Talking with Serial Killers: Dead Men Talking. Christopher Berry-Dee
to write. Oh, I must not forget JR Robinson, who thanks me for exposing him, I don’t think. I am also most grateful to Keith Jesperson’s daughter, Melissa – a remarkable woman.
Good can come from bad, and my relationship, built up with Mr Jesperson over months and months, has, and will continue to bear fruit in the understanding of how a serial murderer’s mind ticks. If he had been executed, which he probably should have been, we would have been denied his ‘knowledge’. His writings and thoughts I have passed onto the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit, for further study. They are very grateful.
With the hard core acknowledgements come thanks to very special people.
Unequivocally, and without reservation, the frontrunner has to be Kirstie ‘Kiwi’ McCallum. Kiwi has selflessly supported me in this writing of this book through very troubled times – because even popular writers feel the pinch sometimes – and it is true to say that no stronger friend can be found.
Then there my friends, ‘The Oddball Club’, driving me to distraction when a veritable party of serial killers could not: I thank Richard, Craig and Mr Lee; also to Wilf for his devoted friendship and his thoughts on a ‘new world order’; Martin ‘The Shrink’ Balaam, who will one day get weaving and write a book; also to Lizzie, Jim, Dan, Laura, Blake and Tom Stoddard.
Years back my mentor was Robin Odell, one of the finest true crime writers and crime historians of our decade. Under his guidance I was taught ‘the trade’, so to speak. God bless you Robin.
Then there is Tony, Joyce and Russell Mercier. I have known them since time began. How can one repay a couple who epitomises such selfless kinship for their fellows, who give the world a son whom they must be so proud of? Hey, Tony! You are the man; your oil paintings are class (with an ‘A’); and thank you, all three, for being you.
Finally, there is a very, very special debt of gratitude to young Ben Burton, for being himself, and for the ‘Green Light Lady’ – a should-be-shareholder in Aldo, who, like John Wordsworth, must also remain incognito.
And that’s it. ‘Period,’ as our American friends will say, leaving these Acknowledgements with you desperate to get on with reading what follows - and no nightmares, please!
CHRISTOPHER BERRY-DEE
I have interviewed, face to face, some 30 of the world’s most heinous serial killers, spree killers and mass murderers. I have sat with them on death rows throughout the United States, where the stench of cheap disinfectant, human sweat and evil permeates every brick of these correctional cathedrals, the human warehouses that incarcerate those from the legion of the damned.
I have listened to their sickening tales of murder most foul and their boasts of having caused such suffering, which are often beyond the comprehension of normal souls like you and me.
These sexual psychopaths love to play mind games and often are as cunning as hyenas. They are control freaks who attempt to manipulate even a seasoned criminologist like me, prompting the chilling question: what chance did their vulnerable prey have against such twisted characters, who can appear as innocent as the man or woman next door?
With a new millennium, a new generation of monsters has emerged. Long gone are the likes of Ted Bundy, although his story remains morbidly fascinating. Indeed, books are still being written, and TV documentaries are still produced which dredge up the ‘oldies’ of yesteryear. It seems that not a month goes by without another screening of a programme on Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, Ken Bianchi or Aileen Wuornos. And Ronald DeFeo, a.k.a. ‘The Amityville Horror’, is still ‘hot property’ despite the fact that in the big league of mass-murderers he is relatively small potatoes (this continued interest is mainly due to the horror films based very loosely on his case).
This book delves deep into the dysfunctional minds of some of these social outcasts. This time the gloves are off and I have allowed these monsters to say just what they wanted to… and in doing so, they give away more than they intended. In that respect, this book is what newspapers might call a ‘worldwide exclusive’. Over the years, the interviews I have conducted have always been a play off between the two parties – me and the killer in question. The killers do their best to control you and this is frequently on-the-edge-of-the-abyss time. You are so close to them, breathing in the foul air they expel from their often diseased lungs. And, although it may not be quite as direct, the same can be said of spending hundreds of hours corresponding with them. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that, more often than not, what these murderers write in their correspondence is more important to understanding their psychopathology than what they say in the relatively brief face- to-face interviews. In these interviews, you must remember, the killer is on his own ground, you are there at his behest and it is in surroundings that he or she is familiar with.
To truly get inside the heads of these devious social misfits – where is exactly where we need to be if we are understand the true nature of evil – long periods of correspondence are the key. Every word, sentence, paragraph and page of their letters are a clue to the reason behind their homicidal behaviour, making this book a must-read for all professionals and aficionados with an interest in the causation of the unlawful and wanton destruction of human life.
Some of these social strays can read and write, while others struggle with the simplest words. Some have a brain, others half a brain, and still others obviously have a ‘To Let’ sign planted firmly inside their skulls. A minority are remarkably lucid. And there they sit, in the depths of the prison system, writing away, often reliving their perverted crimes over and over again… in ink this time, not blood.
Each serial murderer and killer is as different as chalk and cheese. There is no common denominator that puts them on the same plate, with the exception of them now peering through cold bars, many of them awaiting execution, or a life term behind razor wire and grim, weather-stained prison walls.
They will never kill again.
Some say a lot, perhaps too much. Others say very little. Some are honest; others indulge themselves in their sickening fantasies. Some deny their crimes, while others admit the whole shebang. But from their words we can all learn something those who commit the ultimate social crime: serial homicide.
CHRISTOPHER BERRY-DEE
JOHN EDWARD ROBINSON
THE SLAVEMASTER
The following account of John ‘JR’ Robinson’s career of crime and murder offers the reader, and student of criminology, a unique and remarkable insight into the warped and perverted mind of a true, blue-chip sociopath and sado-sexual serial killer.
This chapter should also provide psychologists, psychiatrists and law enforcement with food for thought for it clearly illustrates how even the most intransigent of mentally entrenched psychopaths can be easily manipulated into exposing the deepest workings of their clearly dysfunctional minds. And as this chapter draws to a close, you might consider how Robinson will react when he reads this book and discovers that it is he, the master manipulator, who has been hoodwinked. My bet is that he’ll hit the roof.
* * *
Those unfortunate enough to be invited into John Robinson’s world soon found out that it was not one of refined elegance and gentle self-indulgence, as he would have us believe. Instead its epicentre was administered by a liar, scrounger and a cheat on the run for misrepresentation and commercially ritualised fraud. His was a world that deliberately surrounded itself with an impenetrable, pretentious and often plain misleading hypocrisy; his words churned out by a misleading snake-oil salesman who delighted in the obscure and the shadowy, the indistinct and the imprecise.
In search of metaphors even more elaborate, the two faces that this man displayed – the respectable businessman and sado-sexual serial killer – were so close together that they could be accurately described as