, like I said, his parents were Catholic, and they
Speaker 6: seemed to have pretty consistently gone to church regularly at
Speaker 6: various times. But the children didn't have to go to
Speaker 6: church and didn't, you know, unless they wanted to. And
Speaker 6: for a while, one of Brian's sisters, like I said,
Speaker 6: she ran away and joined a cult, kind of strange
Speaker 6: ult in New York called the Forever Family. And one
Speaker 6: of the things that the cult members diod was to
Speaker 6: perform exoricism. And Brian remembers getting a cassette tape from
Speaker 6: his sister recording was exorism that he was sort of
Speaker 6: fascinated by, and he remembers sort of playing them again
Speaker 6: and again and wondering, you know, thinking about the idea
Speaker 6: that someone could have been possessed by the devil. So
Speaker 6: the idea was already kind of floating around in his
Speaker 6: mind from an early time. But then he also became
Speaker 6: He had a girlfriend who was Iranian, and he didn't convert,
Speaker 6: but he learned. He gave up eating pork, and he
Speaker 6: listened to the Quran on the audio tape and it
Speaker 6: became very interested in religion, but he never actually practiced
Speaker 6: any religion himself or felt as though he was a
Speaker 6: Christian until after the time when he believed that he'd
Speaker 6: been told to turn himself in and that he was forgiven.
Speaker 6: So there was certainly a strong religious elements to it,
Speaker 6: and in fact Brian has been religious ever since then,
Speaker 6: although he's len that's one of the things he's learned
Speaker 6: not to talk about in the psychiatric hospitals because generally
Speaker 6: seen as a symptom of mental illness in the hospital.
Speaker 5: So the family life is dysfunctional. But does anyone notice
Speaker 5: his increased, we'll say, departure from sanity. Does anybody notice
Speaker 5: these changes in Brian? And what are some of the
Speaker 5: other things you talked about? Drug use. I've heard the
Speaker 5: theory about marijuana and people vulnerable to schizophrenia and marijuana
Speaker 5: can exacerbate that. But I especially agree with some of
Speaker 5: the drugs that he was taking that could alter his
Speaker 5: sense of reality, which to be PCP. And so he
Speaker 5: was doing often hard drugs and not just chronically smoking.
Speaker 6: Marijuana right how he was And this is you know,
Speaker 6: this is often a pattern in people who have a
Speaker 6: schizophrenic break. I mean, this is around the age of
Speaker 6: sort of late teams to early twenties, when a person
Speaker 6: is already genetically sort of predisposed to schizophonny anyway, And
Speaker 6: in Brian's case, it just seemed like it was a
Speaker 6: loaded gun, really was. He was using a lot of
Speaker 6: marijuana and also everything he can get particular strain of
Speaker 6: PCP called love but that was around DC at the
Speaker 6: time that he was getting hold off. But that was
Speaker 6: a short period of time that he was doing that.
Speaker 6: He got he had a job delivering a pizza and
Speaker 6: he was arrested he coming home from work one day
Speaker 6: and the police found some drugs in his car and
Speaker 6: they his parents sent him to rehab and then Brian
Speaker 6: made a decision, not you know, to give up drone
Speaker 6: the same way that his father made a decision to
Speaker 6: get up drinking. And he didn't do any dress after
Speaker 6: that apart from the medication that he's being to prescribed.
Speaker 6: He hasn't drunkle or done any drugs since then. But
Speaker 6: you're right that that Brian was severely neglected. I mean,
Speaker 6: in other circumstances of people paying attention, they would have
Speaker 6: seen the signs there. But his parents were clearly self
Speaker 6: involved and they had their own problems, very serious problems.
Speaker 6: Occasionally he would be sent to a psychiatric ward or
Speaker 6: put into therapy, but it was always very brief and
Speaker 6: obviously not didn't take their family situation into account. Either
Speaker 6: that or people were kind of foxed by the way
Speaker 6: the family presented themselves. Because his father, George was you know,
Speaker 6: had a PhD. He worked for he was a government scientist.
Speaker 6: He presented very well and a lot of the psychiatrists
Speaker 6: and therapists were intimidated by him. And so basically, when
Speaker 6: things started getting very bad, any parents would have noticed.
Speaker 6: I mean, Brian was doing things like talking on the
Speaker 6: telephone without dialing number first. He was sleeping all day
Speaker 6: and only going out late at night. He had a
Speaker 6: pair of dogs that he spent almost all of his
Speaker 6: time with. He believed that people were following him. He
Speaker 6: constructed a dummy in his addressed it in his own
Speaker 6: clothes and popped it in the window of the house
Speaker 6: so that people so that his enemies would think that
Speaker 6: he was home all the time. And then finally he
Speaker 6: bought a shotgun and was carrying it around with him,
Speaker 6: even in the shower, and his parents all the time
Speaker 6: thought this was they were kind of amused by it.
Speaker 6: According to Brian's sister Date, they thought that he was
Speaker 6: kind of paranoid about outsiders and about external enemies, but
Speaker 6: they didn't seem to think for a moment that they
Speaker 6: themselves might be at risk. So so all the signs
Speaker 6: seemed to have been there from right from the beginning.
Speaker 5: But one of the signs that wasn't there, which having
Speaker 5: interviewed quite a few authors about parricide, is that there was,
Speaker 5: you know, this obvious resentment, and here this story doesn't
Speaker 5: seem to be any build up of that other than
Speaker 5: his disappointment. And again it didn't seem to be you
Speaker 5: didn't write it as resentment. It was disappointment that his
Speaker 5: father didn't pay for tuition after an incident at college,
Speaker 5: so instead of being able to go back, his father
Speaker 5: said no, so he went back and lived at home.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think what I think it was more. Sorry,
Speaker 6: go ahead, No, go ahead, Oh, I was going to
Speaker 6: say that. I think I did a lot of respects
Speaker 6: about parafived and especially schizophrenic children who kill a parents.
Speaker 6: And it seems to be that in a lot of cases,
Speaker 6: the build up is slow and gradual, and there's a
Speaker 6: lot of repression, and so there isn't any overt moments,
Speaker 6: you know, where the father refuses this or denies this,
Speaker 6: or the mother you know, disinherits or you know, the
Speaker 6: parents don't think he can only do anything wrong and
Speaker 6: in fact, or at least not overtly at that particular moment.
Speaker 6: And it's often something very trivial that is that kind
Speaker 6: of pulls the trigger, as it were, so, you know,
Speaker 6: an ordinary kind of disagreement or in this case, Brian
Speaker 6: was trying to get to sleep and was woken up
Speaker 6: by his kind of yelling, and so in some ways,
Speaker 6: it just seems like the last straw in a situation
Speaker 6: that has been going on and perhaps seems like it
Speaker 6: could go on indefinitely. And the clime often takes place
Speaker 6: when the parents are going about their ordinary business, like case,
Speaker 6: the father was eating a meal, whether was watching television.
Speaker 6: There doesn't seem to be any you know, a big
Speaker 6: fight or it's not a kind of dramatic climax to
Speaker 6: a story. It's just something that's in the that might
Speaker 6: be the dramatic climax in the mind of the child,
Speaker 6: but not overtly on the surface to anyone else. And
Speaker 6: I think that's one of the things that distinguishes paraslides
Speaker 6: where the perpetrator is gizophrenny from ordinary parasides.
Speaker 5: I guess you talk about the that there was no
Speaker 5: clear trigger that night. So what you just mentioned that
Speaker 5: his father was yelling. What was his father yelling about?
Speaker 5: And then what happened?
Speaker 6: Well, Brian, he hadn't been able to sleep, and he'd
Speaker 6: been staying quite sure how long possibly or we and
Speaker 6: krying to sleep, pasting around, you know, getting incredibly frustrated
Speaker 6: and impatient, and the way that he remembers it, it
Speaker 6: was like a kind of dream. But he said that
Speaker 6: he finally managed to fall asleep and a moment later
Speaker 6: he was broken up by his father yelling in the
Speaker 6: kitchen downstairs, which is you know, it was early in
Speaker 6: the morning. His father seems, was yelling while he was
Speaker 6: having his breakfast. Brian, you know, whatever he yelled, it
Speaker 6: was something completely as inconsequential or Brian remembers this the
Speaker 6: words my brother Walter, and it was like that. It
Speaker 6: was just like a last straw for Brian. He just
Speaker 6: he simply couldn't take it. And he when he talks
Speaker 6: about the event to the police, and he said that
Speaker 6: it like it was predetermined, or like something he was
Speaker 6: watching on television, or like something that happened in a dream,
Speaker 6: or like it wasn't him. He wasn't the one doing it.
Speaker 6: And when he at the end of the murder, he
Speaker 6: felt he had a moment when he felt that his
Speaker 6: feet were not touching the ground. So it seems to
Speaker 6: be a very surreal, delusional experience where absolute extremes of
Speaker 6: torment and that's when the psychotic great really occurs.
Speaker 5: And just for people listening, he had not been under
Speaker 5: the influence of drugs for almost three years at that point, correct.
Speaker 6: That's right. Yeah, he'd given up drugs and had given
Speaker 6: up drinking, so he was but he hadn't been on
Speaker 6: any medications either, so he was purely psychotic.
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Speaker 5: That's friends without the are best fiends. Now, Makita, we
Speaker 5: talked about that he was in this. He said later
Speaker 5: he wasn't sure what was real. This happened, this occurred,
Speaker 5: He took off, he thought he was going to Texas,
Speaker 5: but wound up in Florida. Then he turned himself in.
Speaker 5: So what happens with this? You talk in the book
Speaker 5: about how many the misconception of how many people will
Speaker 5: be deemed not credibly responsible or as previously insane, and
Speaker 5: how many people are even afforded that kind of defense
Speaker 5: in trials. In reality, tell us what happens after his
Speaker 5: arrest with him legally in the courts.
Speaker 6: Well, he's transported back to Maryland. So as soon as
Speaker 6: he turns it stuff and he's in the custom, they're
Speaker 6: a police. And he told me about this transport going
Speaker 6: back from from Florida to Maryland, which really shouldn't have
Speaker 6: taken that long, but it took I think three weeks
Speaker 6: because he was you know, the courts outsourced to a
Speaker 6: private transportation company who took who went you know, various
Speaker 6: places Mississippian, Vermond, and various other places. It was a
Speaker 6: really long journey. But he was put in in custody
Speaker 6: and right away his sister's got him a lawyer, and
Speaker 6: right away the lawyer realized that that Brian was was
Speaker 6: was clearly insane, he told me. And Brian was also
Speaker 6: seen by a state forensic psychiatrist who also determined that
Speaker 6: he was suffering from power to schizophrenia. And and so
Speaker 6: because of that, he wasn't a defendent psychiatrist wasn't even
Speaker 6: called in. So with the family history and Brian's and
Speaker 6: psychological history and his actions and the record of his
Speaker 6: actions and words after the crime, it seemed very clear
Speaker 6: to everyone that he was suffering from paradis upon it
Speaker 6: and had been for some time, and he was undiagnosed, unmedicated.
Speaker 6: And this is this is not as common as people
Speaker 6: seem to think, and it's certainly not an easy way out.
Speaker 6: In fact, I don't know what the statistic is now,
Speaker 6: but while I was writing the book, it was less
Speaker 6: There was less than one percent of cases that people
Speaker 6: are found not come responsible, and which is the the
Speaker 6: Mariland version of criminally insane. And in those cases, twenty
Speaker 6: six percent have previous the psychiatric history. So it's it's
Speaker 6: very rare and probably impossible if someone suddenly decide, well,
Speaker 6: I'll use this infarmasy defenses and get out of jail
Speaker 6: free card and have a kind of cushy time in
Speaker 6: a hospital rather than going to prison. But in Brian's case,
Speaker 6: it was very clear from the start that he was
Speaker 6: mentally ill, and he was sent to Clifton Perkins, which
Speaker 6: is Maryland's maximum security forensic max from security hospital now
Speaker 6: presumably for treatments until he was well enough to well.
Speaker 6: He actually didn't go to court. He waived his right
Speaker 6: to trial because he was found incompetent stand trial. So
Speaker 6: he began the long process of what should have been
Speaker 6: a journey to recovery to nineteen ninety two. And now
Speaker 6: it's twenty twenty one and Brian is still in Perkins.
Speaker 6: He's been there twenty seven years. And in the book
Speaker 6: I explained the long journey that he's taken through the hospital.
Speaker 6: In fact, he's been there longer than most doctors and
Speaker 6: many of the other patients now, and just the difficulties,
Speaker 6: the setbacks, the medication, the different doctors, the different psychiatrists,
Speaker 6: the frustration. Brian believes, and I'll give him credit for this,
Speaker 6: It makes sense to me that he was extremely mentally
Speaker 6: ill at the time he killed his parents, and for
Speaker 6: a long time before that and sometime afterwards, but he
Speaker 6: was restored to sanity not too long after. Brian believes
Speaker 6: it was when he was when he was when he
Speaker 6: turned himself in, he had a revelation or religious revelation
Speaker 6: and turned himself in, and he still believed that that's
Speaker 6: what sured him. He certainly hasn't been dangerous or paranoid
Speaker 6: or or to pathologically ill for the last you know,
Speaker 6: I would say for a long time, for many years.
Speaker 6: But he's still at the hospit And that's what fascinated
Speaker 6: me about his story, because it's been I mean, he
Speaker 6: calls it it's like he describes it as playing and
Speaker 6: playing musical chairs with the invisible man. That having to
Speaker 6: go to all these hopes and being blindfold and not
Speaker 6: knowing what to say. The language keeps changing, the hospital
Speaker 6: job and keeps changing, the doctors keeps changing. He's been
Speaker 6: so desperate at times that he actually decided that he
Speaker 6: would prefer to be in prison or dead rather than
Speaker 6: at the hospital. And that was when he escaped. He
Speaker 6: managed to He took a hostage and escape, hoping that
Speaker 6: either he'd be shot by the police and killed, which
Speaker 6: would be preferable, or that he would be sent to prison,
Speaker 6: which would be preferable, and he was actually shot and
Speaker 6: returned to Perkins. I don't think Bryan's is a typical case,
Speaker 6: but nor do I think it's a unique case. And
Speaker 6: I wanted to draw attention to the right of people
Speaker 6: like Brian who are kept in psychiatric hospitals indefinitely. And
Speaker 6: there are other people as well as Brian who told
Speaker 6: me that they would prefer to be in prison, And
Speaker 6: in fact, one patient in the hospital told me that
Speaker 6: a time he permitted he attacked a nurse and was
Speaker 6: sent to prison and wanted to stay there, petitioned to
Speaker 6: court to allow him to stay there. And there are
Speaker 6: a number of reasons for this, and whither I think
Speaker 6: is that there's more dignity they feel was more dignity
Speaker 6: in prison, that you're not constantly scrutinized, that every action
Speaker 6: and word isn't seen as a symptom of something. You're
Speaker 6: seen as a free agent who makes choices. He makes
Speaker 6: decisions like everyone else, not someone who's acting symptoms of
Speaker 6: a disease. But also because there's a determinate time that
Speaker 6: you're going to be there, even if it's life. You know,
Speaker 6: it's better than not knowing. So if you'll get thirty
Speaker 6: years or forty years in prison, at least there's an
Speaker 6: end to it. And so Brian and people in his
Speaker 6: situation there's no end to it, and and there's there's
Speaker 6: there seems to be no way out, and and so
Speaker 6: there's and yet this hope is constantly deferred because theoretically,
Speaker 6: you know, he could walk out tomorrow if the doctors
Speaker 6: decided he was cured. So it's this this terrible limbo
Speaker 6: where you're not a criminal, you're not criminally responsible, but
Speaker 6: then you're not allowed to leave the hospital and you
Speaker 6: don't seem to be ill, but you're often medicated against
Speaker 6: your will and you're not violent, but because you've committed
Speaker 6: an act of violence in the past, but it's assumed
Speaker 6: that you're going to commit nack to violence again. So
Speaker 6: there are all these kind of double vinds that people
Speaker 6: get trapped in. And I think people have this conception
Speaker 6: about what it's like to be in this kind of
Speaker 6: psychiatric hospital. I think people think it's either either like
Speaker 6: one of those dungeons that hand of electors in and
Speaker 6: silence of the lambs, where everyone you know is completely
Speaker 6: crazy and straight jackets, or they think it's kind of
Speaker 6: easy and pussy and you get great food and or
Speaker 6: you have to run a couch and talk to the
Speaker 6: doctor now and then and it's an easy way out.
Speaker 6: But insight it's this kind of Envines experience at least,
Speaker 6: it's this limbo where you know, it's like neither one
Speaker 6: place or another, and it's really a sort of lost
Speaker 6: world really that people don't hear about very much.
Speaker 5: You talk about how it is that no matter what,
Speaker 5: they go through the process of maximum security and then
Speaker 5: the behavior is judged, and then they get a reassessment, evaluation,
Speaker 5: and then they go to medium security, more privileges and
Speaker 5: benefit to being in medium security. Again, your behavior is
Speaker 5: one of the conditions, the main condition, and then the
Speaker 5: minimum security, and from minimum security, the doctors and people
Speaker 5: will talk about that will be the eventual pathway to
Speaker 5: release the discharge from this hospital. But you explain that
Speaker 5: no matter how optimistic Brian got and with progress and
Speaker 5: getting through those security those security requirements from maximum the minimum,
Speaker 5: that there was ways that they assessed him as still
Speaker 5: being not able to ever get near this discharge where
Speaker 5: this led to incredible frustration and highly contributed to this escape. Obviously,
Speaker 5: some of the things that you talk about being used
Speaker 5: in the psychiatrist to be able to deny them further
Speaker 5: progress and these security ratings is the idea of religion
Speaker 5: and the idea of that. Brian did not want to
Speaker 5: take any of these psych or the antipsychotic drugs. So
Speaker 5: tell us how those two things contributed to him not
Speaker 5: making the progress that he would have.
Speaker 6: Liked, right. I mean, you think that you get to
Speaker 6: venom security and then the next step is housing in
Speaker 6: the community or community facility or you know, conditional relief.
Speaker 6: But in fact, as Brian learned, you can go back
Speaker 6: down the track again, back down to maximum. And he's
Speaker 6: been up and down that track many many times. And yeah,
Speaker 6: two of the things that were held against him fiscal
Speaker 6: at first when he was at the hospital. It wasn't
Speaker 6: there was no pressure to or you could choose not
Speaker 6: to take medication. Was it was up to you, although
Speaker 6: you were strongly encouraged to do so as the psychiatrist
Speaker 6: felt that it was appropriate. And Brian was strongly encouraged
Speaker 6: to go on antipsychotics which most of the other patients weren't.
Speaker 6: He didn't see that he needed them. He saw the
Speaker 6: way that patients were in front of the television. The
Speaker 6: drugs made other patients incontinent and impotent, and he didn't
Speaker 6: want to be in that situation, and eventually that was
Speaker 6: held against him. The only way to progress out of
Speaker 6: the hospital was to be directable, meaning you do what
Speaker 6: you're told and you follow the rules. And if the
Speaker 6: rules were you have to be on antipsychotics, then eventually
Speaker 6: he realized that that's what he had to do. And
Speaker 6: you know, he talks about period of years when he said,
Speaker 6: you know, I slept in a chair from from two
Speaker 6: thousand and two to two thousand and five or something
Speaker 6: of these missing years when he was on such a
Speaker 6: heavy days of eventI psychotics that he remembers nothing at
Speaker 6: those years. He was sleeping for years, and he was impotent,
Speaker 6: He wasn't continent. It's just and I think I think
Speaker 6: anyone can understand why one would resist you going on medication.
Speaker 6: And so he then he'd have he had an understanding,
Speaker 6: sympathetic doctor who gradually allowed him to come off medication.
Speaker 6: He was making progress. That doctor left another doctor came
Speaker 6: who wanted him to be on medication, and he was
Speaker 6: back at the beginning again. So it was these were
Speaker 6: things that have contributed to him acting out, attempting to escape,
Speaker 6: and then later on attacking of social worker. But another
Speaker 6: thing that was held against him was his religion. We
Speaker 6: don't talk about it very much with Brian is religious
Speaker 6: and he believes that he was being he was saved,
Speaker 6: but he found that whenever he talked about that in
Speaker 6: front of his doctors, because he didn't belong to any
Speaker 6: particular church, because he'd come to his own understanding of
Speaker 6: the Bible from reading it, that was seen as religiosity,
Speaker 6: a side effect of schizophrenia, and it was held against him,
Speaker 6: and it was seen as a sign of his mental illness,
Speaker 6: not a sign that he was interested in the Bible
Speaker 6: or in the religion. This is it would be for
Speaker 6: someone on the outside. And as he pointed out to me,
Speaker 6: you know, there are people who have all kinds of
Speaker 6: what you might think of as bizarre religious beliefs. There
Speaker 6: are people who believe in snake handling and voodoo, and
Speaker 6: as long as you're part of an established church, it's acceptable.
Speaker 6: But because Brian wasn't part of an established church. He'd
Speaker 6: just come to these decisions on his own. It was
Speaker 6: seen as a symptom of his pathology. So eventually he
Speaker 6: stopped talking about it, and then that was used against him.
Speaker 6: The doctor said that he was hiding his illness while
Speaker 6: not talking about religion. So he really couldn't win. And
Speaker 6: I really sympathized with his frustration. I mean the idea
Speaker 6: that you know, everything that you do could be used
Speaker 6: against you if you're not if you're not romantic ill already,
Speaker 6: I think they could drive you that way.
Speaker 5: In this time period, Who did he have contact with?
Speaker 5: Who was his support system? I hate to use that word,
Speaker 5: because that's the word they used the psychiatric psychiatric department.
Speaker 5: But what were the people there that were still behind them?
Speaker 5: What were siblings were still there? What friends were still
Speaker 5: in contact?
Speaker 6: Other than yeah, Originally he he because he was so
Speaker 6: much younger than his siblings, he didn't really have much
Speaker 6: contact with his older siblings. And you know, if someone
Speaker 6: killed their parents, it's not it's a very difficult time
Speaker 6: for the family. But two of his sisters stood by
Speaker 6: him and were very encouraging and supportive and helped him
Speaker 6: get a lawyer and helped him get diagnosed, and one
Speaker 6: of his sisters eventually moved out of state and has
Speaker 6: since passed away. The other sister was supportive of Brian
Speaker 6: for a long time, but she moved to a different
Speaker 6: state too. He was in touch with his friends from
Speaker 6: the karate center and his karate teacher. But you know,
Speaker 6: twenty seven years, people die, they move away, they have
Speaker 6: families of their own, and Brian is kind of left.
Speaker 6: He has contact with his sister who's helped him out
Speaker 6: and has oh take him into a home should he
Speaker 6: be released, So he does have contact on the outside world,
Speaker 6: and he does have support. And I've been supportive to him.
Speaker 6: I mean, he has former patients who are friends of
Speaker 6: his two who helps him out. But after being in
Speaker 6: hospital for so long and being away from the community
Speaker 6: for so long, being away from his family, and having
Speaker 6: caused this great division in his family, it's and you know,
Speaker 6: the hospital is kind of in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 6: it's difficult to get to, it's those looking hours of
Speaker 6: odd it's difficult for people to visit. So over time
Speaker 6: he's really lost that network that he would originally had,
Speaker 6: and that too, is healed against him now because he
Speaker 6: doesn't have a strong support network on the outside, then
Speaker 6: that scene is another factor against risk factor to him
Speaker 6: causing more violence when he is he ever leave. So
Speaker 6: it's really you know, it's really like a catch twenty
Speaker 6: two in so many situations.
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Speaker 5: Now let's talk about February tenth, twenty and fourteen. His struggle.
Speaker 5: There is you chronicle that there are so many times
Speaker 5: when he's down, he's depressed, he's in the fog, he say,
Speaker 5: he's trying to fight the fog of these these antipsychotic
Speaker 5: drugs that he just doesn't want to, you know, want
Speaker 5: to have in a system. Period. And there's times when
Speaker 5: he works out and feels stronger and feels mentally more able.
Speaker 5: And now this February tenth, twenty and fourteen is a
Speaker 5: guardianship here. How does he get to this point and
Speaker 5: tell us what this is and what it represents for him?
Speaker 6: Well, there were there were two times that Brian has
Speaker 6: been support to defend his case in front of a jury,
Speaker 6: and the guardians that this one in two in twenty
Speaker 6: fourteen was actually his a relief hearing. I think that
Speaker 6: the guardianship was an earlier hearing when he had cancer
Speaker 6: and he decided that he didn't want to be treated
Speaker 6: for cancer. He wanted to be allowed to die. He
Speaker 6: was so unhappy, he was so frustrated. He and he thought,
Speaker 6: he realized, I mean, it's impossible to commit suicide and possible.
Speaker 6: Everything is suicide proof. He thought this was a way out.
Speaker 6: It was not going to be an easy death, but
Speaker 6: this is finally a way out. So he said that
Speaker 6: he didn't want to be treated for his cancer. Well,
Speaker 6: the hospital wouldn't allow that. They felt that he was
Speaker 6: not at he was not capable of making that decision
Speaker 6: from wealth, and they insisted that they were the cost
Speaker 6: of itself became his guardian and to do that they
Speaker 6: had to have a hearing in court, and Brian defended himself.
Speaker 6: He acted as his own attorney. And you know, I've
Speaker 6: heard the transcript. I've listened to the transcript. He did
Speaker 6: a really fantastic job. He argued his case very articulately.
Speaker 6: He tried to show that he was in his right mind.
Speaker 6: He was rational, he knew what cancer was, he knew
Speaker 6: what was in store for him. He end dissipations of it.
Speaker 6: He had, you know, he's read up on it, but
Speaker 6: there was a technicality and the judge basically it was
Speaker 6: a tongue jewelry. And then after that the judge decided
Speaker 6: for the hospital. And it seems to be that the
Speaker 6: judiciary will defer to to the psychiatrists in all cases,
Speaker 6: because even if someone presents really well, like Brian, I
Speaker 6: think that most judges and perhaps the most people would think, well,
Speaker 6: this guy seems fine. You seem to articulate, he seems intelligent.
Speaker 6: But I don't know. I'm not a specialist. It's a psychiatrist.
Speaker 6: They really know, they know what's going on under the surface,
Speaker 6: and I think that's really wrong. I think, you know,
Speaker 6: the point of a jury trial is that you judge
Speaker 6: for yourself. And if someone appears to understand what's going on,
Speaker 6: they haven't caused violence for many, many years, if they
Speaker 6: seem intelligent and rational, then I don't think judge nor
Speaker 6: jury should defer to the judgment of psychiatrists. But that's
Speaker 6: what happens in both cases.
Speaker 5: It was fascinating and that, unlike a criminal court, Brian
Speaker 5: was afforded less right as far as I can see
Speaker 5: in terms of this was a hung trial. It was
Speaker 5: a mistrial, but the judge ruled in favor of the hospital.
Speaker 5: It's like the tie goes to the hospital. I'd never
Speaker 5: heard of that before, so that was unusual, but also
Speaker 5: that it's disturbing in as much as that no matter
Speaker 5: what he said and how articulated he was to defend himself,
Speaker 5: and he was probably correct in that he was better prepared,
Speaker 5: having knowledge of his charts and his diagnosis, than a
Speaker 5: lawyer might be prepared to present the same argument. But
Speaker 5: they presented, the prosecution defended presented psychiatric witnesses that used
Speaker 5: things like personality antisocial personality disorder, which basically, as you write,
Speaker 5: would label him a psychopath and then hence incurable no
Speaker 5: matter what.
Speaker 6: Right and and them and yeah, I think you know,
Speaker 6: everyone advises you not to act as your own attorney,
Speaker 6: but I think in Brian's case he did the right thing,
Speaker 6: certainly because yes, he did know it was about his
Speaker 6: case and about his sanity and his stogolophy. And if
Speaker 6: he was just sitting there with his lawyer doing all
Speaker 6: the work, the jury wouldn't get a real sense of
Speaker 6: him and who he was and how intelligent he was
Speaker 6: and how stable he was, and that's what he wanted
Speaker 6: to show to the jury. So I think he did
Speaker 6: the right thing in representing himself and he really, he
Speaker 6: really did a good job of it, and he really
Speaker 6: I mean the testories from the psychiatrist, they had a
Speaker 6: lot of psychiatrists who never met Brian but had been
Speaker 6: brought in to test And yes, because like because his
Speaker 6: risk factor was high, meaning that you know, he'd committed
Speaker 6: a violent crime, that he had drug use when he
Speaker 6: was younger, a number of other things. But he can't
Speaker 6: probably change he can't do anything about it. Turns out
Speaker 6: that his risk as re offending is high. There's nothing
Speaker 6: he can do about that. He can't go back and
Speaker 6: change his childhood. He can't go back and change what
Speaker 6: happened to him. Nothing's going to change that. So yeah,
Speaker 6: he's kind of trapped in the situation where the psychiatry
Speaker 6: can simply be used against him. And it's kind of
Speaker 6: baffling to me why they weren't give him a break.
Speaker 6: And I think it's because he's because he's struggled. He's
Speaker 6: been driven to extremes. He has tried to escape, he
Speaker 6: has attacked people and to me, it's just behaving the
Speaker 6: way that anyone in that situation will behave is like
Speaker 6: O's violence towards others and not an example of his pathology.
Speaker 6: But I think everyone's afraid that if he's released then
Speaker 6: because it's another crime, then it's on them. Nobody wants
Speaker 6: to hold be responsible. And I understand that fear. I
Speaker 6: mean that happens with a lot of people who are
Speaker 6: commntally ill, and there are problems with you know, people
Speaker 6: not getting support in the community. But I think each
Speaker 6: case is different, and I don't think Brian is one
Speaker 6: of those people. I think he's just trapped. He's kind
Speaker 6: of trapped in this, like I said, in this horrible limbo.
Speaker 5: Again, it was disturbing a little bit because unlike a
Speaker 5: criminal case, they the prospecutor released information about the murder
Speaker 5: of his parents, because again, he's in this no win
Speaker 5: situation where no matter what, there's that past murderous behavior
Speaker 5: or the escape, there's when you if he's going to
Speaker 5: leak that to this jury that he's killed his family.
Speaker 6: In fact, the judge told them the joy that they
Speaker 6: could only use information that came out in the trial.
Speaker 6: They weren't supposed to use any other information at all.
Speaker 6: And at one point a doctor says that, like I
Speaker 6: just says that Brian has a problem with breaking the rules.
Speaker 6: And Brian hasn't broken rules for a long time. So
Speaker 6: he said, well, give me an example of breaking the rules.
Speaker 6: And she said, well, murdering your parents is an example
Speaker 6: of breaking the rules. Now, you know, that should have
Speaker 6: been actually an objection from this trial right there, but
Speaker 6: it was it was simply overlooked. So and even then
Speaker 6: it seems like most of the jury were on his side.
Speaker 6: I think there was once you hold out from hen
Speaker 6: and then again it was a hungarian again the judge
Speaker 6: decided against him.
Speaker 5: It's interesting to despite his progress with psychiatrists and with
Speaker 5: his behavior yet and to the point where he was
Speaker 5: actually released for you say, fourteen different two hour passes
Speaker 5: without incident. He always thought that these things were going
Speaker 5: to be accumulated in his favor to show to demonstrate
Speaker 5: his lack of violentdencies or did it ensure his safe
Speaker 5: release in the community. But that was not to be,
Speaker 5: was it.
Speaker 6: No, And the fourteen visits outside the hospital were a
Speaker 6: really long time ago, and you think they were that
Speaker 6: was like before the year two thousands, so, you know,
Speaker 6: twenty years ago, and he thought at that time, you know,
Speaker 6: he's getting close to release. He's been a lad out
Speaker 6: in the community safely. And yet after the escape account,
Speaker 6: it seems like nothing could go his way. And he'd
Speaker 6: been in there so long that you know, things would
Speaker 6: be improving, then there'd be another change of regime, another
Speaker 6: CEO or another clinical director, or a different different medications
Speaker 6: would come in, or a different kind of psychiatric fashions
Speaker 6: or even diagnoses and power it's so funny, isn't even
Speaker 6: a diagnosis anymore. And it seems as though every time
Speaker 6: he was making progress, there'd be some systemic change, meant
Speaker 6: that he was like right back at the beginning again,
Speaker 6: even down to things like the sort of language that
Speaker 6: you have to use to get to get the doors
Speaker 6: to open. And because he's because he's maintained his dignity,
Speaker 6: because he has no ties to the community, and because
Speaker 6: he has troubles jumping through hoops just for the sake
Speaker 6: of it, I think it's all counted against him. And
Speaker 6: you know, I agree that he'd committed a terrible crime.
Speaker 6: But if we're going to say that a person is
Speaker 6: not responsible for the crime, then we also have to
Speaker 6: treat them like someone who's not responsible instead of punishing them,
Speaker 6: which is is what's happening with Brian.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's yeah. It's very interesting to think that he
Speaker 5: escaped after it wasn't that things were going swimmingly, and
Speaker 5: then it was after sat back, after setback, and he
Speaker 5: thought his situation was futile. To be fair, I think
Speaker 5: he felt it was futile, and I don't think that
Speaker 5: he was deluded in that thinking at that point when
Speaker 5: he escaped and really set himself back even further. But
Speaker 5: he was in that particular situation. It wasn't like he
Speaker 5: wasn't at wits end at that time when he contemplated
Speaker 5: that right.
Speaker 6: And I think it was a rational decision. I think
Speaker 6: it's very hard to know what we were do in
Speaker 6: those circumstances, but I can imagine behaving like that. I
Speaker 6: don't think it was the spermamental illness that you become
Speaker 6: so hopeless and frustrated that you're you're willing to risk
Speaker 6: your life to get out of there.
Speaker 5: It was fascinating that he thought prison would be a
Speaker 5: much better deal, and then he went to those lengths
Speaker 5: and they returned them right back to Perkins once again
Speaker 5: and went back to maximum security, and as you right,
Speaker 5: went right back to admissions. And if he thought it
Speaker 5: was bad that before, it was much worse after taking
Speaker 5: hostages and creating all the trouble that he did for
Speaker 5: everybody at that hospital.
Speaker 6: In me right, right, yeah, I mean, he thought, well,
Speaker 6: they couldn't do any there's nothing else that could do
Speaker 6: to him. You know, the worst, the worst comes to
Speaker 6: the worst, he'll get sent back to Perkins again, and
Speaker 6: he won't be any worse off. Well, he did get
Speaker 6: sent back to Perkins, and he was worse off because
Speaker 6: there was this Now he has this legacy of acting
Speaker 6: out violent behavior, and he's he's putting restraints, he's refused
Speaker 6: privileges and all kinds of things about him that he
Speaker 6: didn't anticipate. Those things can always get worse. I mean,
Speaker 6: when I was asking him a lot about this book,
Speaker 6: whether you know, whether he thought it would help him
Speaker 6: or hurt him. I really didn't want to, you know,
Speaker 6: to do anything that would hurt his case. And he said,
Speaker 6: there's nothing they can do. You know, they they've done
Speaker 6: everything they can. There's nothing they can do to me.
Speaker 6: They haven't already done and will help him and not
Speaker 6: be used against him in any way.
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't count on that, but I mean again,
Speaker 5: he seems to be just in a place where they
Speaker 5: can't do much more, and he has been subjected to
Speaker 5: everything that they had given to him. Luckily he had
Speaker 5: the option not to as one doctor recommended that he'd
Speaker 5: be given shock treatment and he flatly refused that. So
Speaker 5: it's an incredible story of his plight in the You know,
Speaker 5: it seemed too that this hearing seemed very much like
Speaker 5: a parole hearing, very much like it depended on the compliance.
Speaker 5: It would dependent that you'd write about so many people
Speaker 5: that were released from this hospital that maybe even were
Speaker 5: well not maybe we're still experiencing symptoms of their diagnosed
Speaker 5: mental illness, and yet they were released because they were compliant.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot very very important. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 6: a keyword. Compliance. It still of means whatever they want
Speaker 6: it to mean, but but it's it's certainly one of
Speaker 6: the magic words that will get the daughter work.
Speaker 5: Before I let you go, what what is the situation
Speaker 5: with Brian now in terms of I know what're not
Speaker 5: going to be getting released anytime soon, But what is
Speaker 5: the situa current situation for him, how's he doing well?
Speaker 6: He's he's on a decent ward. I think it's a
Speaker 6: minimum security and he he has well. COVID was a
Speaker 6: big problem because they were locked down for a real
Speaker 6: time and they still can't have visits, but they can
Speaker 6: have like scopes visits, and he's things are not so bad.
Speaker 6: Like he's in a situation where he can he can
Speaker 6: have coffee, he can have he can he he would
Speaker 6: be able to have visits if if they were so
Speaker 6: allowing visit so and it's been so long since his
Speaker 6: last court date that he's thinking about. You know, then
Speaker 6: if he's not released soon or if things aren't progressed,
Speaker 6: then he might have the opportunity to go back to
Speaker 6: court again. And that's always a possibility. But you know,
Speaker 6: I think he's he's this writing the book and has
Speaker 6: been a really interesting experience for me and for him.
Speaker 6: So it's at least a little bit of a difference
Speaker 6: in his life in this very tedious life.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you so much, Makeda, coming and
Speaker 5: talking about a couple found slain after a family murder.
Speaker 5: I know that you have written other books for those
Speaker 5: people that would like to check out check out your
Speaker 5: other true crime books and your unique perspective on with those.
Speaker 5: There's an Amazon page. But also you have a website.
Speaker 5: Tell us about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have a website. It's just my name Makita
Speaker 6: Brockman dot com and there's links to all my books
Speaker 6: and the you know, I am interested in truth crime.
Speaker 6: I have a book about an unexplained death that came
Speaker 6: out a couple of years ago, a book about my
Speaker 6: work in a maximum security prison. So it is true clime,
Speaker 6: but it's a kind of a different take on true
Speaker 6: crime than perhaps people are used to. But yeah, everything
Speaker 6: can be found there and more information about me and
Speaker 6: my work and so on. Well, thank you for having
Speaker 6: me down. It was very interesting to talk to you.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 5: Thank you, it's been amazing. Thank you so much. A
Speaker 5: couple found slain after a family murder. Makita Brotman, thank
Speaker 5: you so much. You have a great evening. Good night, Thanks,
Speaker 5: good night,