by Ben Machell
He wrote about seeing a homeless man and buying him a bag of chips and a drink. He wrote about how hard it is picking fruit all day, and how little you get paid in return, and thought of the millions of people around the world doing exactly the same as him only without the luxury of choice. He thought about the beauty of nature, but this only made him anxious, afraid for the future of the planet, his mind running over the same existential fears that had dogged him ever since he first placed his eye to a telescope and saw the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact Jupiter. It was winter in New Zealand, and he was cold. On July 22, 2006, he was resting on the shores of Lake Taupo, which sits in a huge crater left by an ancient volcanic eruption. He shivered while writing in his journal.
It is the strokes of the keyboard which dictates society; from the regulation of power to the electronic transferring of funds. Money is the idol of modern society: the god that constricts each person and the prison which prevents human advancement….Humans constantly strive against one another and furthermore domineer over the rest of nature. A species of such power will ultimately use it unwisely, to the extent that it destroys itself.
Four days later, Stephen made another entry. He wrote about missing the height of the English summer and how he was working as a fruit picker. “I am contemplating the fruition of unconventional financial gain,” he then writes. “That is, a project that would see me ‘stealing’. Some bank or financial institution would do.”
I have this entry only in the form of a photocopied sheet. It has the faded look of a copy of a copy of a copy. In the top right corner, a small official stamp shows that it is “exhibit no. 242.” It is police evidence, used in Stephen’s eventual trial. It is the moment when he first allowed himself to entertain the possibility of “stealing” from banks or other financial institutions. It does not mean that from this moment on his crimes were inevitable. But the seed was now planted. It is your mind that creates the world. And Stephen’s mind was now starting to create his own.
Chapter Ten
Stephen stood in a silent, sun-dappled meadow. The air was warm and still, heavy with the scent of lavender and hot, dry grass. In one hand he held a long, curved bow. In the other, he held an arrow fletched with white feathers. Breathing slowly, he planted his feet, notched the arrow, and then raised the bow to eye level, drawing the string back to his cheek. As he held the pose, his chest rose and fell and his arms began to quiver gently under the mounting strain. Then, with an exhale, he let go. It took a little over one second for the arrow to fly two hundred feet and bury itself into a butt at the far end of the meadow with a gentle thud. Stephen lowered the bow and squinted to see how close to the bull’s-eye he had struck. He was not far off. To his right, he heard a pair of hands clapping softly. Stephen turned to the old Japanese man who had been supervising him. He was in his late eighties and wore a simple brown robe and large, square glasses. He smiled encouragingly at Stephen, who responded with a small bow of respect. Doing his best to hide a satisfied grin, Stephen reached for another arrow. He took aim. And let fly.
It was the summer of 2007, and Stephen was in central France, living on a rural Buddhist retreat outside the town of Limoges. He was working there as a gardener and groundskeeper while studying meditation, yoga, and the ancient art of kyudo archery. Almost ten months had passed since he’d returned from his travels on the other side of the world. Adjusting to life back in the small house in the small coastal town of his childhood had proved incredibly difficult. He had experienced freedom for the first time in his life but then, suddenly, he was back on Manstone Avenue, the site of so much of his childhood trauma, trapped between the looming figure of his father and the distant, distracted figure of his mother. After she’d endured years of psychotic episodes and long-term stays in institutions, Jenny Jackley’s doctors had finally found the right combination of drugs to keep her relatively stable but, at least from Stephen’s perspective, painfully vacant.
Peter Jackley seemed particularly distressed that the young man who had returned to the family home seemed so different from the one who had left it. Peter’s prostate cancer had continued to spread and there were signs, from early 2007 onward, that he was beginning to suffer from dementia. His daughter, Lisa, describes how he had called her up one day after Stephen had returned from his travels.
“My dad thought Stephen had been kidnapped while he was away and that someone different had come back,” she explains. “He used to say that he was worried it wasn’t the real Stephen. He was worried that he had been kidnapped and that it was to do with Nazi gold or something.”
Stephen had not been kidnapped. He had just changed. His travels had made him more sure of himself and less afraid of the world. Socialization was still incredibly difficult, but he knew it was possible. He did not bang his head or pull his hair or simply flee when faced with it. He still possessed the same sense of injustice about the world, about capitalism and global income distribution. Only now it was underpinned by firsthand experience. And he had returned to Sidmouth with something more empowering than anything he could ever have imagined: He possessed in his mind a possible solution. A course of action he could take. The final weeks of his travels, which saw him fly from Fiji to Los Angeles, only cemented the possibility of robbing banks for some greater good. He wrote in his journal about the homeless buskers and beggars of Santa Barbara, viewing them as the unforgivable collateral damage of a system focused exclusively on the pursuit of profit. “Money, money money,” he wrote from L.A. “Here it is the ruling god. The rich grow richer, the poor poorer. There is no equality of justice or opportunity, since money can effectively buy both.”
On his flight from L.A. to London, he wrote “Careers” at the top of a page. He began by brainstorming some options under the subhead “unconventional.” The first was simply “bank robber (‘hustler’)” with the further possibilities of “counterfeit money producer,” “diamond smuggler (Amsterdam—London),” and “drug dealer.” He also included “property developer (mortgage low, develop, sell high),” “stock exchange/share dealer,” and “currency buyer/seller.” Then he moved on to more genteel options: travel journalist, writer (“physics—not philosophy”), writer (“fiction/poetry”), independent retailer (“crafts, books, fossils”), independent tour operator, apprentice builder, landscape gardener, “UN (military) personnel,” astronaut, marine biologist and, finally, geographer.
Arriving back in Sidmouth, though, his priority was to secure some work. And just as before, he struggled. Interviews led nowhere. Rejections mounted. The autumn of 2006 turned to winter, and Stephen slipped back into the same pattern of daytime drinking, petty gambling, and isolation. He drifted into depression, signed on for £45 worth of jobseeker’s allowance a week, and found his mind returning again and again to the possibility of bank robbery as the catalyst to a better world. He began to think seriously about how to make it work. Because to Stephen, it was not a fantasy. If he committed to it, he could make it real. As the Buddha said, it is your mind that creates the world. “I thought, right, I can make a difference. I had this concept that if something was first an idea and then an action, then it can happen.”
He began to conceptualize a process. He would steal enough money to set up a “legitimate enterprise” that he gradually came to refer to simply as “The Organisation.” Once the Organisation was up and running with stolen seed money, he would grow it into a kind of umbrella NGO, funding hospitals, schools, and scholarship programs for the global poor. It would be a banner to which like-minded people across the planet could rally. Its goal was nothing less than the eradication of world poverty and the prevention of ecological catastrophe. Stephen’s heart beat fast with thoughts of the different possibilities.
“There were clear steps in my mind,” he says, trying to explain that while this might all sound vague and fanciful to us, it absolutely wasn’t to him. “It wasn’t some illusive, cloudy thing. It was something I would create
. I just needed the means to do so. In hindsight, I had this target of £100,000 in my mind. Once I hit that point, I would stop. No more robberies. Because the money would then be going into something sustainable that wouldn’t overtly break the law.”
By February 2007, with this possibility still dominating his thoughts, Stephen left Sidmouth for a second time. He says that another lucky win on the horses helped him earn enough money for a cheap trip abroad. Escaping the “black hole” of Manstone Avenue, he moved through Europe, traveling from Amsterdam to Paris, then down through France. It was here he discovered the Dechen Chöling meditation center near Limoges. Composed of a small eighteenth-century château plus outbuildings set in rolling green countryside, Dechen Chöling attracts visitors from around the world seeking instruction in Shambhala Buddhism, a modern, secular form of Buddhist teaching. Central to Shambhala is the belief that individuals can, through their own actions, help to establish an enlightened society. The mythical hidden kingdom of Shambhala was, in Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a place of dignity, equality, and compassion. Stephen arrived at the retreat, first staying as a paying guest before continuing his travels south, into Spain and Morocco. When his money ran out, he returned to Dechen Chöling, finding work as a member of the community’s staff, tending to the grounds, working in the kitchens, and doing odd jobs in exchange for room and board.
As the spring of 2007 turned to summer, the Dechen Chöling staff moved from their rooms in the main château into large tents in order to make room for the hundreds of guests who would soon flock to the community. Stephen found himself sharing a tent with an American man named Ralph Williams. Bald, cheerful, and wearing one silver earring, Williams had worked as an exhibition and theater designer before “burning out” in 2005 and starting a semi-itinerant life of travel and work at different meditation centers. He remembers Stephen very well.
“He was young and he was socially awkward, but for me not really alarmingly so. Just a little odd,” he says. “My sense was that the community in general didn’t quite know what to make of him. There was always a little bit of uncertainty. I could see in him that he was a really sensitive guy who just wanted to fit in, but who didn’t really know how to communicate in a relaxed way with others. He was still trying to figure out the rules for life, and how one is meant to behave and connect.”
Lisa Steckler worked at Dechen Chöling as part of the human resources team. A chatty Canadian not much older than Stephen, Steckler admits she has a tendency to ask a lot of questions, which was something she says Stephen never responded well to. “The quality I remember which made him distinct is that when I would ask probing questions or just try and check in, there were times when he would just look at me,” she says. “I would be waiting for him to answer and he wouldn’t.” This confused Steckler because in her experience, people came to the center to unburden themselves, to share their feelings and experiences. But Stephen seemed to be the opposite.
Steckler says that there was also something else. When he arrived, he did not present himself as Stephen Jackley. Instead, he told everyone that his name was Steve Mason. Stephen had experimented with alternate surnames since adolescence. In one of his early journals, he wrote the name “Steve Mason” several times, trying it out, the same way you or I might repeat a phrase in our heads. He says that in his opinion there wasn’t anything particularly unusual about this. “It sounded better than ‘Jackley.’ And sometimes when I had to say my name to people, I had to keep repeating it and spelling it out, which I found a bit annoying.” Mason, he continues, is a surname from his mother’s side of the family. “I thought it was a good-sounding name, so it seemed like a good one to pick.”
The diaries I have from this period show Stephen in a state of conflict. He loved Dechen Chöling but still felt isolated. He was torn between his developing plans for the Organisation and living a peaceful life in line with the teachings of Shambhala. “Rainy days pass by and I am still alone, without a soulmate,” he wrote in April 2007. “Only dreams of the stars and walks through the forest provide awe and happiness. Last night I got little sleep but felt so ‘full’ and happy—towards everything that exists.”
Later, he wrote about the internal tension he felt there.
I want to stay here till August, maybe even longer. They have me doing mostly physical work here and consequently my physique has improved. Regularity and discipline! But what can I do? How can I make a living? I can’t foresee a life of one-off heists if I follow the Dharma.
Opposite the tent shared by Ralph and Stephen was another, belonging to sixty-five-year-old Maizza Waser, a German woman who worked for Dechen Chöling organizing the workers and allocating jobs. Waser, like Stephen, is autistic, although, unlike Stephen, she had long been aware of her condition at this point. She remembers that Stephen was shy and awkward and that he seemed to struggle with many of the physical tasks. “Most of the work is manual work, either in the kitchen or garden, and he was not very skilled in moving his body,” she remembers. He once accidentally cut down a young sapling. “He was nice to talk to, but when it came down to giving instructions? That was not so easy.”
Waser says that the fact she is autistic does not mean she was therefore able to identify that Stephen was also on the spectrum, though in hindsight, she can see that it would make sense. One morning, she remembers, the two of them bumped into each other outside their tents and began discussing the dreams they’d both had that night. As they walked together through the tall grass to the shower block, Stephen described a recurring dream. “It was very intense. He said that he was always running. Running away from people. Running, running, running,” she says. “I still remember him saying that.”
Ralph Williams chuckles when describing how Stephen would obsessively do intense aerobic exercise routines right in front of the château, either oblivious to the onlookers going about their days or, on some level, hoping that they would see him. “But I also saw his deep love of nature, and there was this one moment that stood out for me in the tent,” he says. “I was resting between shifts and he came in from having his day off and he had this dandelion behind his ear, and I could see that he had been out in nature for hours in this blissed-out state. When he came back, he was completely at peace. Almost in a trance.”
Lying a few feet apart from each other every night, Williams found that he often ended up listening to Stephen voice his concerns for the planet. “We had discussions about the injustices of the world, the banking system and corporate model, capitalistic stuff. He did reference wanting to equalize that in some way, that Robin Hood thing of wanting to rob from those institutions. I remember telling him that you can’t do that—I was sort of lecturing him in a way—because you’ll get into trouble.”
Amid all of this, Stephen still yearned to meet someone. “Soon there will be a large influx of people, which I must deal with,” he wrote from Dechen Chöling before the summer rush. “Perhaps out of the 200+ there will be someone to share happiness with.”
And then, one early summer afternoon, he saw her. A large group of new guests arrived by coach and made their way to the château to find their beds and dump their bags. Among them was a tall, slender young woman in her early twenties with dark blond hair that fell to her shoulders. She walked with a languid, unselfconscious grace. From a distance Stephen watched, transfixed. Later, after a group meditation session, he did something he had never done before in his life.
As the room started to empty, he ignored the urge to slope his shoulders, look at the ground, and move quickly away. Instead, he put his shoulders back and slowly, calmly approached the girl. He asked her where she was from. She said that she was from Colorado and then, smiling, asked if Stephen was from England. He said that, yes, he was from England. Speaking in a soft, gentle voice, she told him her name was Rebecca. (This is not the name Stephen told to me; I’ve changed this name to disguise Rebecca’s identity.) Stephen said he as
ked how she’d come to be interested in Shambhala Buddhism and, before he could really process what was happening, he and Rebecca were having a conversation. And it was the easiest thing Stephen had ever done. She made jokes. She asked questions. She listened to what Stephen had to say, nodding her head slowly, occasionally moving stray strands of hair back behind her ears. She had a funny, infectious laugh that initially gave Stephen a bolt of panic when he realized that, upon hearing it, he was laughing, too.
As the days passed, the two of them gravitated toward each other more and more. Stephen says that their mutual interest in Buddhism made things easier for him, in the same way a mutual interest in cosmology had paved the way to a friendship with John Paige, and a mutual interest in horse racing served to bring him and Julian together. When Stephen was not working, they would go on long bike rides through the French countryside, play Scrabble, or just sit in the long grass and talk. “She was quite philosophical and a deep thinker, but at the same time she didn’t have that aloofness that many intellectually inclined people have. I wanted to spend all of my time with her and nobody else. She became the focus of my world. I guess it’s fair to say I was in love. Certainly, I’ve never really felt the same about anyone else I’ve met,” Stephen says. “She also revealed much in her past, which had similarities to mine. Minus the crime and mum being hospitalized bits.”
One hot afternoon, Stephen and Rebecca were lying together by the shores of a lake. They were both wet from swimming, and their bicycles were resting against a nearby tree. He turned to her and, finally, told her something he had not told anyone. He was wanted by Dutch police. He told her that after leaving Sidmouth in February, he’d traveled to Amsterdam where he proceeded to get very stoned. He was staying in a hostel dorm, and one night, he said he was woken by an angry member of hostel staff insisting that he had not yet paid for his bed and needed to provide the cash. Stephen, groggy, insisted that he had already paid, but the man wouldn’t leave him be so he eventually handed over some more money and drifted back to sleep. Stephen said that the next morning, when he was checking out of the hostel, another member of staff insisted that he needed to pay before he could leave.