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AOTW: Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, among other horror novels, is credited with the statement, "I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk." Your work deals with individuals for whom that, unfortunately, is not an understatement. What is there about the dark side, the tormented side of the human psyche that exists in some individuals, which attracts you as a subject for research?
Susan Kelly: I think there's an intense desire to know why some human beings become monsters. And how it is that monsters can hide themselves behind such wonderful facades. Look at Ted Bundy: handsome, intelligent, charming, articulate ---yet monstrously evil. Since the dawn of literature writers have been preoccupied by these questions. Actually, the attempt to answer them constitutes the basis of and the impetus for the great works.
Gretchen Brinck: Sick as this is, crime, violence, aberrant and extreme behavior fascinate us. Many who have never been victimized and would never commit violence read and write about these things to experience them vicariously.
There’s a prurient quality to our fascination, but for some the curiosity goes deeper. I grew up hearing my mother, a psychiatric social worker, saying “I wonder why?” about behavior and emotions, so I considered aberrant behavior a fascinating mystery. When I became a social worker myself, I learned through study and long experience that multiple forces --- biological, economic, familial, traumatic, etc., combine to produce each troubled person including criminals. We gain knowledge and clues but probably never will absolutely pin down why some become sadists, killers, or psychotic.
Michael Fleeman: We all have a dark side. We all have dark impulses. I think everybody, at one time or another, has thought of killing somebody --- either out of anger or hatred or to solve an inconvenient problem. The difference is that criminals act on these impulses, the rest of us don't. So it is actually not that hard to relate to even the worst criminals.
Brian J. Karem: Well, I think fundamentally for the money. But other than that "the tormented side of the human psyche that exists in some individuals," is a bit off the mark. It exists in all of us, hence the interest we all have in the subject matter and why it pays to write about it. After all, even Eleanor Rigby had a face that she kept in a jar by the door.
Burl Barer: I also have a dark, tortured side to my psyche. This torture is so severe that my psyche is under constant monitoring by Amnesty International, and travelers’ advisories have been issued by the FAA warning people that my thought processes may result in lost luggage. In truth, due to a childhood head injury, I honestly have no understanding of punishment whatsoever. I do not see any connection between crime and punishment. I’m sure other people do see some connection, but I don’t. But I know from my research that this lack of understanding is among the symptoms of psychopaths. I do understand the wisdom of quarantine --- protecting people from proven predators. I get that. Restraint is a concept I understand, to restrain someone from doing harm to others or to property. Punishment, however, eludes me. “If you do X, you will have to do Y as punishment.” I don’t see any connection. Never have; never will. To me, that sounds insane. The two --- crime and punishment --- have nothing to do with one another.
Fear of punishment is not what restrains me from acts of violence, destruction, or rude hand gestures. What restrains me is fear that I will have to deal with people who DO understand the concept of punishment, and the way their minds work scares me! I have a marked aversion to pain and discomfort. This dark side, tormented or tickled, is simply the side “made in the shade.” We can always measure light; darkness is merely the relative absence of light. However, when a foul person in a dark mood snuffs out the life-light of your relative, it’s not something about which an author makes light.
Don Lasseter: I'm interested in trying to identify the turning point in the life of a person who became a killer; exactly what happened that drove this person to a mindset that rationalizes taking life away from another human being, particularly when the victims are decent, innocent people. Such murders arouse deep anger in me, and I want to know what forces molded this killer. Funny you should mention Psycho...my next book, Body Double, is about a murder victim who was Janet Leigh's double in Psycho.
Irene Pence: My subjects are not the tormented, deranged types and that's what I think makes them more interesting. They basically have an air of normalcy to them. I have published three true crime books. The murderer in A Clue from the Grave was one of the fastest promoted master sergeants in the US Air Force. The fact that he would throw away his successful career and plan a devious murder fascinated me. The murderer in Triangle was a millionaire who owned a forty-room mansion, had a couple Mercedes', and was a well-known member of Ft. Worth society, in addition to being a good friend of the police chief. His unfounded jealousy of a lesbian who befriended his girlfriend drove him to murder. The murderer in Buried Memories was a mother of six children who murdered her husbands for their money and buried them in her yard. She was sweet and friendly, and until she unwittingly bragged about the killings one night, she would have never been caught because no one believed her capable of doing anything so terrible.
Sue Russell: A desire to understand. What makes someone cross the line to do the unthinkable? How do those barriers get broken down? I am especially intrigued by women's dark side and by female criminals because society is still in denial about women's rage, capacity for violence and aggression, and murderous impulses. Violent women are not socially acceptable. There's great societal pressure to always view them as victims, even in the face of evidence to the contrary --- and despite the statistical rise in violent crimes by women. Violence in women is more unexpected, more shocking, and for me, that heightens the mystery and the fascination.
Robert Scott: What is so fascinating is how some of these individuals are so normal looking on the outside and so twisted on the inside. Benjamin Pedro Gonzales in my book, Savage, is a prime example. He came across as very mild and meek. All of his female victims commented about how sweet he was. But beneath his calm exterior was an explosive violence. Here was a man who petted a baby goat on Barbara Muszalski's ranch and later stabbed her twenty-two times. A look into these individual's lives is a glimpse into the darkest depths of the human soul.
Carlton Smith: Everyone has some Robert Bloch in them somewhere. What defines character --- not just in a literary sense but in the larger moral sense, as in human character --- is the extent to which we confront our demons and rise above them. Some people, unfortunately, do not overcome these impulses, whether through lack of clear thinking, greed, addiction, fear, or indeed, through any of a host of character flaws we are all familiar with through our own experiences. And, like the stories of Everyman from the Middle Ages, what we see of others’ failures to come to grips with their own dark sides should be cautionary tales for the rest of us.
Dina Temple-Raston: I'm not sure it was the dark side of Bill King, the ring leader in the James Byrd killing, that attracted me to this story. In fact, it was the opposite, the fact that he seemed so normal, that made me take a second look at Jasper, Texas. If you talk to people who knew Bill King --- his father, his friends, his girlfriends, law enforcement officials --- what immediately becomes clear is that this was a guy who thought he was smarter than everyone else. And as an extension of that, he felt that the world's rules didn't apply to him. I spoke about Bill King with Larry Fitzgerald, the head of communications at Huntsville Prison, where death row inmates are given lethal injection. I told him that King had been overindulged as a child, was told how much better and smarter he was than everyone else, and ran rough shod over his parents. Fitzgerald told me that was very common among inmates. I found that interesting.
Carlton Stowers: There is, I think, a misconception that all true crime books focus on whomever committed whatever crime lured the author to the subject. In my case at least, that is not the case. While the crime is the obvious reason for telling the story, I have found that the ripple effect of such tragedy provides the most compelling and worthwhile story. Almost without exception there are far more victims of a homicide than the man on the street imagines. I'm talking about family, loved ones, entire communities, law enforcement officials, attorneys --- all touched by a single evil deed. Certainly it is the responsibility of the writer to explore the mindset of the criminal and his actions but in my books that has generally been secondary to the people left behind and their response. In taking that approach I've avoided glamorizing the crime and the person(s) who committed it and provided the reader with a look at the remarkable strengths of those forced to deal with the unexpected horror that has visited their lives.
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