Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

And then, there is Rhonda Jetmore. She identified me as the person who attacked her six years ago. And it was from a picture taken of me about four years before she was attacked. So she identified me from a picture 10 years old! Why didn’t she identify me when she was attacked? She says she was picked up in front of John’s Service Center. Well, both before and after her attack, I was working inside that building, evenings and weekends. My toyota was parked in front. She couldn’t have missed seeing me inside or going to and from my car. If her story was true; if it was me who actually attacked her; she should have recognized me back when she was attacked!

Now, another point prosecutor Zellerbach made a big thing of was what he thought I’ve been doing for the past 3½, now almost 4 years. Just what did he expect me to do? Rant and rave, kick the walls and cause trouble for everyone? That’s what he might do if he was put in jail. But if I did that, I would have played right into his portrayal of what kind of person he says I am. Well, prosecutor Zellerbach, I wish you’d explain to me exactly how an innocent man is supposed to act in jail?

Did I write down most of my recipes as a cookbook? Yes, I did. It was a suggestion made by several people who cared enough about me to give me a means to retain my sanity under conditions and circumstances that would drive most people crazy. Did I watch TV? Yes. Everyone watched TV in jail. It’s nearly the only source of news and entertainment. Especially if you’re a people person and have to spend 24 hours a day in a cell, alone, with no outside contact. I also wrote… my cookbook, fantasy stories, romantic poetry… I even drew cute cartoons on the envelopes for the few people who would write to me, so I could show them that I hadn’t yet lost my sense of humor. After all, writing and drawing is the best means I have to express what’s in my heart and mind.

One last point before I close: People have said that I’m a “Homicidal animal and shouldn’t be allowed near women.” Well, believe it or not, during my stay in jail, there are several women that I’ve come into contact with that actually like me and trust me enough to be less than arm’s length away from me. One lady in particular spent hours at a time alone with me in a 6 ft. x 8 ft. room locked from the outside with the nearest deputy out of sight and earshot. At no time was she worried that I might harm her. These are women who got to know me and know that I am not the person the prosecutor and news media portrayed me as being.

In closing, Your Honor, this last is addressed to this Court. No animosity intended, but I sincerely feel the Court was wrong in not granting a change of venue: All along I’ve said that I wasn’t going to get a truly impartial jury or a fair trial. I also feel the Court erred by not sequestering the jury: It’s human nature to read or listen to what the news media is reporting that was found inadmissible in the court—restricting order or not. And therefore reading or hearing things they shouldn’t have. Now I hope that didn’t serve to anger this Court, because I do have a last request. For I think I have proven better than any words can say that I am nonviolent and can keep my word, in regard to a promise I made to Your Honor when this insanity began.

My request is that at the end, if I’ve exhausted all of my rights to appeal and am still facing a death penalty, that this Court make the following provisional order in regard to my execution:

“Laws at that time permitting, that my execution be performed in such a manner that my heart, corneas and other needed organs can be removed and donated anonymously to an organ bank for transplanting to a needful person or persons.” In this manner, my death will serve mankind rather than being just another corpse in a graveyard. And finally, that the remains of my body be cremated and then given to a person I will name later to dispense with in an agreed manner. Thank you Your Honor for granting me this opportunity to express my feelings.

After witnessing the courtroom reaction to Bill’s statement, it occurred to me that Bill’s playfulness wasn’t so much about getting one particular reaction from his audience; it was about getting any reaction at all—he simply wanted to be noticed, for any reason, good or bad. In his childlike desperation for affection, he was willing to settle for mere attention, and this clearly reflected his perception of his relationship with his parents: it’s not that they either loved him or hated him, it’s that they were inconsistent about it. What made them lavish him one day, made them punish him the next. From the beginning, try as he might, he had no control or at best imperfect control over his own life. No wonder then that when he had his own babies, he was at any and every moment equally ready to bestow a kiss or deliver a dropkick.

Serial killers are not made by “simple” abuse; they are born to confusion, to inconsistent love and ultimate abandonment. I had read that before, but now I was seeing it firsthand, in Bill Stuff’s lost eyes. Wounded by rejection, prevented from callousing by a burst of loving hope, then bloodied anew, the pain always fresh, never inured. While straightforward unrelenting abuse gives you a choice, a chance to fight, flee, or die, the confounding of love and hate determines your fate for you, guaranteeing your survival at the cost of your soul. You are alive and you are dead.

Think about it in your own lives—if you came from a loving home, like me, you were certainly disciplined now and again. I know I earned a spanking or three, none of which I recall with the slightest physical or emotional pain, although it was embarrassing and eventful enough to teach me the necessary lesson. In fact, my parents’ preferred form of punishment was to tell me to “stand in the corner”, facing the walls while I thought about what I had done wrong. This event lasted but a minute or two each time—although it seemed longer at that age—and, as I stood there, I definitely recall thinking that I was getting off awfully easy for whatever it was I had done. I was neither scared nor scarred by the experience, and I remember counting some two hundred little holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles just above me; but yet I discovered that the next time I was tempted to do the “wrong” thing, I automatically thought twice and then veered in a more correct direction.

On the other hand, twice in my childhood my parents mistakenly acted in a way that terrified me, and, although I’ve intellectually excused and forgiven them since, I still get a twinge of the emotional horror and hurt that originally derived therefrom. In both instances, my parents were acting from their own internal strife although it was couched as a reaction to something I’d done, with the result that I felt rejected, abandoned, and confused.

The first incident for me was when I was maybe five or six years old. The whole family was in our car—my brother and I in the back, father driving, mother next to him. I said something to my mom—something innocuous, but, surprise! my father reflexively reached around and gave me a swat across the cheek. It was the one and only time he ever did that. I was shocked and terrified and in emotional agony—the open-handed swat itself didn’t actually hurt at all. My mother was even more shocked, and she began to yell at my father, which only scared me even more. As it turned out, he had whacked me because he thought I had said something terrible to my mother. In fact, he was deaf in his right ear due to war injuries, and he’d misheard what I’d said. Had he stopped to think, he also would have realized that what he thought he heard was impossibly out of character for me anyway. But he was feeling pressured that day about business concerns, and so he was on the ragged jagged edge to begin with. As I say, I understand all this now, but it doesn’t take away the recollection of how, for one instant, the rug was yanked out from under my emotional world.