The Man in the Monster (22 page)

His sexual urges began to return, and he became concerned when he had urges to hurt one of the nurses. “That really scared me and bothered me because she was one of the nurses who always looked out for me. It bothered me tremendously that I wanted to rape her and hurt her,” he admitted. There was shame in his voice, but also a distance, a sense that he was telling someone else's story.

Finally in February 1994, eighteen months after Depo-Provera had been discontinued, the DOC relented, and Michael was given his first
Depo Lupron shot. With that, he says, his mind was returned to him. “So Depo-Provera was pretty wonderful stuff. . . . Depo Lupron was even more effective than Depo-Provera. It freed my mind; it gave me control. It allowed me to be ‘Michael' again. But there was a price. Now instead of being plagued by sexual fantasies and compulsive urges, I had the freedom to consider the effects of my past actions on others.” Without the medication, his total focus was on his own sexual pleasure. But once he had been freed of the noxious fantasies, he “found it increasingly difficult to not focus on what I had done. I guess that for the first time, it had really sunk in.” He mused that most of the men on death row “seem to have no conscience, and I often find myself envious of them for that.” He added sarcastically, “I'm the only guilty person here on death row. It's really amazing how many innocent people have been sentenced to death.”

 • • • 

I
t was difficult for Michael to comprehend why he didn't feel empathy toward his murder victims. He spent the anniversaries of their deaths praying for them, trying to honor them in some way, but in many ways they were never real people to him. He couldn't properly explain this to other people. To Michael the women were not human beings, just names. “I have a lot of self-loathing of how I could commit a rape/murder as I did, but no individual sorrow for the victims themselves. They remain faceless and almost anonymous to me.” He said he regretted what he did and wished he could bring them back, even substitute his own life for theirs, but “their deaths don't haunt me the way that I feel they should.”

I came to believe that he could not
allow
the women to be real to him. When he killed them, they were objects. He did not know them as people and had to keep them as only names and ages to be able to
cope with his brutal crimes. Otherwise the pain of his shame would have been too great. He could not, however, depersonalize the family members. They sat in the courtroom. They answered questions on the nightly news. Their tears accentuated their pain. He could not neatly tuck their pain away into some cubicle of his psyche.

He wrote that his greatest fear was not being executed but that he would receive a life sentence and that “someday down the line some bean counter will decide that my monthly Depo Lupron shot is too expensive and stop my medication.” He said that a positive aspect of his execution was knowing that he would never have to live with the monster again. “My death, through execution, is not to me an unreasonable insurance policy to see that it never happens.”

1996–1998

In April 1996, the
Connecticut Law Tribune
published my story “Why a Killer Offers to Die,” which tried to explain Michael's determination to spare his victims' families more anguish and his frustration with the criminal justice system. Then in July 1996, I left the paper. I needed a rest—I'd spent more than nine months investigating the Ross case. I wanted to cleanse my thoughts of rape and murder and executions. I wanted to forget everything I knew about him.

However, Michael was not about to go away. He still called me almost every week. After the article came out, I was one of the few people whom he could trust—and among the half handful who would take his calls. But I was well aware of his loneliness and didn't have the heart to ask him to stop calling. We didn't talk so much about his case, but about everything from the weather to world events. Once he realized that I would answer him truthfully on almost any topic, he began to trust me as completely as he was capable of trusting anyone, not only with his story, but also with his deepest thoughts and feelings, whether I wanted to hear them or not. At first he needed me to get his story out and may to some degree have been using me, but after I had written “Why a Killer Offers to Die,” he needed me as a friend, and for the most part, the manipulation stopped.

He was not unlike a demanding child. Sometimes he got pushy, starting our conversation with a request or order for me—something he wanted me to do or somebody he wanted me to call for him or even a request for other men on death row. The instruction or request might be his excuse for calling. At first he was embarrassed to call merely to chat, because the calls were expensive. MCI and the Department of Correction had quite a racket. The cost of accepting the call was five dollars no matter how long you chatted, and each subsequent minute was a dollar for the collect, automated call. He wanted my full attention when we talked—even though I was paying for the call and often had to multitask because I was in the middle of something when the phone rang. It drove him crazy if he could hear me typing. “Are you on your computer?” he would ask. “Yes, I'm trying to finish ordering something for Hannah and James for Christmas. Got a problem with that?” It wasn't difficult to get him to back off.

Like most young children, mine always became neediest when I was on the phone, whining or tugging on my pant leg for attention or getting into fights in their playroom next to my office. That also annoyed him. “Tell Hannah we're busy,” Michael would say. I'd tell him that I would be the one to decide if my kids needed my attention.

Although at first it made me uncomfortable when he asked about my children, they eventually became part of our conversation. Sometimes he would send them birthday cards or a book at Christmas—meaning that he would call Ann or someone else to make the purchase, and he would get the state to reimburse them through his inmate account. My favorite present that they received from him was the children's book
The Story of
Ferdinand
,
about the bull who would rather smell the flowers than fight, but who gets sent to the bullring because he's stung by a bee and his reaction is so violent that it is misinterpreted as aggression.

Michael made most of the money he had from articles he wrote about the death penalty and forgiveness. The publications sent him payments that ranged from twenty-five dollars to a few hundred. Most were for Catholic publications, but he was even published in the
Utne Reader
. He had a lot more cash at his disposal than when he was sweeping the tier for a few cents a week, so he would get Ann or me to do his shopping for him. Later the state confiscated any money he earned from writing, so Michael had his earnings and donations from supporters sent to Ann, who served as his banker. For the most part, the money went for postage to send his newsletter,
Walking with Michael
, which he began in place of keeping up with the large volume of individual letters he received. He hand-printed it and sent it to more than two hundred people every month or two.

The twins were less than two years old when I began corresponding with Michael. I had adopted them as infants just about the time that Michael adopted me. By the time they were old enough to understand that Michael was in jail, he had become a household item. At age five, the inevitable question came up. “Why is Michael in prison?” “He did some bad things,” I would say. That was enough for a while, but eventually they wanted to know more, and I had to tell them that he had killed people. They weren't fearful or opposed to me talking to him. They wanted to know what was going to happen to him, and I had to tell them I didn't know but that he would always be in prison. Perhaps because they had grown up in my household, they were adamant that they didn't want him to be killed.

We sent Michael “Christmas packages.” Prisoners could receive books only if sent directly from the publisher or bookseller, and at Christmas the DOC allowed families to buy boxes of approved assorted treats from a company that specializes in gifts for inmates. The packages included coffee, hot chocolate, cookies, crackers, cheese, and even
sweatpants. He didn't ask me when I was writing the article, but maybe a year later. “I want to ask you a favor. No pressure,” he would say sheepishly. “Want to send me a Christmas package?” I was happy to send them, although I thought they were overpriced—especially considering that most people who would be getting them came from families who didn't have a whole lot of extra cash—about fifty to more than one hundred dollars. Sometimes he would ask me to send a package to his one friend on death row, Bob Breton, because “he has nobody. It would mean a lot.”

I soon found out that Michael also had a series of girlfriends. I had not been aware that most high-profile murderers, especially serial killers, receive letters from women once they are sentenced to die. One psychiatrist told me that some women like the idea of a dangerous man with whom they can fall in love but who can't ever touch them or have sex with them. Many of them have had abusive relationships with other men. Other women see themselves as angels of forgiveness whose duty it is to comfort misunderstood souls. One woman sent half-naked sexually suggestive pictures to him. Another told him she was a witch. One time Michael spent his entire savings from writing articles on wedding bands—but was in effect jilted at the altar. I had no patience for the drama. It's unfathomable for me to understand the attraction—but then again, I never thought I'd have a serial-killer friend.

In some ways, I considered Michael my community service. He was going to pay for his crimes by spending the rest of his life in prison—whether the state shortened that life or not—and if calling me helped him get through the day or week, then so be it. When he was only calling once a week for fifteen minutes, he didn't take up much time or get in the way of the rest of my life. At first he called my house only at specific times, but eventually he began calling me at my summer cottage or on holidays—basically whenever he could get to a phone and
knew I would be home. By that time, neither I nor anyone in my family minded—or at least no one complained.

Underlying all of the discussions were questions—not just the questions he had about my life and about the outside world, but also questions I had to ask about his growing up, his college years, and about his inner world. Those conversations and letters were how I slowly began to piece together how the Michael I knew had gotten to death row and also how I got to really know him.

“Do you ever fantasize about what life could have been?” I asked.

There was a deep sigh on the other end of the phone. “Of course. Remember Rachel, my first girlfriend in college—not the one I was engaged to—the one I got pregnant? I let her down. I was scared and didn't offer to be there for her, so she had an abortion. We were good together and I often fantasize about what would have happened if she had the baby. In my fantasy it was a girl, Ashley. I picture us on a picnic, all of us sitting on a blanket playing with her. It would have been nice—one happy family.”

“You'd get up at night and change diapers and all that?”

“I cleaned up chicken coops. Diapers are nothing. Of course I would. I would have been a good dad.” I wondered whether he was deluding himself to think that he would have been capable of caring for a child, but I didn't want to destroy the small comfort he got from that fantasy. Before I had the chance to react, he attempted to change the subject.

“But it don't make sense wasting time talking about what could have been.”

“Doesn't that take you away from your current predicament for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, sometimes I lie on my bed with my headphones on, listening to classical music, and I just close my eyes and I am gone for a while. I leave this place.” When he was extradited to New York to
stand trial for one of the two murders he committed in New York, he was able to pick up the Cornell radio station. “That was the best.” He told me about a concert he had heard that began with chimes from some tower on campus. “I was back in college before this all happened. I wish it were that easy to go back.” Another time he wrote about drifting back to college as he listened to
A Prairie Home Companion
being broadcast from Cornell. “Two hours of leaving this place. It was heaven.”

 • • • 

M
ichael kept a journal from May 1997 until October 1998; the entries were daily reflections of how he felt, sometimes in the form of prayers. I had been trying to get him to do it, but it was Father John who actually got him started by giving him a notebook. He used the journals as a tool for the spiritual growth he was undergoing as they worked together. When Michael found that he had been baptized a Roman Catholic, he began catechism with Father John, made his first communion, and was confirmed.

At first, writing down his thoughts was cathartic. He could get things off his chest, let go of fears and emotions. It was also another way for him to communicate with God, a type of prayer. After he filled each notebook, he mailed it to me. When he sent me the first full notebook, I hesitated to read it; to do so felt voyeuristic. After a few weeks, however, I slowly did begin reading. In his first entry, Michael said that Father John had just visited him, and he had done his first formal confession and received absolution. “I wish I could say it changed my life—that a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders—but it hasn't. I know that God has forgiven me, but I can't seem to let go of my past.” The page-long passage implied that intellectually he could accept that God forgave him, but emotionally he didn't feel it. He wanted to feel
“cured.” He had his first communion and confirmation three months later, on August 28, 1997, but he wrote nothing about them. I wondered if the reason was that they were also a letdown, that nothing magical had happened.

He talked about wanting to reunite with family members and about his occasional contact with his father. In one entry, he says he “chickened out” of calling his dad because they no longer had anything in common. While on death row, Michael had transformed from a conservative like his father to, as he described it, “a bleeding-heart liberal.” He said that every time he talked to his father, he could sense “that I disappoint him. And often he makes me feel hurt and angry.” Michael was proud when two of his essays were included in a book of essays on capital punishment and sent his father a copy of the book. But his father was critical. “You are suspect. . . . You have to remember who you are and where you are and that the public doesn't want you to have anything.” He was stung by the comment not just because his father did not show pride in his accomplishment, but also because of the harsh truth it represented. He shrugged it off, though, lamenting that he didn't know his father better, but thought it might be best to leave things as they were “and try not to hurt each other.”

Some entries made me realize the importance of things we take for granted, like human touch. “In prison you can't touch anyone. . . . That's why when Christoph Arnold [an elder in the Bruderhof Community] gave me a hug during our first visit, it felt so strange that I broke down and cried. I've wanted to ask Father John for a hug at the last couple of visits, but I felt awkward and didn't say anything.” At Osborn in the visiting area, he could see others getting hugged by their families, “but not me. The best that I could hope for was a brief handshake. Closeness to others is an important part of living. I don't know why it has taken me thirty-seven years to figure that out.”

In a few of the diary entries, he wrote about his feelings about me and some of the others who called or visited. He thanked God for his friends—especially Father John and Ann. I found some of those entries the hardest to read because I could see the repercussions of some of our phone conversations and the impact I could have on him. It made me want to have a seven-second delay before I spoke. In May 1997 he wrote, “‘Be careful what you wish for.' Martha told me that when I talked to her on Tuesday night.” Presumably I had said something about accepting a death sentence. “I was a bit taken aback by those words. Martha is a close friend, one of the very few who really know and understand me. Yet those words sounded like maybe she thought that I'm playing some sort of game. I get accused of that all the time here. I don't need my friends accusing me also. I know that's not what she meant but for a second that's what it felt like.” He wrote the line “Be careful what you wish for” over and over, and then, “I know what I am doing and I know that, in the end, I will be executed. This is not a game, for I
will
die. And while I can't deny that a part of me looks forward to that day, the greater part of me dreads it.” Besides the fear of dying, he knew that with his death, all hope of proving his mental illness would die with him.