Luckily, it doesn’t happen often, but I have represented a couple serial killers.  People ask me:  “What are they really like?”

Well, they’re like most of us—unfortunately.  With a few differences, of course.  I remember defending a guy named Joe several years ago.  He was accused of four rape cases and then the prosecutors got around to charging him with murder—several of them.

He was a young guy, in his thirties, and had worked as a part time car mechanic for a living.   He would generally pick up young girls who were alone on the streets.  His usual method was to talk them up a little and then try to get them into his car.

After he was convicted of all four rapes, he started to confess to the first of several murders.  They were some of the most gruesome I’d ever heard.  He’d taken one woman far out into the country, threatened her with a knife, stabbed her  to death in the chest—and then raped her.  He followed another woman home and when she wouldn’t have sex with him, killed her with a shotgun and proceeded to shoot her children as well.  A really nice guy.

I remember going to the jail to interview him.  The cells were small, made of concrete, and had a plastic table with two plastic chairs in each one.  He had spent several months there waiting for his trials.  The jail food isn’t good and he had started to gain weight.  He had an arrogant attitude about the prosecutors and their evidence, saying he could explain everything to a jury.

Like most criminals I’ve worked with, he had a personality disorder—to say the least.  Some of us are neurotic, that is we take on responsibility for people and things we don’t need to do.  Most criminals are the opposite—they blame everyone for their problems and don’t take responsibility for anything, even their crimes.

Joe fit the pattern exactly and told me repeatedly about how misunderstood he was and how the world was trying to screw him all the time.

Then, during one of our conversations, I looked up at him and my breath caught in my throat.  I saw a human sitting across the plastic desk from me and he talked like a human, but there wasn’t any human being inside the body.  I felt like a vacuum had sucked all the air out of the small room.  He didn’t have a conscience and I saw that clearly for the first time.  I didn’t feel physically threatened, but it was worse.  I was spiritually frightened to be in the presence of something evil.

The court psychologists tell me they use the terms sociopaths and psychopaths interchangeably.  To me, it didn’t make any difference.  The person sitting before me was a sociopath with no conscience.

The post In a Room With a Serial Killer appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

satanic cult.

Could this be true?

In my work as a Public Defender, I’ve represented many serial killers in the past.  Here are some ideas I have on the Barbour case:

1.  Miranda Barbour has been charged with murder of a young man who she lured through a Craigslist ad and stabbed him to death while her new husband choked the victim.  The police traced the victim through his last phone call to Ms. Barbour.  Therefore, the police should certainly take her claims seriously and investigate.

2.  All the serial killers that I’ve worked with have been men.  I find it hard to believe that Ms. Barbour, who is female and only 19, would actually be a serial killer.

3.  I represented a man, named Don, who was convicted a a rape charge.  Once he got to prison and the media forgot about him, he started confessing, one by one, to several brutal murders—of which he was convicted of everyone.  He was a serial killer who wanted the attention.  Also, he was serious about his “accomplishments.”  Miranda Barbour sounds more flippant and too excited to tell everything all at once.

4.  Which leads to my last point:  Many people, weird as it sounds, like the attention that being a serious, serial criminal brings to a person.   Especially when you mention satanic cults, etc.

5.  I think Miranda Barbour is faking it.  She may be guilty of the crime for which she’s accused now, but I’m doubtful about the others.

The post Miranda Barbour– Craigslist Killer?? appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

Trying to convey to readers that experience through the use of my words is tougher than it may seem. On the one hand, I could simply “take a photo” and give the reader a detailed description of what I saw. It might sound like this: “He had thin blonde hair combed over his head, green eyes, a long sloping nose with wide nostrils. Two ears on either side of his head framed a mouth in the middle with thick lips…”

Kind of boring.

So, my job becomes one of distilling all the sensory data I received into a few words that will convey something about the person in front of me. It’s more than a photo because as a human, I have a reaction to the meeting while a camera doesn’t. That gives me an opportunity to filter or expand certain impressions as they affected me. One of the questions I often get about representing criminals is, “What’s he really like?”

A photographic description would tell one story about what they’re like but the person asking wants more. They want to know, through my interpretation as another human, what is he like.

As a writer, I have to pick certain details about the killer and tell these to the reader. The trick is to pick just a few that together, convey a feeling or impression that I’ve received by being present with the person. Because I don’t have pages to go on and on describing the character, I have to choose the details carefully and not include too many.

Let’s say I want to convey the distrust/nervousness the killer feels about everything. Maybe I’d write: “Low brows hooded green eyes that darted between me and and the door of the room. The fingers on his left hand squeezed together and tapped on the table while I told him of my qualifications as a lawyer. He was missing the ring finger on that hand.” Okay…not great but you notice how I left out most of everything about his physical appearance. Why? It’s really not important nor does it help to give any sense of the character’s inner feelings.

As readers, none of us want to be introduced to a character like reading an encyclopedia. Our own brains are fully capable of filling-in the picture of a character an author is drawing.

The process reminds me (never actually been there myself) of an LSD trip–a few drops will explode into the brain, creating unexpected colors, sounds, and sensations. My job as a writer is to take a few drops of detail from the killer sitting before me and deposit those in the brain of the reader. If I’m doing my job well and the magic is working, the reader will supply the necessary details and fill-in what I’ve left out. Through their imagination they’ll create a character far better than I ever could as a writer.

The post Writing, Crime, and LSD appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

I’ve worked as a criminal defense lawyer for years, representing just about everyone you can imagine. One particular serial killer stands out.

I actually represented him on a series of criminal sexual assaults, the modern way of saying “rape.” His usual pattern was to pick up bar women or young vulnerable girls who felt sorry for him. Why would they feel sorry for a serial killer?

He had all the Hollywood attributes: kind of dumpy, white, prematurely balding, little education, horrible childhood, violent home life…you know the story. He had a soft face and soft voice that lulled women into thinking he was more of a schmuck than anything else, so they trusted him. Unfortunately, they agreed to go with him.

By the time I met this Casanova, he had been charged with several rapes and was the prime suspect in three grizzly murders. One was a young waitress he lured into his car and drove into the countryside to share a campfire. There was evidence he raped her–after stabbing her to death…

Appointed to defend him, we first met in a small interview room in the county jail. He seemed to shrink into the corner of the room like a blob of pliant putty. He usually looked down when talking to me except at times when I questioned his story, he’d glare at me in silence for a moment. Occasionally, he’d burst into loud tirades about how unfair everything was toward him.

From the outside he looked like a classic loser. But as I worked with him other deeper, sinister attributes appeared.

Nothing was ever his fault which freed him from any responsibility for his criminal spree. He seemed like a blob–methodical, plodding, but I saw a sharp steel will underneath the surface fueled by hate and self-pity. Most shrinks say sexual perps are not interested in sex but rather, in power and control. This guy was interested in both. Since he couldn’t get either power or sex through the normal paths, he took it as he wanted in a perverted manner.

The scariest part for me actually occured after I left him in the interview room.

During the interview I felt like I was suffocating. This hadn’t happened with dozens of other defendants I’d talked with in the same room. I’d defended equally horrific criminals before. Why did I feel so upset with this guy?

After the meeting, I realized what scared me so much. The suffocating feeling came from a vacum in the room. I had talked with someone who looked like a human being but had absolutely no consciousness inside. I’ve rarely met anyone without a soul–except for this guy. When I looked into his dead eyes I didn’t find anything except a hollow yet violent shell.

After his convictions when asked if he wanted to say anything to the judge before sentencing, his only plea for mercy went like this: “Judge, the probation officer who done my report said I had sex with 20 women. He lied. I f…ked 2000 women.”

The post In a Room with a Serial Killer appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.