The Unusual Suspect

by Ben Machell

  To Stephen, the fact that he had been placed on suicide watch after innocently admitting to regularly feeling suicidal was a surprise. More than that, it felt like a slap in the face for having been honest and straightforward with the nurse. He sat on the floor with his head in his hands.

  * * *

  —

  It was a dark October evening in 2007, and a nineteen-year-old student named Luke Twisleton had almost finished his shift at the largest branch of William Hill betting shop in Worcester. Twisleton was in his second year of a business degree at the university, but had applied for a job as a cashier in order to earn a bit of extra money. A member of the university’s rugby team, he was strapping, confident, and affable. After his job interview with William Hill, he’d been offered employment “on the spot,” and that was that. It was closing time and after gently encouraging a few lingering customers out the door, Twisleton was helping empty the slot machines and cash out for the night.

  As he worked, he noticed a pair of gloves on one of the tables. He paused and wondered whether there was still a customer on the premises, possibly in the men’s toilet. He decided to go and check. He pushed open the door and saw a man gripping both sides of a sink and staring at himself in the mirror. He was wearing a black ski mask. Beside him, on another sink, was a knife and pistol. The man spun around and for a split second, Twisleton saw a look of frantic fear in his eyes. Twisleton filled the toilet doorway. He was nearly six feet tall and weighed 225 pounds. But he was still processing what was in front of him. “I was a bit shell-shocked and said, ‘What are you doing?’ But he had a ski mask on, so I think I knew what he was doing.”

  There was then a race, spanning a matter of milliseconds, to determine which of them could react quickest. The masked man won by a fraction. Overcoming his terror, he grabbed his weapons and charged at Twisleton. “He put the knife up to my chest and the gun to my head. Then he told me to get on the floor, which I refused to do. I don’t know if you have ever been in a bookies, but the toilets are not that clean. So all I did was put my hands behind my head and backed out. When I got out of the toilet I put my back to the wall and slid down.”

  From behind his ski mask, Stephen scanned the shop floor. He saw Twisleton’s manager, a middle-aged woman, and screamed at her to freeze. She ignored him and bolted out the front door, locking it behind her.

  Stephen muttered a curse. The previous night, he had concluded a diary entry with a rallying call to himself.

  MAKE SURE YOU DO THE HEIST AND DO IT WELL!

  But the heist was not going well at all. His plan had been to force a member of the staff to open the safe before an alarm could be raised. Now there would be no time for that. The police would arrive in a matter of minutes. So Stephen leaped over the cashier’s counter and opened the tills, stuffing banknotes into his backpack. Overhead CCTV monitors relayed everything that was happening, and he almost jumped when he caught sight of a black-clad figure in a ski mask. It took a second to realize it was simply an image of himself. From his position on the floor against the wall, Twisleton could see that Stephen’s actions were manic and unfocused. There was a bag in plain sight containing cash that the manager had been in the process of emptying from the slot machines. “You used to pull thousands from those machines,” he says. “But he completely missed it.”

  Instead, Stephen cleaned out the tills and rushed to the back of the betting shop where there was a fire exit. When he’d entered William Hill twenty minutes earlier, posing as a customer with his hoodie pulled low over his head, he’d known that he would escape via the rear, into the tight warren of alleyways and backstreets he had determined would suit his purpose perfectly. He bolted past Twisleton, through the fire door, and into an alley. Twisleton leaped to his feet and slammed the door shut, because he knew that at the end of the alley was a high gate. He hoped it would leave the robber trapped. Within a matter of minutes, the police arrived at the front of the shop and demanded Twisleton let them in. He explained that he couldn’t, because the manager had locked him in, but directed them around the back. Shortly after, the manager appeared with the keys. Armed police and a dog team poured in through the shop and then out through the fire exit at the rear. But the alley was empty. The gate had been scaled. The masked man had vanished into the night. A police helicopter thrummed overhead, scanning the streets for any sign of him.

  They found none. Stephen had already changed his clothes. He had planted a changeover bag and a bicycle in some bushes near an alley. From there, it was a five-minute cycle back to Wyvern Hall. He hurried past his Chinese flatmates as they watched TV in the communal area, and locked the door of his room behind him. Hiding his replica pistol before emptying the banknotes onto his bed, he quickly counted them. In all, the robbery had yielded £530. It was not nearly enough. The Organisation would not arise from petty cash smash-and-grabs. Going after the betting shop had been, as much as anything, a reflex. A need to prove to himself that he was still Robin Hood. Later, Stephen would take a red felt pen and mark some of these banknotes with the initials “RH.”

  “To begin with, I just didn’t bother,” he says. “But then I saw it as a point of principle that these notes had to be marked. Don’t ask me why.”

  Marking the notes seemed like an act of defacement. As much as Stephen needed money for the Organisation, he also hated it. He hated the fact that we all allowed ourselves to believe that banknotes have any actual real, inherent worth. Of course they don’t. In the past, you could at least theoretically take your cash to a bank and exchange it for its true value in gold, even though it would have been impossible for everyone who trusted in their cash to do so simultaneously. But today? Today you could not even do that. The banknotes Stephen had stolen had value only because we agree that they do. In his residence hall bedroom, he stopped scrawling “RH” for a moment and stared at the pieces of paper in front of him. He let his eyes trace the fine detail of a £20 note, the words “Bank of England” etched in an elaborate, florid script, the portrait of the queen looking back at him, festooned in jewels, gnomic and unblinking.

  He thought of the words of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize–winning economist. “The pieces of green paper have value because everyone thinks they have value.” It’s not just paper money that this applies to. Every hour, billions of pounds appear, vanish, and reappear on stock markets and investment bank balance sheets around the world. This money is not real, any more than the cash in your wallet is. But the idea of money—money as we know it today—has been foisted on us. We have constructed an entire society around the pursuit of it, and now nobody wants to see or say the truth. He wrote in his diary:

  Wealth is the greatest trick ever played. It is a worldwide illusion that enslaves mankind in a conveyor belt of work, produce and consume. An illusion which people give up their lives to pursue. Wealth is the foundation of all inequality—the primary tool of the rich and powerful.

  He decided that a portion of his takings should go directly to those in need. Wearing a long coat and doing his best to cover his face, he would go out at night and drop small rolls of his “RH” banknotes in the laps of the homeless without breaking stride. “I remember a couple of them shouting after me, just really grateful, like they couldn’t believe it.” On one occasion, a homeless man actually got up and chased after him, which, in turn, forced Stephen to break into a sprint in order to avoid being identified. “That was in Worcester,” he says quietly. “That was funny.”

  Luke Twisleton was interviewed by police at the scene of the crime until eleven p.m. He returned to his flat, went to bed, then got up very early to make a six a.m. rugby training session. He explained to his teammates what had happened to him the previous night. Some were convinced he was joking. He showered and then went to a morning lecture. And then, from nowhere, he crumbled. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I collapsed, pretty much,” he says. “All of a sudden it hit me. What happe
ned and what could have happened.” He went back to his family home in Bristol, where he remained for a month, unable to eat or sleep. He was prescribed sleeping pills. “Any confidence I had at that point vanished. My rugby went downhill. I gained a lot of weight.”

  What Stephen did to the nineteen-year-old Twisleton left a permanent mark. Twisleton says that he felt ashamed for not having been able to stop him. He thought he was about to be murdered by a terrified-looking stranger in a ski mask. He did not fully address the trauma for years. “I buried a lot of the stress, and I probably only dealt with that a few years ago. It was my wife who convinced me,” he says. “She has known for a long time that I needed to go and speak to someone. I couldn’t sleep without a light on. If it was dark, I couldn’t get out of bed if there wasn’t a light on because I couldn’t go into a dark place. I went years of sleeping two or three hours a night. I finally went to see a psychologist through the [National Health Service], and I thought it was going to be a complete waste of time, but it was the opposite. I would like to say I am completely over it, but there are still little ticks. It had a big impact on my life.”

  Over the course of his crimes, Stephen’s actions and deliberate use of threats and violent intimidation similarly impacted many people’s lives. Victim statements provided in advance of Stephen’s eventual trial in the UK show this. Ordinary working people were left traumatized. One statement provided by a bank worker and summarized by police described how Stephen “pointed a gun at them and that led them to become hysterical. The victim was taken to hospital after the incident because she was so distressed and was told she was suffering from severe trauma.”

  Another of Stephen’s victims told police that “the effect of the robbery has left her nervous at work and wary of strangers coming into the shop. If she has to face the suspect, it is likely she will become distressed and unable to give her account.” Others talked of feeling physically sick. Of an inability to return to their place of work or simply not knowing how they would cope with day-to-day life.

  Stephen says he now understands that his Asperger’s made it hard for him to appreciate the emotional impact of his actions on others. When Ben Weaver described his friend as being able to have empathy for people and their problems in a general, abstract way, but struggling to have empathy for an individual in front of him, this is what he was talking about.

  In planning and executing his early crimes, Stephen understood that pointing a replica gun or commando knife at somebody would, in that moment, make them afraid. It was a shame that he had to do so, but then making them afraid was the whole point. But once he’d made his getaway, he did not spend much time worrying about how his victims felt. At least, not to begin with. Inasmuch as he thought about it at all, he reasoned that their fear would pass, they would see they were not dead, and then they’d presumably just…continue with their lives. When he later learned this was not how they felt, it was a shock.

  It’s a bit like the genuine surprise he felt when, upon telling the Strafford County jail nurse that he had felt suicidal many times, he found himself being put straight onto suicide watch. Even if he had entertained suicidal thoughts, it was obvious, to him, that he was not actually going to kill himself. He couldn’t empathize with the nurse who’d heard him say this and then worried that he might actually do it. To Stephen, it was obvious that he was not going to kill or deliberately hurt anybody during his crimes. Doing so would make absolutely no sense. But the person at the other end of the replica pistol didn’t know that. At some level, he didn’t seem to understand this.

  “I couldn’t appreciate that going into a bank and pointing a gun at them…they didn’t realize it’s an imitation,” he says. “It could have been real to them. And I didn’t appreciate how that would convey to them. In a vague sense I knew it would cause fear. But intellectually, I couldn’t understand how it would affect them on an emotional level.”

  Later, Stephen reflected on how his Asperger’s impacts his ability to understand people’s feelings. “I don’t know how big the empathy thing with me is, though, because I care about others, deeply. The issue is more relating to their emotions, or rather understanding how things impact their emotions. It’s still a guessing game.”

  When it came to his crimes, this problem was made worse by the fact that Stephen had come to view banks and betting shops purely as institutions. Faceless, soulless, and malign. When Stephen finally stood trial for his crimes, he was surprised, confused, and then somewhat outraged to see that each charge listed him as robbing from individuals who had actually been given names. “I remember saying to the solicitor, ‘Are you sure the charges are correct?’ Because all the evidence was that I never saw it as individuals, I saw it as corporations. I wouldn’t have any contention saying I wanted to steal from corporations. But I was charged, in effect, with stealing from individuals.”

  Luke Twisleton says that Stephen wrote to him from prison, sending a letter to the university that ultimately found its way to him. It was a gesture of contrition, but also an attempt to make Twisleton understand what he had been hoping to achieve.

  “He was pretty much calling himself Robin Hood; that was how he saw himself. He was taking on these big corporations and giving back to the people,” says Twisleton. “It was sort of an apology. He was saying he was targeting these organizations and going after business but not thinking of the people who work there. But I’m not the business. I’m not rolling in money. I’m working there so I can pay my rent. He suggested some reading I should do,” he adds with a brittle chuckle. “So that I would better understand what he was trying to do.”

  Twisleton no longer has the letter. He kept it for a long time. But one day his wife uncovered it when they were in the process of moving. So she took it. And ripped it up. And threw it away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Breakfast on suicide watch consisted of powdered egg reconstituted into a pallid slop, two slices of soggy toast, and a small carton of milk. As he ate, Stephen learned that the strange young hyperactive inmate, the one who talked in his sleep and traced invisible patterns on sheets of paper, was called Matt. The older bald man who just seemed to lie on the floor underneath a blanket was called Steve. Matt was delighted with the eggs and wolfed them down. He then proceeded to help himself to the food on Steve’s tray. He asked if Stephen would like the spare carton of milk. When Stephen said he would not, Matt threw it into the air, letting the carton land on his head. He then stashed it under his blanket along with half a dozen other unopened milk cartons, vibrating with a kind of giddy joy.

  The bald man was refusing to eat. He just lay there on the floor, curled up, barely speaking. On each breakfast tray there was a plastic cup containing a clear red liquid. Stephen took a sip and was hit by a tongue-burning sugary sweetness. “The juice is drugged,” said Steve, who spoke from the floor in a distant monotone. Stephen recoiled. He thought of his mother and the way her drugs would leave her hollowed out and docile, so he tipped the juice down the small metal sink in the corner of the cell.

  Hours passed. Prison staff came in with medication for Steve, who obediently swallowed it down, and then they left. More food was presented along with cupfuls of the Day-Glo juice. It was impossible for Stephen to feel at ease. The Hole had been bad, but at least he’d had his own space, however small. He was allowed books and writing materials. But here? Here he was wedged between a man who seemed completely inert and another who was practically hyperactive. Stephen had spent almost his entire life stuck in close proximity to two people struggling with mental illness. And now, over four thousand miles away, he was back doing the same. Matt quizzed Stephen about England and his crimes, before going on long, rambling, self-aggrandizing anecdotes about his own criminal career. He claimed to have been a gang leader and made $10 million before finally being captured. His constant talking, probing, and boasting were punctuated by violent, powdered egg–powered bowel movements. Stephe
n gagged. It was a direct assault on his own heightened need for hygiene. Within twenty-four hours the claustrophobia was overpowering. He began to understand that there was a reason the other two gulped down the juice so willingly.

  Stephen did his best to find out what he was doing there. When prison staff came in and out of the observation cell, he badgered them for information. They explained that he was considered a suicide risk. In order to no longer be considered a suicide risk, he must first request an appointment with one of the prison psychiatrists. But because it was now Saturday, he would have to wait until Monday.

  The next morning, the bald man was carried from the cell. Placed in a wheelchair by the guards, he was left sitting in the corridor attached to a drip. He was weak and his refusal to eat meant that he was forced to receive fluids, supplements, and vitamins intravenously. Stephen stared at him from inside the cell. Earlier, Stephen had tried to be encouraging, urging his depressed cellmate to just hold on, to wait until he was out of jail and could finally be back in nature, walking barefoot on the grass and listening to the sound of birds. Just talking about it gave Stephen a lump in his throat, but the man simply looked at him. “I couldn’t give a shit about birds or grass,” he said, evenly.

  After that, Stephen stopped talking to him. He requested some paper and a pen, which was granted, and informed the guards he was going to write a letter of complaint to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., informing them of Steve’s plight and demanding that somebody come down to the Strafford County Department of Corrections, New Hampshire, to see for themselves. “I said, right, I’m writing to my embassy about this. And I said it in such a serious way that the guards just laughed and said, okay, you do what you want. They couldn’t have cared less,” he says. “I actually did write it. I don’t know if they ever responded.”