Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Of course, there was the remote possibility that she’d just up and flown the coop, angry at Bill and Bonnie’s absence, but the profile said that either a possum or a ground squirrel was to blame, and both had lately been seen acting fat, full, and sassy in the immediate vicinity.

So Bill was out there waiting when the killer came back for another meal.

It was the possum, and it was making a beeline for the hen house, intent on easy pickings.

What it got for its trouble was the blade of Bill’s ax. By the time Bill was done, there were too many possum pieces to count.

And then, a few nights later the ground squirrel made its move, foolishly thinking that the turf was fair game since the possum had abandoned it.

Bill took a shotgun to the ground squirrel, liquefying it.

“Those’re the only things that I’ve ever killed… that I can think of,” said Bill Suff to me.

Think again, Bill and look at the photos of Tina Leal. With all sincere respect to the living person whom I never met, the corpse, as dressed up and posed, looks like a chicken. A costumed, cartoon chicken. No question. It’s “Big Bird”, it’s “Foghorn Leghorn”, it’s “Rhode Island Red” from Bill’s own drawings. Bill was big on drawing birds—the blue and purple clothes on Tina Leal match the colors in Bill’s drawings of blue jays. The long, thin, “bird” legs with the stripes all the way up, thanks to the socks. And Tina’s arms are inside the T-shirt because chickens don’t have arms, they have wings—Tina’s arms are placed inside the shirt so that they bulge up like a chicken’s breast and wings. Tina’s small, angular face with the tiny beak nose—did she look like a chicken to him in the first place, so that he knew he’d be obligated to complete her transformation?

Think I’m mad, or just worried that I can see things through Bill’s eyes?

But now even you know why the lightbulb is there, don’t you? Bill had seen Chicken Girl lay egg after egg, and it was always both miracle and mystery. How come the damn things don’t break ? How can such a big thing grow inside that tiny chicken and then get squeezed out of that tiny hole ?

Ain’t life grand.

We’ll never know for sure why Tina Leal got “the chicken treat-ment” any more than we know why any artist suddenly gets one image in his head instead of myriad others. The magic of the creative process is that you begin with infinite choices, and yet you are able to choose. The only difference between the non-artist and the artist is that the former can’t make a choice, doesn’t see one choice because too many of them run together into a vision whiteout.

The day Tina Leal died, Bill Suff had his beloved but tragically lost Chicken Girl on his mind—in his killing kit the “egg” and the chicken clothes were waiting for their moment—and so what he inflicted on Tina was the one thing he had to do above all others.

Oh, and the “egg”—the lightbulb—it didn’t break.

Damnedest thing.

Brian,

This is the ‘Near Death Episode’ paper I wrote just after my arrest. You’ll probably need some explanations as to certain names or incidents mentioned in the paper. So, I’ll do that here. I’ve told you about Dijianet’s death, my Aunt Judy’s death and Cathy Sharp’s death. Earl’s death, you can probably learn more from Mom or Don than you can from me. But one thing they don’t know about, is something that happened before Dad died. Cheryl and I were at the hospital and he was supposed to be in a coma. Cheryl was about seven or eight months pregnant then; she was standing beside me and I was holding his left hand. Granted, his eyes were shut, but I believe that I still was able to reach him on some conscious, or subconscious, level. Tears were in my eyes and I was telling him that he couldn’t die before the baby was born (we didn’t know the sex beforehand). Asking him to please hold on until after Cheryl gave birth, I felt him definitely squeeze my hand in reply. From that squeeze, I got the message that he would see the baby, regardless. And yes, I believe that happened… that he did see Bridgette when she was born.

Now as to other things and names mentioned:

A Bugler in the Air Force :

When I was assigned to the hospital at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, my commander found out from my records that I played the bugle (trumpet). I was given a choice: Have ‘Grounds Duty’ or ‘Funeral Detail.’ Grounds Duty consisted of one week every three months of mowing the grass or trimming the shrubs on the hospital grounds. In retrospect, Grounds Duty would have been an easier duty. Most of the enlisted personnel only served on Funeral Detail: once every ten to fifteen funerals. Because there were only three buglers, I caught every third funeral and every third week I caught either the weeklong reveille or evening taps. Needless to say, between that and my regular ward medical duties, I didn’t have a lot of free time to spend with Teryl.

As to ‘ Nita Severson and her ex - husband :

I worked as a typist for Nita for about two months after working for the Schartons and before going to work for John’s Service Center. One day, when I got to her home for work, she told me to forget work that day and to drive her over to her ex-husband’s home to talk to his widow. She asked if I would accompany her to the funeral. I guess it was because she considered me such a good friend. Bonnie came with me and Nita was little upset because she wasn’t really invited.

As to Jesse Brown :

Jesse Brown was the supervisor of the Supply Services warehouse when I went to work for the county. When he died, we almost shut down the warehouse for the afternoon so we could go to his funeral. Bonnie was not present for that one.

The auto accident when I was 17 :

I was working for the Perris Volunteer Fire/Rescue department when I was a senior in high school. We were called out for an auto accident on Temescal Canyon Road. A car being paced by an Elsi-nore Police Car crashed into a cement embankment for a railroad underpass. The two girls in the car were instantly killed. When I arrived on the scene, I saw that the driver was a girl I had dated a couple times when I was at Elsinore High.

The house fire :

After I graduated from High School and went to work for the Fire Dept. in Perris, we answered a call for a structure fire. The wooden frame house (shack, really) was totally engulfed. The babysitter and one child got out of the house. The three younger children didn’t. When we got the fire out we found the children huddled together in a bedroom.

Charles Brown :

Charlie was a very good friend of mine while in prison. He was a very intelligent man that always asked my counsel on many matters. He wound up going to the infirmary because he felt sick. They diagnosed him with viral flu. It was later discovered that he had double pneumonia. When he was transferred to the Huntsville Hospital, I lost my lead operator on the computer system he and I worked on and a very good friend. His sister wrote me two weeks later saying that he had passed away. I wrote a letter back to her telling her that he had been misdiagnosed, but I never heard back from her again.

The rest of the paper is self-explanatory. Well talk more about it when I next see you.

Twice in my lifetime I’ve had ‘near-death’ episodes. I’ve never told anyone about them for fear of being thought crazy. Because of those two episodes, death does not bother me as much as it may bother others. In my life, I can only recall four deaths that moved me to tears: Dijianet’s, my Aunt Judy’s, my dad’s and Cathy Sharp’s. I’ve seen a lot of death in my life: as the bugler playing ‘taps’ for military funerals in the Air Force; Nita Severson’s ex-husband’s funeral; Jesse Brown’s funeral; an auto accident when I was 17; a house fire when I was 18 where the children died in the flames; the Casares girl that I am wrongly accused of; and those previously mentioned above. When I became aware of the deaths when I was 17 and 18, I was very upset at the unjustness of death coming to someone so young. It wasn’t until 1971 that I came to terms with the passage of our corporeal lives.