Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

As for Carol, she was uniquely special to Bill and his fantasies, in the pantheon of his victims she mattered in a positive way. Unlike other victims, he didn’t mutilate her, and he killed her twice—both the strangling and the stabbing were fatal—not as overkill, but to be quick, certain, and painless about it. He also did not demean her in final repose—in death she was left laid out as in life, with her face discreetly covered. Interestingly, Eleanor Casares was also left in an orchard, and her face was covered, too.

Finally, Bill’s attitude toward his victims—how he perceived them—was no doubt more a function of his “outside” life than any actual reality respecting the victim. When Bill killed Carol, he was in love with Cheryl and believed in her and her virginity. Despite her best intentions, Bill later found out that Cheryl was no virgin, and, as bad as that betrayal was for him, the only thing worse was when she got pregnant. Once again he decided that he was with a woman who lied to him, cheated on him, and might be bearing another man’s child. Teryl’s betrayals became ascribed to Cheryl, even though there’s no evidence at all that Cheryl ever betrayed Bill.

But, once Bill turned on Cheryl—once he’d concluded that she’d turned on him—the violence of his killings escalated. The first killings—including several in Elsinore attributed to him but for which he has yet to be charged—involved sacrificial stabbing of the heart. Clearly, he then began stabbing the vaginas of his later victims because the wombs of the women in his life had cuckolded him in the most emotionally profound and painful way, and drawing blood from the vaginas of his victims was his way of finally getting the virginal blood that both Teryl and Cheryl had promised and then denied him.

Does all this fantastic fantasy make sense?

Sure.

Isn’t it just plain nuts?

Definitely,

So what do we do with these people, with the Bill Suffs of the world?

That’s the question.

And the answer is that, all this horror aside, I am still anti-death penalty and particularly anti-death penalty for Bill Suff.

Murder is wrong, and, as a society, we have to find a way to stop it. But the death penalty has no deterrent effect. It also dehumanizes us, it turns us—the innocent—into murderers. More, the system is all-too-often fallible, and one too many innocent men have been executed for my taste.

Giving the State a mechanism of legalized homicide is an open invitation to abuse and disaster. It scares me. The cinder-block room is bad enough.

Nonetheless, I feel for the families of crime victims, and I know that if someone murdered someone I loved, I’d be the first out there with my nine-millimeter Beretta looking to get even.

I don’t find that hypocritical. My suggestion is that we rewrite the laws and go back to our English common law tradition. It used to be that, if you saw a guy killing your daughter, you could chase him down the street and blow him away, and, at worst, you were guilty of manslaughter but probably you were guilty of no crime at all.

So, I say if we insist on having a death penalty, then work it as a writ of execution issued to a family member of the victim. If Dad wants to see his daughter’s killer killed, let Dad himself throw the switch on Old Sparky.

Murder is personal—let’s keep it that way.

As for Bill, it’s easy for me to push for reversal of his death sentence because, no matter what, he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail. Nonetheless, he’s proved he’s no danger to anyone while in jail, and he’s always protested his innocence to these crimes where the evidence was hardly beyond a reasonable doubt and where the investigation, arrest, and trial were anything but fair.

People will say that, by his convictions, Bill has forfeited his right to be heard any longer, but his is a unique and powerful voice that will go a long way toward helping us save ourselves from future Bill Suffs. We really have to decide whether we want to prevent murder or merely be content with mopping up the blood afterward.

Finally, to be noted is that Bill has his share of supporters who fully believe in his innocence. To them and to Bill, I say that the simple test of the truth would be to let Bill out of jail and watch what he does. As smart as he is, as clever as he is, as creative as he is, if he is what we think he is, then, loose in the world, he will attempt to kill again.

A serial killer can’t stop himself.

That’s the whole point.

And, to me, that’s insane.

And we don’t execute people for insanity.

The final chapter has yet to be written on the Bill Suff case, but this book is now done.

With this book, Bill will think that I have betrayed him, but the truth is that I consider him a friend. Regardless of what pain he may or may not have inflicted on others, his relationship with me has made my life better, has caused me to look into myself, to resolve issues that were long troubling and self-destructive.

I wish the same personal growth for him.

And I will fight alongside him to get his death sentence overturned.

He was unbelievably shocked. He hadn’t committed the crimes he had been convicted of but it looked like he was the one who was going to suffer the punishment. Only a few people believed he was innocent. But there were others who knew he was innocent: the real killers, some of the police investigators, and, to a more limited degree, some of the other members of the district attorney’s office. Even the prosecuting attorney knew he was wrongly accusing this man on several accounts. But he sure wasn’t about to admit it. Unfortunately, the people who knew him best (his wife, old girlfriend, co-workers, family), believed the lies and innuendoes told to them by the police investigators. The alibis that the witnesses had testified to were not believed. Evidence that proved innocence wasn’t presented in a convincing manner so it would overcome the lies and supposed facts presented by the prosecution. Statements pointing out that DNA evidence directly opposed the teachings of the Bible were ignored. Of course, if not for the news media, the trial might have been a fair one. The news media had assumed the worst, accepted the “leaks” at face value, and convinced the public that he had done every horrible crime the prosecution was claiming. Long before the jury was chosen, the news media had brainwashed everyone into believing in his guilt. It was the opinion of many that the jury came in predisposed to a guilty verdict, despite their claims of being able to wait for the evidence before making a decision. That opinion was based upon the questionnaires the jury panel answered before being subjected to the voir dire. There were many responses like “He’s guilty!” and “If he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t be in jail!” One respondent went so far as to say “If he’s guilty, give him death! If he’s not, give him life without parole!” He had read the questionnaires and knew what they said. More than 90% were negatively oriented toward him. So the topic of fairness still nagged at him.

After receiving the death sentence, Lee was consoled by several members of the jail staff that had gotten to know him. They couldn’t believe he had been found guilty, let alone sentenced to death. Talking to these people that believed in his innocence only brought on tears for all concerned. Just about everyone else who knew him had turned their collective backs on him. His own family thought he was guilty after listening to the lies and exaggerated evidence the investigators told them. And that really hurt him, because in his experience most families stuck together through thick and thin. Blood didn’t turn their backs on blood. He couldn’t believe his own family was not standing up in his defense, backing him regardless of the consequences.