Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

This story is by no means finished. Lee’s having been sent to prison with a death sentence is a sad tale of a travesty of justice, a disaster in his life and in our legal system. Guilt declared on an innocent man who respects people, a man who befriends everyone no matter what their station in life. A man who accepts each person he meets at face value. He often ignores wrongs done to him and never retaliates against those people. He feels no anger at anyone for the situation that has befallen him. Not even the prosecutor or the judge in charge of his case. During the final moment’s of Lee’s trial, the prosecutor said that Lee must not like him very much, and then he’d chuckled. But the prosecutor was wrong. Lee felt no dislike for the prosecutor. He felt afraid of the power that the prosecutor has at his command. That he could prosecute an innocent man, convince the public that someone had committed such heinous crimes with as little true evidence as he had presented at the trial. That kind of power should not be in anyone’s hands. So Lee now sits in his solitude, feeling the pain and loneliness that has come with his current circumstances. Yet he silently laughs at the people who think they have hurt him by sentencing him to death.

Little do they realize just how much they have helped him. He knows the truth! He knows that he is innocent. He isn’t afraid of death. He has been to the other side and come back. He is aware of things that others don’t even suspect. Lee knows what is coming next and he welcomes it!

On Death Row, Bill Suff has a color television and a memory typewriter. The TV comes with its speaker disconnected internally—you have to use headphones to hear. Inmates can buy TVs and typewriters and radios and computers and all manner of goods and appliances from a catalogue supply service managed by the warden’s wife. In fact, inmates cannot get major goods or supplies any other way, not even as gifts.

Books are not allowed in under any circumstance.

Even lawyers cannot bring books to their inmate clients.

Accordingly, Bill Suff will not see this book in print, and so I had to read it to him over the phone once it was done. I had always pledged to him that his response to the book would be printed herein.

When I finished reading to Bill, there was silence on the other end of the line.

“Bill? You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Not what you expected, right?”

“No, not what I expected—parts of it anyway.”

“And?”

“You make me sound guilty.”

“And, for the record?”

“I’m innocent.”

“Of everything?”

“Everything they charged me with.”

“I truly believe this book will help your case, help your cause,” I said. “Now you’re a human being rather than just a headline.”

“Except you make me out to be a monster.”

“You’ve never treated me monstrously. And you’ve treated a whole lot of people well. You’ve done good for many, and, if any writer’s view of the world is worth reading, then yours is—you have a lot to say.”

“Yes. That’s true,” he said. “But I’m concerned about what you had to say.”

“What I have to say is nothing more than what I say. It’s what I believe to be true. You don’t have to agree.”

“Believe me, I don’t. Everything you say about me being guilty is fiction. I don’t know where you heard it, but it didn’t come from me.”

“Have I betrayed you?”

He hesitated; then: “I don’t know.”

“At various points in your life, you’ve felt that both friends and family betrayed you, but they nonetheless remained your friends and family.”

“That’s true.”

“I remain your friend. I believe this book may well save your life.”

“Do you really believe I’m a killer?”

“Yes,” I said.

He thought for a moment, and: “It’s possible to be friends with people who’ve done bad things—I’m friends with many people here in prison… but I don’t know that it’s possible to be friends with someone you think did something he didn’t do. That means you don’t really know the person, and how can you be friends with someone you don’t really know?”

“Maybe I know you better than you think,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“Friends?” I asked.

“I’m torn,” he said.

“Fair enough,” I said.

“When are you going to come up and visit me?” he asked.

“Later this month,” I said.

“Great!” said Bill Suff.