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I leaped to my feet, and launched myself at him.
It was what he’d been waiting for. He caught me as if I was a child running into his outstretched arms in the playground.
The next second he had me in a vicious headlock, my back to his chest. I clawed frantically at his arm as he crushed my windpipe, digging my fingernails into his skin hard enough to draw blood but unable to break his hold. Everything was already starting to turn black. His breath was hot against the back of my neck. I knew he wasn’t going to stop until he killed me. And then he’d kill my mother – if she wasn’t dead already.
Somehow I summoned my remaining strength and in one last, desperate move, I lurched forward, momentarily throwing him off balance as he fell with me. His hold finally loosened and I broke free and staggered to the other side of the kitchen, coughing and gasping for air.
My father didn’t follow me. He was holding his head, bellowing with pain. Blood dripped through his fingers from a sickening gash on his forehead. There was more blood on the marble counter: he must have smashed his head on the edge of the stone with the full force of his bodyweight behind him.
He looked at me, his expression confused, as if he couldn’t work out why I was here. And then slowly he sank to his knees.
The blow to his head almost certainly wasn’t fatal. I had to call an ambulance for my mother: the paramedics would probably save him, too. And then she’d go back to him, like she always did.
No one would blame me for his injuries. Everything I’d done until now had been in self-defence.
When I picked up the cushion from my mother’s kitchen chair and calmly held it over his face until he stopped breathing,thatwas murder.
SETtalks | psychologies series
Science♦Entertainment♦Technology
Inside the mind of a psychopath |Original Air Date 9 July
The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What I did was wrong: legally and morally, at least by your lights. But it wasjust.
I’ve never really thought of killing my father as murder. I had to put him down for the good of the pack. Hand on heart, I can honestly say I didn’t get any pleasure from doing it, beyond relief that I was up to the job. As I’ve said, you don’t know what you’re capable of till you’re put to the test. You could find out you’re a very different person from the one you’ve always imagined you are.
But I’d stepped up to the plate and got the job done. It was necessary and unpleasant, but I didn’t have the kind of destabilising last-minute qualm of conscience I’d feared. In fact it was surprisingly easy in the end. If we’re being honest, it didn’t trouble me any more than zapping a mosquito would bother you.
My moral code, such as it is, comes down to one simple concept.
Survival.
And the truth is, if you’d been in my shoes you’d probably have come to the same decision. The only difference between us is that you’d have agonised about it beforehand and felt guilty afterwards.
But if the outcome is the same, does that make you a better person than me? Or just a hand-wringing hypocrite?
Admittedly there was some collateral damage. That was unfortunate. But sometimes the innocent have to be sacrificed for the greater good. It’s not a choice anyone makes lightly, though of course for me it’s easier than for some.
And at least it wasquick. He had a better death than some.
Honestly, it’s nice to be able to get everything offmy chest like this. Confession is a wonderful thing, don’t you think? Sofreeing.
So you can trust me when I tell you I didn’t murder Felix Porter.
Because I’ve got no reason to lie to you.
Andhisdeath wasn’t quick at all. It was gruesome and slow and incredibly painful. You’ve all read the stories, and seen the news. You know what happened to him. I may be a psychopath but I’m not asadist.
It’s interesting, by the way, how everyone loves to dwell on the gory details. You cover your eyes and you peep through your fingers, but you stilllook. You want to knowallthe grisly specifics. What you need, what youcrave,is a nice bloodthirsty adrenaline rush at someone else’s expense.
Well, let me give that to you. I didn’t kill Felix Porter but I wasthere. And I can tell you he had a long, cruel, lingering death. Hesuffered.
It’s a myth that the body protects itself by turning off our pain receptors when we’re mortally injured. Nature is a sadistic bitch. Just ask any amputee who’s suffered the agony of phantom pain from a limb that’s no longer there.
Felix was in indescribable pain, more pain than you can imagine, and he endured every excruciating minute of it fully conscious. He wasn’t even granted the blessed peace of oblivion. He couldn’t talk: his vocal cords had been destroyed, and he couldn’t even scream his agony. But I’ll never forget the expression in his eyes: he was in hell, suffering the torment of the damned. Any one of you would have killed him in a heartbeat just to put the man out of his misery.
