Along came the spider

Chapter 48

HE REST OF THAT DAY, I burned the candle at the other end. It felt a little irresponsible, but that was good for me. It’s all fight to put the weight of the world on your shoulders sometimes, if you know how to take it off.

As I drove out to Lorton Prison, the temperature was below freezing, but the sun was out. The sky was bright, almost blinding blue. Beautiful and hopeful. The pathetic fallacy lives in the nineties.

I thought about Maggie Rose Dunne that morning on my drive. I had to conclude that she was dead by now. Her father was raising all kinds of hell through the media. I couldn’t blame him very much. I’d spoken to Kathefine Rose a couple of times on the phone. She hadn’t given up hope. She told me she could “feel” that her little girl was still alive. It was the saddest thing to hear.



I tried to prepare myself for Soneji/Murphy, but I was distracted. Images from the night before kept flashing

T by my eyes. I had to remind myself that I was drivin I

I 9 a car in midday Metro D.C. traffic, and I was working. That was when a bright idea hit me: a testable theory about Gary Soneji/Murphy that seemed to make some i sense in psych terms. Having an interesting theory du jour helped my concentration at the prison. I was taken up to the sixth floor to see Soneji. He was waiting for me. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night, either. It was my turn to make i something happen. I went at him for a full hour that afternoon, maybe even a little longer. I pushed hard. Probably harder than with any of my patients. “Gary, have you ever found receipts in your pockets-hotels, restaurants, store purchases-but you have no memory of spending-the money?” “How did you know that?” His eyes lit up at m y question. Something like relief washed over his face. I told them I wanted you to be my doctor. I don’t want to see Dr. Walsh anymore. All he’s good for is scrip for chloral hydrate.” “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist like-Dr. Walsh. I’m also part of the team that helped arrest you.” He shook his head. “I know all that. You’re also the only one who’s listened before making final judgments. I know you hate me-the idea that I took those two children, the other things I’m supposed to have done. But you listen, at least. Walsh only pretends to listen. ” “You need to continue seeing Dr. Walsh,” I told him.

“That’s fine. I guess I understand the politics here by now. Just please, don’t leave me in this hellhole by myself.

“I won’t. I’m with you all the way from here on. We’ll continue to talk just like this.”

I asked Soneji/Murphy to tell me about his childhood.

“I don’t remember a whole lot about growing up. Is that very strange?” He wanted to talk. It was in my hands, my judgment, to determine whether I was hearing the truth, or a set of elaborately constructed lies.

“That’s normal for some people. Not remembering. Sometimes, things come back when you talk about them, when you verbalize.”

“I know the facts and statistics. Okay. Birthdate, February twenty-fourth, nineteen fifty-seven. Birthplace, Princeton, New Jersey. Things like that. Sometimes I feel like I learned all that while I was growing though. I’ve had experiences where I can’t separate UP, dreams from reality. I’m not sure which is which. I’m really not sure.

“Try to give me your first impressions,” I told him.



“Not a lot of fun and laughs,” he said. “I’ve always had insomnia. I could never sleep more than an hour or two at a time. I can’t remember not being tired. And, depressed-like I’ve been trying to dig myself out of a hole my entire life. Not to try to do your job, but I don’t think very highly of myself.

Everything we knew about Gary Soneji depicted the opposite persona: high energy, positive attitude, an extremely high opinion of himself.

Gary went on to sketch a terrifying childhood, which included physical abuse from his stepmother as a small child; sexual abuse from his father as he got older.

Over and over, he described how he was forced to split himself off from the anxiety and conflict that surrounded him. His stepmother had come with her two children in 1961. Gary was four years old, and already moody. It got worse from that point on. How much worse, he wasn’t willing to tell me yet.

As part of his workup under Dr. Walsh, Soneji/Murphy had taken Wechsler Adult, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and Rorschach tests. Where he sailed completely off the scales was in the area of creativity. This was measured by single-sentence completion. He scored equally high in both verbal and written responses.

“What else, Gary? Try to go as far back as you can. I can only help if I understand you better.”

“There were always these ‘lost hours.’ Time I couldn’t account for,” he said. His face had been drawing tighter and tighter as he spoke. The veins in his neck protruded. Light sweat rolled over his face.

“They punished me because I couldn’t remember

. , ” he said.

“Who did? Who punished you?”

“My stepmother mostly.”

That probably meant most of the damage had happened when he was very young, while his stepmother did the disciplining. “A dark room,” he said.

“What happened in the dark room? What kind of room was it?”

“She put me there, down in the basement. It was our cellar, and she put me down there almost every day.”



He was beginning to hyperventilate. This was extremely difficult for him, a condition I’d seen many times with childabuse victims. He shut his eyes. Remembering. Seeing a past he never really wanted to encounter again.

“What would happen down in the basement?” “Nothing… nothing happened. I was just punished all the time. Left by myself.”

“How long were you kept down there?”

“I don’t know… I can’t remember everything!” His eyes opened halfway. He watched me through narrow slits.

I wasn’t sure how much more he could take. I had to be careful. I needed to ease him into the tougher parts of his history, with the feeling that I cared, that he could trust me, that I was listening.

“Was it for a whole day sometimes? Overnight?”

“Oh, no. No. It was for a long, long time. So I wouldn’t forget anymore. So I’d be a good boy. Not the Bad Boy.” He looked at me, but said nothing more. I sensed that he was waiting to hear something from me.

I tried praise, which seemed the appropriate response. “That was good, Gary, a good start. I know how hard this is for you.” As I looked at the grown man, I imagined a small boy kept in a darkened cellar. Every day. For weeks that must have seemed even longer than that. Then I thought about Maggie Rose Dunne. Was it possible that he was keeping her somewhere and that she was still alive? I needed to get the darkest secrets out of his head, and needed to do it faster than it’s ever done in therapy Katherine Rose and Thomas Dunne deserved to know what had happened to their little girl.

What happened to Maggie Rose, Gary? Remember Maggie Rose?

This was a very risky time in our session.

He could.become frightened and refuse to see me again if he sensed that I was no longer a “friend.” He might withdraw. There was even a chance of a complete psychotic break. He could become catatonic. Then everything ‘Would be lost.

I needed to keep praising Gary for his efforts. It was important that he look forward to my visits. “What you’ve told me so far should be extremely helpful,” I said to him. “You really did a great job. I’m impressed by how much you’ve forced yourself to remember.’ “Alex,” he said as I started to leave “honest to God, I didn’t do anything horrible or bad. Please help me.,

A polygraph test had been scheduled for him that afternoon. Just the thought of the lie detector made Gary nervous, but he swore he was glad to take it.



He told me I could stay and wait for the results if I wanted to. I wanted to very much.

The polygraph operator was a particularly good one who had been brought from D.C. for the testing. Eighteen questions were to be asked. Fifteen of those were 6 4controls.” The other three were to be used for scoring the lie detector test.

Dr. Campbell met with me about forty minutes after Soneji/Murphy had been taken down for his polygraph.

Campbell was flushed with excitement. He looked as if he might have jogged from wherever they had staged the test. Something big had happened.

“He got the highest score possible,” Campbell told me. “He passed with flying colors. Plus tens. Gary Murphy could be telling the truth!”