UBC: Berry-Dee, Talking with Serial Killers

[truepenny]

Talking with Serial Killers: The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories by Christopher Berry-Dee

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a lot of hat and not very much cattle. It profiles and interviews Harvey Louis Carignan, Arthur John Shawcross, John Martin Scripps, Michael Bruce Ross, Ronald Joseph "Butch" DeFeo, Jr., Aileen Carol Wuornos, Kenneth Allen McDuff, Douglas Daniel Clark and Carol Mary Bundy (who declined to be interviewed), and Henry Lee Lucas. (I note that somebody changed the subtitle between the time the book was in galleys and the time it was printed: the cover says "the most evil people in the world," while the title page says, "the most evil men in the world." Which, yes, hello, you did interview Aileen Wuornos.) Berry-Dee seems more interested in congratulating himself on his own prowess as an interviewer (interviewing people who wouldn't talk to anyone else, getting his subjects to talk about things they wouldn't talk about with anyone else) than in the people he interviewed. (I think it's probably unintentionally telling that the photograph of Michael Ross is actually a photograph of Christopher Berry-Dee shaking hands with Michael Ross; Ross is essentially invisible behind the bars of his cell.) In some cases there's barely any interview at all. The section on Kenneth McDuff, while it indulges in an indefensible description of lethal injection from the injectee's point of view (e.g., "McDuff felt pressure in his chest" (257)), dismisses the interview with very little more than "McDuff whinged on for an hour about the injustices committed by the judicial and prison system" (260). Granted that McDuff is maybe the number-one contender for Most Repellent in this particular rogues' gallery, that's still a poor excuse for an "interview." And Berry-Dee is not as good as he thinks he is at laying out the (admittedly very complicated) careers of these serial killers in a clear narrative.

If this book has a valuable point, it's the shrieking need for prison reform in America. Several of these killers murdered, were arrested, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, were paroled for reasons ranging from over-crowding to bribery, and went right back to murder. (McDuff was given three death sentences in 1968, had the sentence commuted to life in 1982 (? Berry-Dee has it as 1992, but that can't be right), and was paroled in 1986. It's believed he started killing again three days later.) Capital punishment may or may not be the answer, but letting this kind of killer out to continue murdering is most definitely NOT.



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