You never picture yourself in a room like that — still, cold, waiting. Maybe it was my curiosity… the one that killed a cat. Maybe fate. But there I was.
Then he walked in. The man who murdered 37 young couples, leaving their little ones behind to face the world alone. I had sixty minutes to find out why — not as a detective or a journalist, but as someone trying to understand what turns a person into a serial killer.
Honestly, I’d pictured someone else — cold grin, piercing eyes. But, there was none of that. Just an old man in his sixties. Thin hair. Slouched in his chair. Blinking slowly, staring at nothing — as if he’s tired of being seen.
One fluorescent light flickered overhead. But inside me… emotions swirled like a deafening tornado. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding, and worried he could too. Fear, anger, doubt… and above all, a pressing curiosity: What makes someone do what he did?
A few seconds passed in silence.
“Why?” I finally asked — barely a whisper.
He sighed, “That’s the question, huh?”
There was a long silence.
He leans back. I wasn’t sure if he would ever answer it.
But then he spoke. Not to confess, not to justify, but maybe to empty something out.
“It never starts with a murder. It starts with the pain… I didn’t know how to exist without the pain. So I gave it away.”
I didn’t feel sympathy. But it hurt. Like hearing pain speak its native tongue.
“But why parents? Did you ever think about the kind of life their children would be left with?”
“When you’re drowning, do you care who you drag down with you?”
I didn’t want to answer that.
He didn’t expect one either. He continued.
“My mother used to lock me in the basement when I cried. Said I needed to learn how to behave. I wasn’t even ten…”
He swallowed hard, like the words were heavier than he expected.
“My father? He used me to dump his frustration — on the rare days he was sober enough to stand. I don’t think he saw me as a person. Just a punching bag — the reason his life didn’t work.”
He paused, eyes fixed somewhere I couldn’t see.
“I just wanted to play. Be a kid. But the others wouldn’t let their children near me. They’d leave the park when I showed up, or stare at me until I left. Close their doors if they saw me on the sidewalk.”
His voice dropped.
“They all thought I was a monster. And so I became one.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I felt his pain but didn’t want to admit… to him… or myself.
A few minutes passed in silence. I thought about stepping out to give him space and give myself distance. But one question lingered like a thorn in my mind. I couldn’t walk away without asking.
“Did you ever want to stop?”
He chuckled — not out of comfort, but something closer to helplessness — then dropped his gaze. Maybe he was searching for the right words. Maybe just avoiding to face the question.
I didn’t dare interrupt. I stayed still… just like I used to as a kid, waking up in the middle of the night, frozen in bed, convinced something was lurking in the dark. One small movement, one sound, and it would know I was there.
He finally spoke.
“It was the only thing that made me feel anything. Stopping meant facing who I was without it. And I didn’t think there was anything left by then.”
It struck deeper than any life lesson or philosophy I’d ever read.
The door opened. The hour has passed. I stood to leave.
He looked into my eyes… for the first time directly. And then, from somewhere deep inside him, came two unexpected words.
“Thank you.”
I didn’t understand why.
Maybe it was gratitude, surfacing in the final days of his life.
Or maybe… I was the first person who listened long enough… for him to finally let go of what he’d buried for decades.
I walked out unchanged on the outside — but rearranged, disoriented inside.
The monsters aren’t born. They are cornered, stripped, and pushed to become one.
Author’s Note
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