by Linda Mather
“Echopraxia” Paul said.
They all looked at him dismayed, he laughed.
“Sometimes catatonic schizophrenics mimic body movements of others or obsessively repeat what others say. These features are known as echopraxia” he said, feeling chuffed with himself that he had listened in his classes and internalized his learning.
“So what you saying now Paul, that she’s a fucking schizophrenic” John asked.
“I’m not a psychiatrist John I can’t make that diagnosis, I’m just telling you what I know.”
“She’s probably faking it” Vera said entering the room in the middle of the discussion. “After all she is a psychotherapist; she’d know all the symptoms. But forget that look at this!”
Vera had been on the computer all morning digging up as much information as she could on Tanya Wright’s background. They all were given copies of the information Vera had.
“Fucking hell” was the first response.
“Jesus” was the second.
“Oh my God” was the third and this went on until all eight of the team had read the details that Vera had collated.
“Who’s going to tell the boss this?” Derek asked.
There were no volunteers. Not even Paul, he hadn’t liked Stephen and this was in a sense Karma but even he felt that this was more than he deserved.
Tanya Wright had been born a boy!
His birth name was Richard Dobson and he had used that name up until he was 18 years of age where he began to live as a woman. He had a sex change operation when he was twenty two years of age.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Tanya smiled at him as he entered the interview room, the same smile that she always gave him whenever he saw her. A pleased to see him sort of smile, a sensuous smile that always sent a shiver down his spine.
It had the same effect today, but a different type of shiver, a cold shiver leading to a nauseous feeling within the pit of his stomach. He struggled to keep himself together, to hide the tremors in his hands that he just wanted to put around her throat and squeeze the life out of her grotesque face. It incensed him that he had once found this woman to be beautiful, graceful and sexy. She had deceived him, betrayed him in the worst possible way.
“Hi” she said in a fashion that they had just met up in a coffee shop, not in an interview suite where she had just been charged with a triple murder and an attempted murder. She displayed no repentance for what she had put him through, how she had duped him; she didn’t even appear to feel any indignity for what she had done to those poor women.
It was just Tanya sat there, Tanya as she had always been.
He pulled the chair out from under the table, squeaking across the floor as he did it. It was the only noise in a deathly silent room. He sat down and just glared at her adamant that she would speak the first words. They looked at each other for what seemed like hours, that uncomfortable silence each hoping the other would break it, him with a face frozen in pain and her eyes with a glazed look, but smiling.
How the fuck can she just sit there smiling he thought, he’d fucked her and she was really a bloke, what did that make him. She’d led him on a wild goose chase, murdered three people and left him inane messages that made no sense. Another man had gone to prison for one of the murders, one of her clients.
“Why?” He said no longer able to sit the silence out, he knew that he was probably being watched from the two way mirror, the thought that they may be interpreting the look as something meaningful between them sickened him to the essence of his soul.
“Why not?” she replied, typical Tanya, gave nothing away.
“You fucking made a fool out of me Tanya, you duped me into believing that you were……………” he couldn’t even let the words come out of his mouth, he knew for sure they would pour out with the vomit that he was undyingly trying to keep inside.
“Well, well, well” she laughed “it would not be right would it for a woman to make a fool out of a man?”
Another fucking question, could she never give a straight answer to anything, even now, she owed him that, and she owed him the truth.
“You’re going down for a very long time Tanya, a very long time, and every minute you are in there I hope that you fucking rot!”
He was losing it, he didn’t want to lose it, he would be pulled out and he didn’t want to leave that room until he had some understanding of why she had done this, why him, was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time or was it something personal.
“Roses are red Stephen violets are blue. I’m schizophrenic, and so am I – Oscar Levant”
“What the fuck………….. Just rot in hell bitch!”
“You will rot for as long as me” she replied her eyes like steel and her face distorting into anger now “you have lain in the same bed as a transsexual serial killer” she retorted. “You’ve put your cock inside a man” she laughed now, an evil long drawn out laugh.
He wanted to slap her but instead he stood up and threw his chair across the room. He knew that he was never going to get anything out of her, anything that would make him feel better. He slowly walked towards the door. He knew that if he didn’t leave now they would come and order him out and he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
He had just put his hand on the door knob when she said
“Oh by the way, was I as good a fuck as my mother” he turned confused, but she looked away grinning, satisfied, as he left the room running those final words through his head.
Chapter Thirty-Six
So that is my story.
Could I have done something different with my life?
You might say Yes, but the truth is that no I couldn’t, I was meant to be given this mother and I was born to eventually kill.
My fate had been decided as soon as I was in that queue. It was decided when I was given 326, it was decided when 325 fell ill.
I believe that my life with my mother was just to prepare me for what I was born to do; it was to toughen me up, to help me to develop a hatred that you need to have burning inside of you to enable you to kill.
I had that hatred, I lived with that hatred from the day she ironed my shirt while it was still on my small body, it intensified each time she abused me, so by the time I was sixteen I was ready.
I was ready to kill.
My time in the institution meant that I had to put my desires on hold but once I was out that’s when it started.
I am being charged with three murders but there were many more, they were far afield and no-one linked them to me.
Other men were serving time for their murders, I was clever, I would see them pick up men and go home with them and then when they left I would go in and kill them.
The police would get the DNA from her vagina and these men would be charged with the murder. They never ever got my DNA. Just like with Ivan Springer.
It was only when I met him, knew what he did for a living that I began my work closer to home, the work that I was born to do.
I wanted him to suffer too for what he did to me and so I killed two birds with one stone. That was to be my fifth card:
Kill two birds with one stone
But that was to be my downfall, playing too close to home, and not waiting for the right time.
The psychiatrists will say it is down to the abuse I got as a child, they will be arguing it out in court, one will say I am mad and another will say that I am faking insanity to avoid full responsibility for my crimes, but you and I know the truth don’t we?
Don’t we?
Was I born to kill, or was I born okay and it was my experiences that led me to kill?
Do I have a faulty gene, or am I the result of years of abuse, nature or nurture?
That will always be the question on everyone’s mind; theorists will be arguing that point well after I have left this planet.
Am I insane?
That is something you will never know. I will keep that close to my chest. The state of my sa
nity will decide my punishment.
Will I stop?
No; I won’t stop until I have killed her over and over again. Until I can stop women like her producing, until I can stop promiscuous men impregnating women like that. Then the killing will stop, and then every child will have a chance even if they are born to kill.
Like me.
Epilogue
Stephen sat in the airport lounge; he was just Stephen now, no longer Detective Stephen Roberts.
He had resigned from his post and was on his way to see his Sister who lived in Greece. He had two hours to get drunk before his plane arrived and needed to obliterate the memories of the last few days, few weeks, few months in fact.
He had no choice but to resign, she had humiliated him. He had lost the respect of his team he shuddered at the memory of when it had all come out, the whispers, the laughing behind his back, someone had, had the nerve to say out loud knowing he was in earshot “Where was his gut instinct then, when he was shagging a transsexual serial killer!” They’d all laughed, even Derek and John his most valued men.
He couldn’t have stayed on, this would never have been a seven day wonder, and this would have followed his career for the rest of his life.
He ordered his first double whiskey from the airport bar and tried to read the magazine he had just brought at the kiosk, but he couldn’t focus, his concentration drifting back to the psychiatric report he’d read of the woman he could have, might have fell in love with.
The psychiatric evaluation was embedded in his mind, word for word and would be something he believed he would never forget, it read:
“Tanya is 31 years of age and has recently been charged with the murder of three women and the attempted murder of another. She has been working for the last ten years as a psychosexual therapist for people with transgender or cross dressing issues.
Tanya was born a boy named Richard Dobson to a single mum. He never knew the identity of his biological father.
His childhood appeared to be one of poverty and he experienced severe physical and emotional abuse from his mother, who died in 1996 in a house fire reported to be arson, but no one was ever arrested or charged with this offence.
Tanya or Richard as his birth certificate and medical records read (and what I will call him for the purpose of this report) was very avoidant when I attempted to discuss this with him.
I must add at this point however, that Richard appeared to move from one personality to another during our sessions. Some conversations he spoke and emulated that of a man and in others a woman.
There are very few medical records for Richard up until the age of sixteen when he was admitted to a psychiatric unit in London after trying to cut off his penis and almost bleeding to death. He spent two years in this institution and was diagnosed at the time of having a multiple personality disorder with sociopath tendencies.
He disclosed to his psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Burns (report attached) that he felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body. Dr Burns arranged therapy for him with a transgender psychologist, he engaged extremely well in therapy and he was subsequently discharged aged eighteen reported to be safe to return to the community.
He lived as a woman for four years and during this time went to college and then university to study psychotherapy followed by psychosexual therapy. After three years in training he was working on a placement with a transgender service.
Aged 22 during the summer holidays he flew to Thailand and had a complete gender change operation.
Richard has been living and working as a woman ever since under the name of Tanya Wright.
Richard does not appear to have gotten over the dreadful abuse inflicted by his mother who he describes as promiscuous and callous.
These memories and feelings were resurrected after meeting an ex lover of his mothers Detective Stephen Roberts who ironically worked on the murder investigations.
There had been an incident when he was about seven years old where he had walked into the kitchen wearing no pyjama bottoms, having wet the bed, and his belief is that his mum’s lover Detective Roberts had laughed at his penis, which he had already grown to believe was an abnormality, a protuberance that shouldn’t be there.
This had caused him extreme distress and had also resulted in his mother hitting him causing a three inch scar still visible today on his forehead and subsequently locking him in an under stairs cupboard on a weekly basis for long periods of time, when she had brought men to the house,
In Richard’s disturbed mind the women he killed were comparable to his mother. He believed that he could kill two birds with one stone, kill ‘his mother’ over and over again and laugh at the man trying to catch him, just like this man (Detective Stephen Roberts) had laughed at him all those years ago.
He believes that his role in society is to save the benefit system from future pay outs to single parents and he also has a magical belief about birth numbers, his own birth number being 326, this indicates to him that he was to kill three single mothers, two single people without children, but of childbearing age and six promiscuous men, fortunately he did not get to carry out all of these murders.
My diagnosis of Richard is that he is a sociopath and demonstrates symptoms indicative of a multiple personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder possibly developed due to the severe abuse experienced in childhood.
My view is that he demonstrates Narcissistic traits due to the fact that he sees himself as ‘special’ to complete the work he believes that he has to do. For example he believes that he helps others by getting rid of ‘vermin’ (women like his mum) and saving the benefit system using magical beliefs about birth numbers.
On the other hand he also demonstrates traits of multiple personality disorder due to his distinct and separate personalities. He demonstrates an unawareness of each other’s existence.
The male persona having quite a violent view of the world and the female persona that has empathy which he has demonstrated in his crimes by suffocating his victims with a pillow, This makes him different from other serial killers – killing people in a kind way.
Sadly he also demonstrates symptoms indicative of schizophrenia.
My professional opinion is that Richard is not and was not of sound mind when committing these crimes”
Stephen felt sick as he ordered his third double whiskey; he had been having sex with a transsexual serial killer for the last 10 months.
How would he ever cope with that, he knew it would crucify him for the rest of his life, leave him with the psychological problems his perpetrator had lived with for most of his life?
He could remember the incident clearly now, his mother was a one night stand, like most of the women in his life at that time, yes he had laughed, laughed at the pyjama top he’d had on and the writing on it:
‘God gives every bird a worm, but he does not throw it into the nest”
He’d laughed because of ‘the little worm’ hanging down limply below this slogan.
If only he had known that this would have such an impact on a child’s life.
But he couldn’t see this creature as a child now, as much as he tried.
After reading the psychiatric report he knew that she, he would not go to prison, that her barrister would claim insanity, she’d go to a psychiatric institution and charm her way out in two years.
He suddenly stopped mid thought…….. That’s what she was getting at, in the interview room……….
‘Roses are red Stephen…………………..’
She was trying to tell him that she would fake insanity; she even had the psychiatrist fooled.
She was having the last laugh.
‘He, who laughs last, laughs longest.’
**********
It was time to go to the boarding lounge now, start a new life in Greece, what he was going to do he had no idea but it would be a fresh start where no-one knew him, no one knew what a mess he’d made of his life.
He bo
arded the plane and smiled at the air stewardess, she smiled back obviously attracted to his manly looks and dazzling eyes.
Life was going to be good now he thought, he knew it was after all he could feel it in his gut.
AUTHORS NOTE
While writing this book, I was just finishing the fifteenth chapter when my husband called me out the office and said “Hey Linda, come and look at this”. He had the tele text on, and this is what it said.
“Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people.
Writers had a higher risk of anxiety, bi-polar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression and substance misuse, the Swedish researchers at the Karakinska Institute found.”
That’s why you can get inside the mind of a serial killer he teased.
What a load of rubbish I replied. Because I didn’t write this book………………. my alter ego did.
I didn’t like to remind him that he came home from work every evening asking if I’d wrote the next chapter yet as he wanted to read it, so what did that make him.
I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and if my husband has me sectioned please come and visit me.
I would like to give a big thank you to the people who have supported this new adventure of my life and for their continuous positive feedback. They include:
Elaine Woolmore, Ann Hirst, Giuliana Davies, Claire Kilmurry, Sheilagh Roxborough & Julia Quinn.
Thank you also to Dr. Baljit Mann for her psychological input and alongside my husband Michael David Mather and my stepson Dr Michael William Mather a big thank you for proof reading my book and for your valued feedback.
Thank you for buying and reading this book. I hope you enjoy.
Exploring your thoughts:
Did you develop any empathy for the killer? – The killer had a horrific childhood did you feel sorry for him.