by Ben Machell
It is not society’s fault that Stephen committed his crimes. Nobody made the decision to rob banks for him. But the Jackleys were nevertheless excluded by society because of psychiatric conditions that were not their fault. One of the reasons they moved around so much during Stephen’s early years was for this very thing. Stephen knew enough to fret about asking his classmates to come round and play at Manstone Avenue because he feared how they would respond to his mother and father. It is not a coincidence that Ben Weaver’s father worked with autistic people and that, as a result, Ben knew that some people were different and that, while this may come with certain challenges, it was nothing to be squeamish about and certainly nothing to end a friendship over.
This is not a book with a message. But what I hope it shows is that people like Stephen do not arrive fully formed. They are shaped by the world in which they live, a world we happen to share with them. We have, therefore, a responsibility to understand and accept the reality of the different conditions we will inevitably encounter in others, whether it’s schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, social phobias, Asperger’s, whatever. And while it is not always an easy thing to show patience or empathy toward someone who has a condition you cannot see, nor is it the hardest thing in the world, either. Far from it. It’s one thing to encourage openness and honesty when we talk about it. It’s another thing—a much more valuable thing—to not flinch or check the time more than you would otherwise do when somebody who does struggle with a difference is right in front of you.
At the vegetarian curry house where we had our last meal together, Stephen had with him a copy of Greta Thunberg’s book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference. It was, I suppose, the closing of a circle. In 2018, Thunberg had been a socially isolated teenager with Asperger’s who had an intense anxiety about impending ecological catastrophe as well as a determination to do something about it. Following a social media campaign and a series of emphatic speeches issuing calls to action over climate change, the Swedish teenager went on to become the world’s most recognizable and influential activist on climate change. She has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, has more than four million Twitter followers, and is considered a Nobel Peace Prize winner in waiting. The same stubbornness, determination, and sense of injustice that was present in Stephen is present in her, and much of the world loves her for it. Stephen presented me with Thunberg’s book a little bashfully. He said that he hoped I’d find the time to read it.
Sometimes he looks at the state of the world and feels an overwhelming pessimism. “I’ll feel that the world has reached a point where the course is already set, and there is nothing anyone can do.”
More often, though, he tells himself there is still a future worth fighting for. Over the course of hours and hours of conversation, Stephen only ever made one very tentative suggestion about this book. He said that, despite everything that he has been through, he would hope that people still manage to find a positive message in his experiences. Stephen saw that the world was in trouble and he’d wanted to do something about it. What he did was wrong, and he knows that. But, still, he did something. Which is what we have to do if we want to give ourselves a fighting chance. A train is rumbling down the track. We can choose to either hear it or not.
“The world is in a very precarious place. And it could get a lot worse. We can all take action, and we can all take small steps to make it more sustainable and fair,” he says, before smiling shyly. “Just not by robbing banks.”
Author’s Note
When I first sat down to interview Stephen Jackley for The Times in the spring of 2016, the possibility that I might write a book about the quiet young man in front of me never crossed my mind. By the time we parted three hours later, I knew that I would eventually run out of excuses not to.
Writing about Stephen’s life and his crimes has been strange, sad, and exhilarating, and The Unusual Suspect would not exist—or at least not in the form it does now—if it had not been for his involvement and cooperation. I have, over the course of my job, encountered many people who relish the attention that comes with being a subject, even if they pretend not to. Stephen is not one of them. During the hours of interviews I conducted with him and over the dozens and dozens of emails I kept sending demanding more and more information—names, people, places, feelings—I was often left with the sense that he felt himself to be engaged in a process that was wearying but somehow necessary. There were many times I was sure that my next question would be the one that would finally cause him to simply walk away from memories that were painful, shameful, and raw. He never did. For this I thank him.
Stephen had no editorial control over this project beyond consenting to the replication of his diary entries, other written materials, and psychiatric reports. Dialogue, where it appears, is presented as he or other interviewees can best recall. Stephen would often provide the names or contact details of individuals he felt sure would have nothing good to say about him, only to voice his surprise when that turned out to not quite be the case. Equally, I approached a good many family members who simply did not want to talk about him and what he had done.
The diary entries included in this book are only snippets of the inner world Stephen documented throughout his adolescence and then on into the period of his crimes. I have some of these notebooks and entries, the West Mercia Police hold others, some are shared between us in the form of photocopied evidence bundles used in his trial, and still more may well have been lost or destroyed while Stephen was serving his jail sentence in the UK. I have tried to use the written material available to me in a way that does not editorialize. By quoting selectively from his diaries, it would be possible to cast Stephen as either a sinner or a saint. He was, in his own way, both of these things, and so I have tried to make the quoted entries reflect that complicated reality.
A great deal of information relating to Stephen’s crimes exists in the form of local news reports, CCTV imagery, and court records from both sides of the Atlantic, all of which I relied on throughout the course of my research. There are also moments when we have to rely on Stephen’s version of events and nobody else’s. As in any such circumstance, there is always the possibility that the teller, consciously or not, omits or embellishes or otherwise presents a reality they feel either would have been better then, or serves them better now. Nevertheless, I have tried, as much as possible, to take Stephen at his word. My intention had never been to place him on trial a second time, and in any case, it is my belief that far more has come to light as a result of him being given the benefit of the doubt than not.
I must thank a number of law enforcement agencies, particularly the Devon and Cornwall Police, the West Mercia Police, the ATF, and the U.S. Marshals. All the officers I interviewed were patient, thoughtful, and professional; they remembered Stephen’s case with interest and bore him no ill will. But they all stressed that his crimes had real victims. It is for this reason that I am incredibly grateful to Luke Twisleton for talking so honestly about the long-lasting trauma of being robbed at gunpoint, and I would encourage everyone to consider that he was just one of dozens of people who found themselves caught up in Stephen’s actions through no choice of their own.
I would like to thank the Vermont Department of Prisons as well as Mark Potanas and Cameron Lindsay, former warden of MDC Brooklyn, both of whom provided a great deal of valuable information about the realities of the United States penal system. Similarly, Dr. Sajid Suleman was a huge help in better understanding the nature of Asperger’s in general and in Stephen in particular. My appreciation goes to the Arkbound Foundation for allowing the reproduction of Stephen’s mother’s poems, and also to Ben Weaver, not just for sharing his memories but also for being a good friend to a young Stephen, a fact I cannot help wanting to thank him for.
Finally, I have to thank Nicola Jeal, my editor at The Times Magazine. When I first told her that I had heard about this geography stu
dent from Devon who developed an obsession with Robin Hood and then robbed a load of banks in order to give to the poor, she agreed that it was a story worth pursuing. Four years on, I know the reality is a little more complicated. But it was still a story worth pursuing. I am glad that I did.
Ben Machell
To Nathalie, Thomas, and Willow
Acknowledgments
This story would still exist in fractured pieces across a dozen different notepads and Microsoft Word files if it were not for the care, patience, and professionalism of many different people, all of whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. I would like to thank everybody at Ballantine, but particularly Brendan Vaughan, who acquired The Unusual Suspect for U.S. publication, and Pamela Cannon, my editor, who oversaw everything with perfect calm and perception. Thanks must also go to Lexi Batsides for her tirelessness, to all the proofreaders and copy editors who managed to make so many strange English terms and expressions understandable to American readers, and also to Carlos Beltrán, whose cover art I think is absolutely brilliant.
It’s impossible for me to imagine any of this happening without Richard Pike at C&W. Richard managed to make the prospect of writing a book seem not only possible but also even vaguely enjoyable and rewarding. I now accept that he was probably right. Throughout this entire process Richard has been a constant source of reassurance, good humor, and deep professional knowledge that I could not have managed without. I am very fortunate to have him as an agent. I’d like to thank everyone at C&W as well as Luke Speed and Anna Weguelin at Curtis Brown, and Zoe Sandler and Heather Karpas at ICM, who have all been instrumental in bringing this story to as wide an audience as possible.
Everybody who contributed interviews or information to The Unusual Suspect deserves special thanks. They did not have to give me their time and attention in order to speak about Stephen and his crimes, but they all did, and I will always be grateful to them. Similarly, there are dozens of people who contributed in ways that may not be obvious on the page, but who nevertheless helped immeasurably. There are all the various cheerful and forbearing members of staff working for different prison services and police forces who did their best to answer my questions or politely explain that my requests were impossible. There are the members of the public who replied to my posts on the community Facebook pages for places like Seaton and Ledbury, where Stephen had committed his crimes, and who had recollections they were willing to share. There is also Joseph Evans, a brilliant young writer whose talents were absolutely wasted helping to lighten the load of interview transcription. So thank you all.
I would never have had the opportunity to write this book if I had not been given opportunities to write in the first place. I would therefore like to sincerely thank everybody who has ever commissioned me, but especially when I was young and not particularly good. On this very specific note, I have to say that I will forever look up to the funny, clever, and kind people at MOJO magazine circa 2005—Andrew Male, Jenny Bulley, Ian Harrison, Danny Eccleston—who all gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement and hope when I had very little idea what I was doing.
Since then I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last fifteen years at The Times and the number of people who have given me chances, trust, and friendly bollockings are too many to mention. That said, I do want to thank all my Times Magazine colleagues, past and present. First and foremost, I need to thank Tony Turnbull for giving me a job in the first place and Gill Morgan, my first editor, for letting me have a go at writing features. Nicola Jeal, Simon Hills, Louise France, and Monique Rivalland have all been amazingly supportive editors to write for and I cannot thank them enough, while Amanda Linfoot and Chris Riley will always be two of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with. The past fifteen years have whizzed by, and this is in massive part due to the pleasure of sitting right next to my fellow writers Robert Crampton and Hilary Rose, whose friendship, humor, and kindness have been constant. Cheers!
Finally, I want to say thank you to my whole family. My mother and father, Lydia and Robin, are the most loving, intelligent, and funniest parents you could ever hope to have, and every member of the Machell, Streit, and Lees families is a wonderful person to have in your life. Thank you, of course, to Thomas and Willow. You are, in every sense, the reason I get out of bed in the morning. Most of all, though, I want to thank Nathalie. You are the best person I have ever met and I could not have done any of this without you. Nor would I have wanted to. I love you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Machell is a feature writer for The Times and The Times Magazine and has contributed to publications including the London Evening Standard, Vice, and Esquire. He has been shortlisted for Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards. Machell has full and exclusive access to Stephen Jackley and his diaries, as well as access to law enforcement and the key characters involved in Jackley’s story on both sides of the Atlantic.
Twitter: @ben_machell
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