It’s a pretty bizarre deal, and, by the most bizarre of coincidences, I just happen to know a lot about it. See, back when I was in law school, I was the defense attorney in a “mock” murder trial, and the defense I was saddled with was—you guessed it—fugue state.
My client had been accused of murdering his girlfriend. His story was that he was asleep, heard a prowler, grabbed his revolver, and fired one shot at the menacing figure; coming into his room. This of course did not explain why his girlfriend had six bullets in her.
The prosecution put on evidence of premeditation and motive: after learning that his girlfriend was going to dump him for his rival, my client went out and bought the pistol that became the murder weapon. And then, after killing the girl, my client tossed the gun down his apartment building’s trash chute. He first denied having anything to do with the killing, but then later “admitted” to the prowler scenario once the fingerprint-covered gun was reclaimed and a paraffin test turned up gunpowder on his hands.
I was definitely on the wrong side of this case, but lawyers have to make do with what they have, and fugue state it was. My client was a likable witness, but there wasn’t much he could testify to— he remembered nothing after the first shot, nothing until he turned on the lights, went over to look at the body, and made the horrible discovery that it was his girlfriend.
My expert was a psychiatrist who insisted that, yes, fugue states do exist, and you prove them indirectly, by what the patient cannot recall and what he would not normally have done. Even better than “Nessie”, the Loch Ness Monster, where absence of evidence is not to be taken as evidence of absence, a fugue state is positively indicated when other explanations go wanting. So, if you had the slightest doubt that a young man would throw away his life and murder his girlfriend out of simple jealousy, then fugue you.
That was the defense.
And so I presumed I would sooner be taking a ride on Nessie’s back than hearing the jury come back “not guilty”.
Incredibly, the jury hung at eleven to one for conviction. The lone holdout was a young man who later told me he could relate to fugue states because he’d once been in one.
Swimming near their little putt-putt in the Pacific just off Santa Barbara one summer, this juror and his brother were suddenly attacked by a great white shark. The deadly Carcharodon carcharias had the juror’s brother in its grasp and was about to shred him for lunch when the juror somehow got to the boat, found the oar, beat the shark loose, and hauled his brother to safety. The thing was, the juror remembers none of it after the shark first struck. The next thing the juror knew, he was paddling for shore with a busted oar, his bloody brother lying at his feet.
Afterwards, doctors told the juror he’d been in a fugue state, exhibiting incredible focus and sense well beyond his usual capacities.
Of course, we all know stories of adrenalized moms lifting cars off their kids, but the moms in those cases generally remember doing it. However, a fugue state is more than an explosion of adrenaline; it’s a trip to a different realm altogether. It’s a “head” thing. And if the head don’t fit, you must acquit.
But I didn’t for a minute buy Bill Suff’s hint that maybe a fugue state could explain his crimes. Peasley and Driggs didn’t go for it either—they’d have been laughed right out of court if they’d even tried to suggest it.
The next couple of times that Bill called, I let the answering machine get it. I didn’t want him thinking I was waiting by the phone—I wanted him to think that: my life was moving along just fine without him, and it was.
But when I finally did pick up one night, I laid right into him about this fugue state business. “I read Mr. Murder, Bill, and you don’t suffer from fugue states,” I said. “If you’re ever going to plead insanity or mental defect, you’re going to have to admit to remembering the crimes. If you really couldn’t control yourself, then that’s ‘irresistible impulse’; but if you try to say you still don’t know anything about what happened, then no one’s going to believe you. Too much planning went into these crimes—victims were not chosen at random, dumpsites were predetermined, trophies were taken for later reflection and enjoyment, and tracks were covered up after.”
That’s the thing about serial killers—the crime itself, the murder, the acting out, is only the first step. Next comes the real fun— mutilating the bodies, posing them obscenely, re-dressing them in odd ways. These are sexual crimes, but all too often the killer is impotent at the time of the killing—it’s only later, when he’s playing around or remembering back to what he did, that he gets off. This explains why there wasn’t semen at most of the scenes. The pastiche, the freeze-frame the killer locks in his mind is that last look back at his handiwork as his van’s headlights wash over the perfect staging, the perfect expression of his emotional bent that evening—that memory is what the killer takes away with him and fantasizes over later, again and again. And that’s what helps fuel the next killing—next time he’ll try a little variation, give vent to some creative thought or image which logically succeeds the previous, a challenge both to his art and his libido.
Not that I’m trying to maintain that serial killing is art. But it is expression, and although we are probably kidding ourselves to try to read too much into each detail of each crime, you have to agree that the crimes mean something, and each one speaks for itself When pressed to explain why this pose, why this mutilation, why this choice of victim, the killer’s answer might be as simple and complex as: “Because it seemed a good idea at the time.” Pretty much the way Picasso justified his “blue” period.
But all this flows from the notion that, however irresistibly driven, the killer “knows” what he’s doing when he’s acting out. Forget the fugue. The killer’s reptilian, limbic threshold is in the driver’s seat, and its needs are basic and all-consuming and decidedly conscious.
Sex, aggression, and survival—survival of one’s self now through dominance, and then forever through procreation. It’s Darwin again—give the man a cigar.
So I was not surprised when Bill dropped the fugue business without argument—he knew it was bullshit.
And then, only a couple of days later, he told me about a “nightmare” he’d been having—he even wrote it down. Here it is:
Brian,
Here’s one you’ve not yet been told about. At least, I don’t think anyone has told you about this. I’ve only told a handful of people about this girclass="underline" Tricia, Mike Kania, maybe Frank & Randy, and one of the psychiatric doctors in the Air Force who was a personal friend of mine.
I’ve had this same recurring dream since I was in high school. As a senior, just before graduation, around the time of our senior prom, I first had this dream. It shook me up enough that I had decided not to go to the prom. The prom is another story and has no real bearing on this one.
Anyway, the first time I had “The Dream” was when I was a senior, as I’ve already said. I next had the dream (quotation and capitals, inferred) right after graduation when I began working for the Forestry Dept. as a fireman. Our cook was a family friend called Tom Sheehan (deceased some 10 yrs ago), I told him about the dream and he gave me some off-the-wall explanation about it being some kind of foretelling dream. Tom was into dream interpretation and related subjects. Then I enlisted in the Air Force and began to have the dream more frequently. Between January ‘69 and December 13, 1969, when I married Teryl, I must have had that dream a couple dozen times.