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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Geese Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. On February twenty first, nineteen ninety two, twenty two year old Brian Bechtold walked into a police station in Port Saint Joe, Florida, and confessed that he'd shot and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He said he'd been possessed by the devil. He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and ruled not criminally responsible for the murders on grounds of insanity. But after the trial,
where did the criminally insane go? Makita Brotman reveals Brian's inner life leading up to the murder, as well as his complicated afterlife in a maximum security psychiatric hospital where he is neither imprisoned nor free. During his twenty seven years at the hospital, Brian has tried to escape and been shot by police, and has witnessed three patients on
patient murders. He's experienced the drugging of patients beyond recognition, a sadistic system of rewards and punishments, and the short lived reign of a crazed psychiatrist turn docker in the tradition of one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Couple Found Slain is an insider's account of life in the underworld of forensic psych wards in America and the forgotten lives
of those held there, often indefinitely. The book that we're featuring this evening is Couple Found Slain After a Family Murder with my special guest, author and psychoanalyst, Keita Brotman. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Makeita brock thank you, Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. This is an extraordinary, extraordinary book. As I mentioned to you, especially in regard to its uniqueness.
Let's tell our audience how you came to be the author, why you wanted to write this book, How you became to be the author of Couple Found Slain.
Well, I'm glad that you think it's unique, because that's really what I was going for. And to tell you about how I how I came to write it is I really need to say a little bit about my own interest in true crime, which I've always been an interest of mine, but I'm not so interested in genre true crime. I'm much more interested in the stories that don't get told for the you know, the stories of the story sort of around the periphery of the actual
crime itself. And that's something that interested me for a while. And in twenty thirteen, and my ordinary day job is a professor at the college, and I was ontobratical that year and I did some volunteer teaching. I taught in a prison, and I taught in a forensic psychiatric hospital
called Clifton Perkins in Maryland, and I taught fiction. So the group in Perkins, the psychiatric hospital was for pretty high functioning patients to help them to have discussion groups, to read, to help develop empathy and so on, and to to help just an activity, give them something to do. So Brian was one of the members of the groups right from the start, and I was I mean they were all. This was a maximum security facility, so all the patients have committed serious crime. But I was surprised
how how high functioning they were. That Brian in particular, because he was so he was eager to join in. He's very helpful, he was articulate, he was a genial he was interesting, and I started to wonder. I didn't know what the patients had done or what the diagnosis were, but I started to wonder about Brian, you know, what he was doing there. And then one day, after another patient had left, a young girl, we were talking about
her and Brian said that he would, he would. He wanted to ask her out, but then he found that she was she was born in Nice, eighteen ninety seven. And I asked him, well, were you in nineteen ninety seven, and he said he was. He was there at Perkins, and in fact, he was closer to getting out than he is today. And I realized that he'd been there
for over twenty years. And then I became very curious, because you know, all the patients have committed serious crimes, but hardly any of them stays out length of time. The average stays around seven years, I think, and often a lot less. So he told me that he'd killed his parents, which is, you know, it's a terrible crime, but among schizophrenics who commit murder, killing one's parents is
not uncommon. I think there's a I've read different estimates, but you know, at least three hundred such murders a year in the US, which is, you know, it's not a lot, but sort of crimes that seems so unusual. It's not uncommon. So many of the other patients in Pokins had also killed their parents or one of their parents, and so I started to learn more about Brian's story
and his history and his background. Eventually I realized, you know, I'm always kind of looking out for the new subjects to write about, and I realized that Brian's was a very interesting story, and it's a story that doesn't normally get told. It's about true crime. It's about crime, but it's a different part of the true crime narratives that
people don't normally get to hear. And I realized that since Brian was so helpful and articulate and ready to give me his you know, his psychiatric notes, his and his court records, and I learned from him that those twenty seven years have actually been in some ways full of drama. Even though the day to day life in the hospital might be just ordinary bureaucracy and not much going on, over time, there's been some really fascinating events.
So I decided to write the book, and Brian, you know, gave me all the information about his life, and I interviewed other people who involved, and yeah, I just wanted to tell that side of the story that doesn't very often get told.
Let's get to the rest of that other part of the story, but let's first go back to the original horrendous crime point. Say Joe, Florida, February twenty first, nineteen ninety two, and there's a officer, Timothy high Tower. He's at the police headquarters and a young man walks in and this is Brian. What does Brian say to this officer? What is the story that he tells them? What does he tell them?
He tells them that he kills his parents and that he was possessed by the devil, and the officers are dubious. They interview him for a while. They then they Brian thinks that they suspected he was on drugs, or they didn't.
They really didn't seem to believe him, and partly because his parents had a vacation home in Florida, although they lived in Maryland, and that the police assumed that perhaps the parents were the vacation home, or that Brian was mistaken, or Brian was confused because he didn't know when he'd killed them. He thought it was maybe ten days, two weeks. He wasn't sure. He had a very clear memory of what happened, but he also said that he wasn't sure
if he dreamed it or if he imagined it. And so he seemed very in some ways, very determined and clear, in other ways, very much out of touch. The police in Florida made calls to the police in Maryland. Well, first they called Brian's home and there was no answer. Then they called the local police in Maryland where Brian lived. And as you said that we have a young man down here who says he's killed his parents, do you have a record of an elderly couple, retired couple who
have been killed? And they said no, not at all, but they said they would do a wellness trick anyway, just in case. They went to the house and they found that actually Brian was telling the truth. He had killed his parents. He'd shot them both, and then he had immediately stolen the family car and took his dog
with him and driven. He intended to to drive across the borders to Mexico, but he ended up actually, you know, kind of going in circles and eventually he picked up a hitchhiker, and he was very delusional all this time, but he had a revelation. He was at the campsite in Portant Joe, Florida for a while, he read the
King James Bible. He heard a show on the radio religious show and had this revelation that he had been possessed by the devil and that he needed to turn himself over to the police to be forgiven, which is what he did. And so that's kind of where where the story begins.
Police when they do the illness check obviously find even through the window, the officer can see that there's someone sitting in a chair and obviously dead. What is the condition of his parents in that home found by police at that time in Maryland.
Well, they've been he shot them. I think it was a fifth over a week earlier. And so obviously there you know, the bodies and is decomposing and in a bad state. But then so is the rest of the house. I mean the I begin that the book with a description of the scene that the police finds, because the house is it's really now I've seen the police photographs, it's really a wreck. There's trash, everywhere. It's it looks like the home of hoarders, and there's just you know,
there's food all over the kitchen. It looks like it doesn't look lived in, but the fact the parents were living there and and her Brand's mother had cancer breast continer. She was using an oxygen tech. The television was on when the police went in upstairs, that the house was not so messy, but there were really strange signs all over the house that clearly, you know, something has been
wrong in this house for a very long time. And there was like writing on a TV guide it's had to go to how there was a strange kind of birthle in the floor in the basement. There were a lot of karate prophies in an upstairs bedroom and bullet shells,
and they found the box for swe off shotguns. So they were kind of putting the story together as they as they stooded the house and photograph the house and converts to the autopsy that this was clearly a house where things had not been right for some time, and they and they were right.
You in your book go back and tell the story of Brian Anthony beck Told and his parents, George and Dorothy tell Us a little bit about who these people were and and tell us how they lived.
The Bechtels were family. The parents that goes into a big grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and like many families, there was a history of mental illness in the family, although it wasn't necessarily called mental illness. You know, there was an uncle who wasn't right in their head, and you know, people have different euphemisms for it, but clearly there was a history of mental illness in the family.
And the parents married fairly fairly young, and George was doing his PhD in electrical engineering, and Dorothy became a housewife pretty quickly. And it seems that right from the start they.
Were in this match.
It seems that George was very distant and cold and didn't really seem to be interested in his family or didn't really have an ability to show a section was a very were drawn kind of person. And because they were Catholics, they had a number of children in succession.
They four children while George was still finishing his PhD and then moving around the country as he worked at different like he worked at the Weapons Center and then he got a job at Martin Marietta in Orlando, Florida, and that was a big move up in the world for the family, and they moved into a more prosperous house and it seemed like things were really kind of
steppling down. But the dynamic between the parents, George and Dorothy, was just getting worse and worse, and they became you know, they weren't the most abusive parents, but they certainly began using, using their punishing their children, especially George Junior, the older boy, and being very physically hands on and neglecting them for long periods of time. So they were certainly neglects and abusive.
And then when the family seemed to be falling apart, Dorothy sand she was forty two, she found that she's pregnant with Brian, and the last day the family needed was another child. They were ill prepared to deal with the four children very hat but for some reason, George did not want to Swat have an abortion, even though she wanted one, and so Brian was more into this, you know.
Very.
Like hot house, you know, this terrible situation where he really didn't have a chance right from the start, you know, he was not really welcomed.
Yes, so he to say he had a dysfunctional family life was to say the least, and with siblings much older than him, and a couple of the siblings trying to get out of the house from this dysfunctional family life itself. But there was particular you talk about George Sr. Being abusive and cruel to his wife and family, but then he had an accident and he quit drinking, and then he was even more more aggressive and verbally abusive, wasn't he.
Yeah, And it's interesting because people think again, like you tell a narrative and someone gives up drinking, and they seem to you know, that she usually the turning point and they were car But in fact George seems to have been using alcohol to you know, to help him and to make him feel more affectionate, to help them sleep. And there was three years when he was sort of versically drying out from his alcoholism, when he was even colder.
And then his wife Dorothy got breast cancer and she's very sick, and he didn't seem to have very much shemverthy towards her at all, And so the dynamics of the family descended even further. And yes, I mean one of the daughters attempted suicide many times. Both of the daughters were in an ad of psychiatric hospital of one ran after join a cult. They basically did everything they could to get out of this devastatingly abusive family situation, and Brian for a while found release in martial arts.
He joined taking martial arts with and he became very close to his martial arts teacher and made a good friend there at at the karate studio. And for a while it seems as though that was kind of he was found a path that was going to be more accepting. But after that things really went downhill. He dropped out of school, he started using drugs, and really he went to college for a while, but then he was on probation for a drug offence and then his father stopped
paying the tuition. So so yeah, things when it seemed as though things were getting better, things were getting worse. And Brian really didn't know the two older siblings afore. They were, you know, fifteen years and seventeen years older than him, so they were really far apart. And after the older siblings home, Brian was still young, he was still a young boy, and he was left at home with these older parents who really had no interest in
him and didn't really want him there. So it's unsurprising that his depression became pathological.
Was any religion an element in this? You talk about that he later or soon would say that he was possessed by the devil, But how much was religion and influence on what religions was he looking at in particular?
Well, like I said, his parents were Catholic, and they seemed to have pretty consistently gone to church regularly at various times. But the children didn't have to go to church and didn't, you know, unless they wanted to. And for a while, one of Brian's sisters, like I said, she ran away and joined a cult, kind of strange ult in New York called the Forever Family. And one of the things that the cult members diod was to
perform exoricism. And Brian remembers getting a cassette tape from his sister recording was exorism that he was sort of fascinated by, and he remembers sort of playing them again and again and wondering, you know, thinking about the idea that someone could have been possessed by the devil. So the idea was already kind of floating around in his mind from an early time. But then he also became He had a girlfriend who was Iranian, and he didn't convert,
but he learned. He gave up eating pork, and he listened to the Quran on the audio tape and it became very interested in religion, but he never actually practiced any religion himself or felt as though he was a Christian until after the time when he believed that he'd been told to turn himself in and that he was forgiven.
So there was certainly a strong religious elements to it, and in fact Brian has been religious ever since then, although he's len that's one of the things he's learned not to talk about in the psychiatric hospitals because generally seen as a symptom of mental illness in the hospital.
So the family life is dysfunctional. But does anyone notice his increased, we'll say, departure from sanity. Does anybody notice these changes in Brian? And what are some of the other things you talked about? Drug use. I've heard the theory about marijuana and people vulnerable to schizophrenia and marijuana can exacerbate that. But I especially agree with some of the drugs that he was taking that could alter his
sense of reality, which to be PCP. And so he was doing often hard drugs and not just chronically smoking.
Marijuana right how he was And this is you know, this is often a pattern in people who have a schizophrenic break. I mean, this is around the age of sort of late teams to early twenties, when a person is already genetically sort of predisposed to schizophonny anyway, And in Brian's case, it just seemed like it was a loaded gun, really was. He was using a lot of marijuana and also everything he can get particular strain of PCP called love but that was around DC at the
time that he was getting hold off. But that was a short period of time that he was doing that. He got he had a job delivering a pizza and he was arrested he coming home from work one day and the police found some drugs in his car and they his parents sent him to rehab and then Brian made a decision, not you know, to give up drone the same way that his father made a decision to get up drinking. And he didn't do any dress after that apart from the medication that he's being to prescribed.
He hasn't drunkle or done any drugs since then. But you're right that that Brian was severely neglected. I mean, in other circumstances of people paying attention, they would have seen the signs there. But his parents were clearly self involved and they had their own problems, very serious problems. Occasionally he would be sent to a psychiatric ward or put into therapy, but it was always very brief and
obviously not didn't take their family situation into account. Either that or people were kind of foxed by the way the family presented themselves. Because his father, George was you know, had a PhD. He worked for he was a government scientist. He presented very well and a lot of the psychiatrists and therapists were intimidated by him. And so basically, when things started getting very bad, any parents would have noticed. I mean, Brian was doing things like talking on the
telephone without dialing number first. He was sleeping all day and only going out late at night. He had a pair of dogs that he spent almost all of his time with. He believed that people were following him. He constructed a dummy in his addressed it in his own clothes and popped it in the window of the house so that people so that his enemies would think that
he was home all the time. And then finally he bought a shotgun and was carrying it around with him, even in the shower, and his parents all the time thought this was they were kind of amused by it. According to Brian's sister Date, they thought that he was kind of paranoid about outsiders and about external enemies, but they didn't seem to think for a moment that they themselves might be at risk. So so all the signs seemed to have been there from right from the beginning.
But one of the signs that wasn't there, which having interviewed quite a few authors about parricide, is that there was, you know, this obvious resentment, and here this story doesn't seem to be any build up of that other than his disappointment. And again it didn't seem to be you didn't write it as resentment. It was disappointment that his father didn't pay for tuition after an incident at college, so instead of being able to go back, his father said no, so he went back and lived at home.
Yeah, I think what I think it was more. Sorry, go ahead, No, go ahead, Oh, I was going to say that. I think I did a lot of respects about parafived and especially schizophrenic children who kill a parents.
And it seems to be that in a lot of cases, the build up is slow and gradual, and there's a lot of repression, and so there isn't any overt moments, you know, where the father refuses this or denies this, or the mother you know, disinherits or you know, the parents don't think he can only do anything wrong and in fact, or at least not overtly at that particular moment.
And it's often something very trivial that is that kind of pulls the trigger, as it were, so, you know, an ordinary kind of disagreement or in this case, Brian was trying to get to sleep and was woken up by his kind of yelling, and so in some ways, it just seems like the last straw in a situation that has been going on and perhaps seems like it
could go on indefinitely. And the clime often takes place when the parents are going about their ordinary business, like case, the father was eating a meal, whether was watching television. There doesn't seem to be any you know, a big fight or it's not a kind of dramatic climax to a story. It's just something that's in the that might be the dramatic climax in the mind of the child,
but not overtly on the surface to anyone else. And I think that's one of the things that distinguishes paraslides where the perpetrator is gizophrenny from ordinary parasides.
I guess you talk about the that there was no clear trigger that night. So what you just mentioned that his father was yelling. What was his father yelling about? And then what happened?
Well, Brian, he hadn't been able to sleep, and he'd been staying quite sure how long possibly or we and krying to sleep, pasting around, you know, getting incredibly frustrated and impatient, and the way that he remembers it, it was like a kind of dream. But he said that he finally managed to fall asleep and a moment later he was broken up by his father yelling in the kitchen downstairs, which is you know, it was early in the morning. His father seems, was yelling while he was
having his breakfast. Brian, you know, whatever he yelled, it was something completely as inconsequential or Brian remembers this the words my brother Walter, and it was like that. It was just like a last straw for Brian. He just he simply couldn't take it. And he when he talks about the event to the police, and he said that it like it was predetermined, or like something he was watching on television, or like something that happened in a dream, or like it wasn't him. He wasn't the one doing it.
And when he at the end of the murder, he felt he had a moment when he felt that his feet were not touching the ground. So it seems to be a very surreal, delusional experience where absolute extremes of torment and that's when the psychotic great really occurs.
And just for people listening, he had not been under the influence of drugs for almost three years at that point, correct.
That's right. Yeah, he'd given up drugs and had given up drinking, so he was but he hadn't been on any medications either, so he was purely psychotic.
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That's friends without the are best fiends. Now, Makita, we talked about that he was in this. He said later he wasn't sure what was real. This happened, this occurred, He took off, he thought he was going to Texas, but wound up in Florida. Then he turned himself in. So what happens with this? You talk in the book about how many the misconception of how many people will be deemed not credibly responsible or as previously insane, and how many people are even afforded that kind of defense
in trials. In reality, tell us what happens after his arrest with him legally in the courts.
Well, he's transported back to Maryland. So as soon as he turns it stuff and he's in the custom, they're a police. And he told me about this transport going back from from Florida to Maryland, which really shouldn't have taken that long, but it took I think three weeks because he was you know, the courts outsourced to a private transportation company who took who went you know, various places Mississippian, Vermond, and various other places. It was a
really long journey. But he was put in in custody and right away his sister's got him a lawyer, and right away the lawyer realized that that Brian was was was clearly insane, he told me. And Brian was also seen by a state forensic psychiatrist who also determined that he was suffering from power to schizophrenia. And and so because of that, he wasn't a defendent psychiatrist wasn't even
called in. So with the family history and Brian's and psychological history and his actions and the record of his actions and words after the crime, it seemed very clear to everyone that he was suffering from paradis upon it and had been for some time, and he was undiagnosed, unmedicated. And this is this is not as common as people seem to think, and it's certainly not an easy way out.
In fact, I don't know what the statistic is now, but while I was writing the book, it was less There was less than one percent of cases that people are found not come responsible, and which is the the Mariland version of criminally insane. And in those cases, twenty six percent have previous the psychiatric history. So it's it's very rare and probably impossible if someone suddenly decide, well, I'll use this infarmasy defenses and get out of jail free card and have a kind of cushy time in
a hospital rather than going to prison. But in Brian's case, it was very clear from the start that he was mentally ill, and he was sent to Clifton Perkins, which is Maryland's maximum security forensic max from security hospital now presumably for treatments until he was well enough to well. He actually didn't go to court. He waived his right to trial because he was found incompetent stand trial. So he began the long process of what should have been
a journey to recovery to nineteen ninety two. And now it's twenty twenty one and Brian is still in Perkins. He's been there twenty seven years. And in the book I explained the long journey that he's taken through the hospital. In fact, he's been there longer than most doctors and many of the other patients now, and just the difficulties, the setbacks, the medication, the different doctors, the different psychiatrists,
the frustration. Brian believes, and I'll give him credit for this, It makes sense to me that he was extremely mentally ill at the time he killed his parents, and for a long time before that and sometime afterwards, but he was restored to sanity not too long after. Brian believes it was when he was when he was when he turned himself in, he had a revelation or religious revelation and turned himself in, and he still believed that that's
what sured him. He certainly hasn't been dangerous or paranoid or or to pathologically ill for the last you know, I would say for a long time, for many years. But he's still at the hospit And that's what fascinated me about his story, because it's been I mean, he calls it it's like he describes it as playing and playing musical chairs with the invisible man. That having to go to all these hopes and being blindfold and not knowing what to say. The language keeps changing, the hospital
job and keeps changing, the doctors keeps changing. He's been so desperate at times that he actually decided that he would prefer to be in prison or dead rather than at the hospital. And that was when he escaped. He managed to He took a hostage and escape, hoping that either he'd be shot by the police and killed, which would be preferable, or that he would be sent to prison, which would be preferable, and he was actually shot and returned to Perkins. I don't think Bryan's is a typical case,
but nor do I think it's a unique case. And I wanted to draw attention to the right of people like Brian who are kept in psychiatric hospitals indefinitely. And there are other people as well as Brian who told me that they would prefer to be in prison, And in fact, one patient in the hospital told me that a time he permitted he attacked a nurse and was sent to prison and wanted to stay there, petitioned to
court to allow him to stay there. And there are a number of reasons for this, and whither I think is that there's more dignity they feel was more dignity in prison, that you're not constantly scrutinized, that every action and word isn't seen as a symptom of something. You're seen as a free agent who makes choices. He makes decisions like everyone else, not someone who's acting symptoms of a disease. But also because there's a determinate time that
you're going to be there, even if it's life. You know, it's better than not knowing. So if you'll get thirty years or forty years in prison, at least there's an end to it. And so Brian and people in his situation there's no end to it, and and there's there's there seems to be no way out, and and so there's and yet this hope is constantly deferred because theoretically, you know, he could walk out tomorrow if the doctors
decided he was cured. So it's this this terrible limbo where you're not a criminal, you're not criminally responsible, but then you're not allowed to leave the hospital and you don't seem to be ill, but you're often medicated against your will and you're not violent, but because you've committed an act of violence in the past, but it's assumed that you're going to commit nack to violence again. So there are all these kind of double vinds that people
get trapped in. And I think people have this conception about what it's like to be in this kind of psychiatric hospital. I think people think it's either either like one of those dungeons that hand of electors in and silence of the lambs, where everyone you know is completely crazy and straight jackets, or they think it's kind of easy and pussy and you get great food and or you have to run a couch and talk to the doctor now and then and it's an easy way out.
But insight it's this kind of Envines experience at least, it's this limbo where you know, it's like neither one place or another, and it's really a sort of lost world really that people don't hear about very much.
You talk about how it is that no matter what, they go through the process of maximum security and then the behavior is judged, and then they get a reassessment, evaluation, and then they go to medium security, more privileges and benefit to being in medium security. Again, your behavior is one of the conditions, the main condition, and then the minimum security, and from minimum security, the doctors and people will talk about that will be the eventual pathway to
release the discharge from this hospital. But you explain that no matter how optimistic Brian got and with progress and getting through those security those security requirements from maximum the minimum, that there was ways that they assessed him as still being not able to ever get near this discharge where
this led to incredible frustration and highly contributed to this escape. Obviously, some of the things that you talk about being used in the psychiatrist to be able to deny them further progress and these security ratings is the idea of religion and the idea of that. Brian did not want to take any of these psych or the antipsychotic drugs. So tell us how those two things contributed to him not making the progress that he would have.
Liked, right. I mean, you think that you get to venom security and then the next step is housing in the community or community facility or you know, conditional relief. But in fact, as Brian learned, you can go back down the track again, back down to maximum. And he's been up and down that track many many times. And yeah, two of the things that were held against him fiscal at first when he was at the hospital. It wasn't there was no pressure to or you could choose not
to take medication. Was it was up to you, although you were strongly encouraged to do so as the psychiatrist felt that it was appropriate. And Brian was strongly encouraged to go on antipsychotics which most of the other patients weren't. He didn't see that he needed them. He saw the way that patients were in front of the television. The drugs made other patients incontinent and impotent, and he didn't want to be in that situation, and eventually that was
held against him. The only way to progress out of the hospital was to be directable, meaning you do what you're told and you follow the rules. And if the rules were you have to be on antipsychotics, then eventually
he realized that that's what he had to do. And you know, he talks about period of years when he said, you know, I slept in a chair from from two thousand and two to two thousand and five or something of these missing years when he was on such a heavy days of eventI psychotics that he remembers nothing at those years. He was sleeping for years, and he was impotent, He wasn't continent. It's just and I think I think anyone can understand why one would resist you going on medication.
And so he then he'd have he had an understanding, sympathetic doctor who gradually allowed him to come off medication. He was making progress. That doctor left another doctor came who wanted him to be on medication, and he was back at the beginning again. So it was these were things that have contributed to him acting out, attempting to escape, and then later on attacking of social worker. But another
thing that was held against him was his religion. We don't talk about it very much with Brian is religious and he believes that he was being he was saved, but he found that whenever he talked about that in front of his doctors, because he didn't belong to any particular church, because he'd come to his own understanding of the Bible from reading it, that was seen as religiosity, a side effect of schizophrenia, and it was held against him, and it was seen as a sign of his mental illness,
not a sign that he was interested in the Bible or in the religion. This is it would be for someone on the outside. And as he pointed out to me, you know, there are people who have all kinds of what you might think of as bizarre religious beliefs. There are people who believe in snake handling and voodoo, and as long as you're part of an established church, it's acceptable. But because Brian wasn't part of an established church. He'd just come to these decisions on his own. It was
seen as a symptom of his pathology. So eventually he stopped talking about it, and then that was used against him. The doctor said that he was hiding his illness while not talking about religion. So he really couldn't win. And I really sympathized with his frustration. I mean the idea that you know, everything that you do could be used against you if you're not if you're not romantic ill already, I think they could drive you that way.
In this time period, Who did he have contact with? Who was his support system? I hate to use that word, because that's the word they used the psychiatric psychiatric department. But what were the people there that were still behind them? What were siblings were still there? What friends were still in contact?
Other than yeah, Originally he he because he was so much younger than his siblings, he didn't really have much contact with his older siblings. And you know, if someone killed their parents, it's not it's a very difficult time for the family. But two of his sisters stood by him and were very encouraging and supportive and helped him get a lawyer and helped him get diagnosed, and one of his sisters eventually moved out of state and has
since passed away. The other sister was supportive of Brian for a long time, but she moved to a different state too. He was in touch with his friends from the karate center and his karate teacher. But you know, twenty seven years, people die, they move away, they have families of their own, and Brian is kind of left. He has contact with his sister who's helped him out and has oh take him into a home should he be released, So he does have contact on the outside world,
and he does have support. And I've been supportive to him. I mean, he has former patients who are friends of his two who helps him out. But after being in hospital for so long and being away from the community for so long, being away from his family, and having caused this great division in his family, it's and you know, the hospital is kind of in the middle of nowhere, it's difficult to get to, it's those looking hours of
odd it's difficult for people to visit. So over time he's really lost that network that he would originally had, and that too, is healed against him now because he doesn't have a strong support network on the outside, then that scene is another factor against risk factor to him causing more violence when he is he ever leave. So it's really you know, it's really like a catch twenty two in so many situations.
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Now let's talk about February tenth, twenty and fourteen. His struggle. There is you chronicle that there are so many times when he's down, he's depressed, he's in the fog, he say, he's trying to fight the fog of these these antipsychotic drugs that he just doesn't want to, you know, want to have in a system. Period. And there's times when he works out and feels stronger and feels mentally more able. And now this February tenth, twenty and fourteen is a
guardianship here. How does he get to this point and tell us what this is and what it represents for him?
Well, there were there were two times that Brian has been support to defend his case in front of a jury, and the guardians that this one in two in twenty fourteen was actually his a relief hearing. I think that the guardianship was an earlier hearing when he had cancer and he decided that he didn't want to be treated for cancer. He wanted to be allowed to die. He was so unhappy, he was so frustrated. He and he thought, he realized, I mean, it's impossible to commit suicide and possible.
Everything is suicide proof. He thought this was a way out. It was not going to be an easy death, but this is finally a way out. So he said that he didn't want to be treated for his cancer. Well, the hospital wouldn't allow that. They felt that he was not at he was not capable of making that decision from wealth, and they insisted that they were the cost of itself became his guardian and to do that they had to have a hearing in court, and Brian defended himself.
He acted as his own attorney. And you know, I've heard the transcript. I've listened to the transcript. He did a really fantastic job. He argued his case very articulately. He tried to show that he was in his right mind. He was rational, he knew what cancer was, he knew what was in store for him. He end dissipations of it. He had, you know, he's read up on it, but there was a technicality and the judge basically it was a tongue jewelry. And then after that the judge decided
for the hospital. And it seems to be that the judiciary will defer to to the psychiatrists in all cases, because even if someone presents really well, like Brian, I think that most judges and perhaps the most people would think, well, this guy seems fine. You seem to articulate, he seems intelligent. But I don't know. I'm not a specialist. It's a psychiatrist. They really know, they know what's going on under the surface,
and I think that's really wrong. I think, you know, the point of a jury trial is that you judge for yourself. And if someone appears to understand what's going on, they haven't caused violence for many, many years, if they seem intelligent and rational, then I don't think judge nor jury should defer to the judgment of psychiatrists. But that's what happens in both cases.
It was fascinating and that, unlike a criminal court, Brian was afforded less right as far as I can see in terms of this was a hung trial. It was a mistrial, but the judge ruled in favor of the hospital.
It's like the tie goes to the hospital. I'd never heard of that before, so that was unusual, but also that it's disturbing in as much as that no matter what he said and how articulated he was to defend himself, and he was probably correct in that he was better prepared, having knowledge of his charts and his diagnosis, than a
lawyer might be prepared to present the same argument. But they presented, the prosecution defended presented psychiatric witnesses that used things like personality antisocial personality disorder, which basically, as you write, would label him a psychopath and then hence incurable no matter what.
Right and and them and yeah, I think you know, everyone advises you not to act as your own attorney, but I think in Brian's case he did the right thing, certainly because yes, he did know it was about his case and about his sanity and his stogolophy. And if he was just sitting there with his lawyer doing all the work, the jury wouldn't get a real sense of him and who he was and how intelligent he was and how stable he was, and that's what he wanted
to show to the jury. So I think he did the right thing in representing himself and he really, he really did a good job of it, and he really I mean the testories from the psychiatrist, they had a lot of psychiatrists who never met Brian but had been brought in to test And yes, because like because his risk factor was high, meaning that you know, he'd committed a violent crime, that he had drug use when he was younger, a number of other things. But he can't
probably change he can't do anything about it. Turns out that his risk as re offending is high. There's nothing he can do about that. He can't go back and change his childhood. He can't go back and change what happened to him. Nothing's going to change that. So yeah, he's kind of trapped in the situation where the psychiatry can simply be used against him. And it's kind of baffling to me why they weren't give him a break. And I think it's because he's because he's struggled. He's
been driven to extremes. He has tried to escape, he has attacked people and to me, it's just behaving the way that anyone in that situation will behave is like O's violence towards others and not an example of his pathology. But I think everyone's afraid that if he's released then because it's another crime, then it's on them. Nobody wants
to hold be responsible. And I understand that fear. I mean that happens with a lot of people who are commntally ill, and there are problems with you know, people not getting support in the community. But I think each case is different, and I don't think Brian is one of those people. I think he's just trapped. He's kind of trapped in this, like I said, in this horrible limbo.
Again, it was disturbing a little bit because unlike a criminal case, they the prospecutor released information about the murder of his parents, because again, he's in this no win situation where no matter what, there's that past murderous behavior or the escape, there's when you if he's going to leak that to this jury that he's killed his family.
In fact, the judge told them the joy that they could only use information that came out in the trial. They weren't supposed to use any other information at all. And at one point a doctor says that, like I just says that Brian has a problem with breaking the rules. And Brian hasn't broken rules for a long time. So he said, well, give me an example of breaking the rules. And she said, well, murdering your parents is an example
of breaking the rules. Now, you know, that should have been actually an objection from this trial right there, but it was it was simply overlooked. So and even then it seems like most of the jury were on his side. I think there was once you hold out from hen and then again it was a hungarian again the judge decided against him.
It's interesting to despite his progress with psychiatrists and with his behavior yet and to the point where he was actually released for you say, fourteen different two hour passes without incident. He always thought that these things were going to be accumulated in his favor to show to demonstrate his lack of violentdencies or did it ensure his safe release in the community. But that was not to be, was it.
No, And the fourteen visits outside the hospital were a really long time ago, and you think they were that was like before the year two thousands, so, you know, twenty years ago, and he thought at that time, you know, he's getting close to release. He's been a lad out in the community safely. And yet after the escape account,
it seems like nothing could go his way. And he'd been in there so long that you know, things would be improving, then there'd be another change of regime, another CEO or another clinical director, or a different different medications would come in, or a different kind of psychiatric fashions or even diagnoses and power it's so funny, isn't even
a diagnosis anymore. And it seems as though every time he was making progress, there'd be some systemic change, meant that he was like right back at the beginning again, even down to things like the sort of language that you have to use to get to get the doors to open. And because he's because he's maintained his dignity, because he has no ties to the community, and because he has troubles jumping through hoops just for the sake
of it, I think it's all counted against him. And you know, I agree that he'd committed a terrible crime. But if we're going to say that a person is not responsible for the crime, then we also have to treat them like someone who's not responsible instead of punishing them, which is is what's happening with Brian.
Yes, it's yeah. It's very interesting to think that he escaped after it wasn't that things were going swimmingly, and then it was after sat back, after setback, and he thought his situation was futile. To be fair, I think he felt it was futile, and I don't think that he was deluded in that thinking at that point when he escaped and really set himself back even further. But he was in that particular situation. It wasn't like he wasn't at wits end at that time when he contemplated that right.
And I think it was a rational decision. I think it's very hard to know what we were do in those circumstances, but I can imagine behaving like that. I don't think it was the spermamental illness that you become so hopeless and frustrated that you're you're willing to risk your life to get out of there.
It was fascinating that he thought prison would be a much better deal, and then he went to those lengths and they returned them right back to Perkins once again and went back to maximum security, and as you right, went right back to admissions. And if he thought it was bad that before, it was much worse after taking hostages and creating all the trouble that he did for everybody at that hospital.
In me right, right, yeah, I mean, he thought, well, they couldn't do any there's nothing else that could do to him. You know, the worst, the worst comes to the worst, he'll get sent back to Perkins again, and he won't be any worse off. Well, he did get sent back to Perkins, and he was worse off because there was this Now he has this legacy of acting out violent behavior, and he's he's putting restraints, he's refused privileges and all kinds of things about him that he
didn't anticipate. Those things can always get worse. I mean, when I was asking him a lot about this book, whether you know, whether he thought it would help him or hurt him. I really didn't want to, you know, to do anything that would hurt his case. And he said, there's nothing they can do. You know, they they've done everything they can. There's nothing they can do to me. They haven't already done and will help him and not be used against him in any way.
Well, I wouldn't count on that, but I mean again, he seems to be just in a place where they can't do much more, and he has been subjected to everything that they had given to him. Luckily he had the option not to as one doctor recommended that he'd be given shock treatment and he flatly refused that. So it's an incredible story of his plight in the You know, it seemed too that this hearing seemed very much like a parole hearing, very much like it depended on the compliance.
It would dependent that you'd write about so many people that were released from this hospital that maybe even were well not maybe we're still experiencing symptoms of their diagnosed mental illness, and yet they were released because they were compliant.
So there's a lot very very important. Yeah, yeah, it's a keyword. Compliance. It still of means whatever they want it to mean, but but it's it's certainly one of the magic words that will get the daughter work.
Before I let you go, what what is the situation with Brian now in terms of I know what're not going to be getting released anytime soon, But what is the situa current situation for him, how's he doing well?
He's he's on a decent ward. I think it's a minimum security and he he has well. COVID was a big problem because they were locked down for a real time and they still can't have visits, but they can have like scopes visits, and he's things are not so bad. Like he's in a situation where he can he can have coffee, he can have he can he he would be able to have visits if if they were so allowing visit so and it's been so long since his
last court date that he's thinking about. You know, then if he's not released soon or if things aren't progressed, then he might have the opportunity to go back to court again. And that's always a possibility. But you know, I think he's he's this writing the book and has been a really interesting experience for me and for him. So it's at least a little bit of a difference in his life in this very tedious life.
I want to thank you so much, Makeda, coming and talking about a couple found slain after a family murder. I know that you have written other books for those people that would like to check out check out your other true crime books and your unique perspective on with those. There's an Amazon page. But also you have a website. Tell us about that.
Yeah, I have a website. It's just my name Makita Brockman dot com and there's links to all my books and the you know, I am interested in truth crime. I have a book about an unexplained death that came out a couple of years ago, a book about my work in a maximum security prison. So it is true clime, but it's a kind of a different take on true crime than perhaps people are used to. But yeah, everything can be found there and more information about me and
my work and so on. Well, thank you for having me down. It was very interesting to talk to you. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Thank you, it's been amazing. Thank you so much. A couple found slain after a family murder. Makita Brotman, thank you so much. You have a great evening. Good night, Thanks, good night,