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AOTW: When Eva Braun's home movies of her life with Adolf Hitler were found, one director thought it was important to release these films, to show us the "human" side of Hitler. Do you feel a responsibility to portray the humanity of the villains you write about? And, if so, how do you react to the naysayers who see these criminals only as monsters?
Susan Kelly: In writing about Albert DeSalvo, the man who claimed to be the Boston Strangler, I wasn't writing about a villain --- I was writing about someone who desperately wanted to be a villain. So it was in fact easy to portray his human side. He certainly wasn't any saint; he was a pathological liar as well as a repeat sex offender. But he was also a guy who stole money in order to buy his wife and daughter Valentine's Day gifts.
I've never written nonfiction about a real monster. I'm not quite sure how I'd approach that. I confess to being a bit stymied as to how one would go about showing the warm and winning side of Osama bin Laden. And why would I want to? Even Alan Dershowitz has remarked that he wouldn't want to defend bin Laden.
Gretchen Brinck: I strongly believe we should portray the villains as three-dimensional characters. The purely evil, diabolical killer belongs in fiction. To present the villain’s complexities is to write good literature.
To the naysayers who wish to see the criminal only as a monster, I would answer that we wish to simplify our view of criminals because it separates us from them. They are Evil, we are therefore Good. The simplistic view also permits us to treat them inhumanely in prison. But though we are taught the simple version as toddlers in Sunday School, the adult world is not black and white, and criminals are not a different species.
Also, I believe true crime readers want more than a list of the criminal’s evil acts. Many of them want to know WHY. When I was interviewing people for The Boy Next Door (1999), almost all asked me please to explain in my book why their neighbor and classmate did the horrible things he did. His acts harmed many people beyond the immediate victims and their families, and these people were desperate to know WHY.
To depict a criminal as a complex person is to be a bleeding heart. It is to do thorough research and to produce a fascinating work. Many of Jack Olsen’s books, for example, are intense character studies of criminals.
Michael Fleeman: To make a true-crime story work, one has to show both sides of the subject. Nobody is all bad or all good. That's an oversimplification. The trick is to show the entire person. Often, by showing the good side, it makes the bad seem all that more heinous.
Brian J. Karem: People are afraid of the Hitler within themselves and hence the reason why they don't want to be reminded that Hitler could say, look normal eating a meal or bouncing a baby on his leg. He can't be anything like us? Shock. Horror.
I've always seen the complete picture of a person as far more interesting and ultimately enlightening than mere snap shots. As much info as I can have, thank you very much, don't spare the mayo.
The Naysayers who only see criminals as monsters are blind and don't see anything other than the monster. Besides it's been my experience that most naysayers are actually critics who happen to be failed writers. I can only see them as monsters.
Burl Barer: A natural desire for simplicity and certitude tempts us to sanctify the innocent and demonize the guilty, burying the depth of our pain in the shallow, “it was God’s will." Life, including death, appears incomprehensibly unfair. Time heals all wounds except the fatal. Scars of the heart seldom fade, and comforting the bereaved is a temporary social obligation.
God’s will is love and unity, not beatings, beheading, and homicide. I can understand why people would want to just not think about why these things really happen, and we all want the easy explanation and the sound-bite solution. There are no explanations for the inexplicable, reasons for the irrational, nor justifications for injustice. If an immediate answer is urgently imperative, fabrication is always sufficient --- entirely fictional answers are most often validated by immediacy alone. The truth, detained by time-consuming investigation, often arrives late, unwelcome, and rebuffed.
Don Lasseter: I feel the responsibility to present whatever facts are available about the criminal, whether they portray humanity or evil. I try to offer all the facts to the readers and let them make up their own minds about the good or the bad aspects. Regarding "monsters," I once asked a defense attorney how she could defend such monsters. I thought her answer was pretty good. "I defend human beings who are accused of a crime. I have yet to see any of them who are monsters. They have bad sides and good sides like all of us. And if someone doesn't defend them, then we have nothing but kangaroo courts in which innocent people can be wrongly convicted."
Irene Pence: I've seen redeeming values in all of my murderers and I describe these values so that the perps don't come off as one-dimensional cardboard characters. I graphically depict their evil acts so any would-be naysayers know who the villain is and that I'm not whitewashing anyone.
Sue Russell: Distant monstrosity is not as affecting as the confounding mystery of evil when it strikes close to home. And showing the human side of villains brings it closer to home, which in turn makes it more frightening. If we reduce these criminals to the status of "monsters," yes, we keep evil and good clearly delineated, but it's an oversimplification and generally a lie. Some antisocial personalities do seem like empty shells. Even so, you can't reduce criminals to one dimensional characters.
Robert Scott: There always seems to be cause and effect in these individual's actions --- a reason they became "monsters." In the book I'm currently working on, Like Father, Like Son, Thomas Soria Senior was leading a fairly normal life until he discovered the nude body of his mother on his bedroom floor on September 25, 1979. He was eighteen-years-old. She had been hog-tied, raped and murdered execution-style by his stepbrother, Ronnie Mozingo. In later years, Thomas Soria Senior became a killer himself --- turning into a version of the person he hated most in life, Ronnie Mozingo.
Carlton Smith: Human crimes are committed by human beings, not by supernatural forces. What may seem a contradiction in a character --- say, Hitler’s affection for his dogs while countenancing the mass murder of millions --- only shows his complexity. To show only the hateful in a Hitler is to misunderstand him, an action that we undertake with our own peril. Moreover, to show only the awfulness of a Hitler is to simplistically demonize him, which makes for good propaganda but bad journalism.
Dina Temple-Raston: I faced this dilemma soon after I started A Death in Texas. Early on, I was the only reporter who had spoken with Bill King; we sat down for a long conversation in the middle of his trial. As a result a lot of news outlets --- Good Morning America, Nightline, Frontline --- were eager to talk to me. I learned a lot of lessons. I tried to portray Bill King as a reasonably normal guy, someone you'd never guess was capable of this kind of crime, and ABC was barraged with mail complaining about their decision to have an "apologist" for Bill King on air. The point I was trying to make, obviously unsuccessfully at that time, was that it isn't the men in sheets you need to worry about; it's the seemingly average guy like Bill King --- the one you can't spot --- that needs to be identified. I'm a lot more careful now when I talk about Bill King. My theory about this crime is that it was something that got out of control --- a southern ritual of beating up a defenseless black man that turned into a brutal murder. I think most people would prefer to believe that Bill King, Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry (the three men convicted of the crime) were pure evil because then they don't have to see any of themselves in their actions. Certainly the people of Jasper wanted to see them as aberrations, and I'm not sure that is entirely the case.
Carlton Stowers: As I've alluded to in the previous response, I've never felt the "monster" of the story was the central character, thus I've only felt a need to portray him honestly and fairly and to show the harm he's caused. I've yet to get involved in a true crime project where I felt there was just cause to sympathize with the criminal. In fact, as I've chosen my subjects, I've tried to make sure there was a clear line between the good and evil in a story.
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