“A guy from Spokane wants to come in and see me soon. He’s gay—he’ll probably be good for one hundred dollars a month when he decides to be a better friend,” Jesperson said. “I don’t play gay. I’m straight and he knows it. Call me a whore, Phelps.” He laughed.
Part of me understood those wanting to know him because he’s famous. Living in the shallow, celebrity-driven culture we are currently smothered by, some people feel inadequate enough to want a piece of him in whatever capacity they can get it. But I will never understand why strangers arbitrarily send their hard-earned money to a serial killer and, likewise, why beautiful women, young as twenty, send a serial killer pictures of themselves clad only in swimsuits or panties (both of which he has shown me). It defies practical understanding.
Jesperson never looked to me as a cash cow—obviously, he didn’t need to. He knew and respected that I’d never provide him with money. Still, I didn’t know how to respond to the “highlight” comment he’d made, so I let it pass and, same as those days when I felt talking to him was overwhelming me, my guard weakening, said I had to go.
“Don’t call me for a few weeks, okay? I need a break.”
“One day, Phelps, I won’t hear from you again and, like all the others, you’ll be gone, too,” he said, before explaining how several people had befriended him throughout the years, only to abandon him after they got whatever it was they’d wanted: his signature, a painting, a letter, a few phone calls, a personal visit. “You’ll have what you need from me one day and you’ll disappear. And there is nothing I can do about it.”
He was right. The only plan I’d buttoned up within my head by then was severing all communication and ties with him at some point. I was resigned to let him rot in the dingy, smelly prison he believes is a good life. The only question was: when?
“You might be right,” I admitted.
“I know I am.”
Something happened, however, not long after this conversation. A change in me occurred. Intrusions into my sleep and while eating out with friends and family were the norm by now, and I expected Jesperson’s influence to infiltrate my social life. I guess, in employing a serial killer and interviewing him for as many years as I had about his crimes, one has signed up for an invasion of his emotional and personal space. But as he got to know more about my life by the few things I’d let slip and admitted, or perhaps what others were sending him upon request, he used this to further deepen our relationship.
“Let’s talk about your sister-in-law’s murder,” he said next time we spoke. He’d mentioned this from time to time and I’d let it pass. But he was adamant. “I can help you. I can give you some answers. I know from our last conversation that this is an uncomfortable subject for you, but I want you to know I will help in whatever way I can.”
“What are you talking about? You know nothing about her or what happened. I’ve explained how I feel talking to you about this.”
“Right, but all those cases we talked about on Dark Minds, I knew nothing about those, either, until you sent me research and filled me in. Let’s treat her case as one more Dark Minds episode. Send me what you have and let’s see where it takes us.”
It was a subject I did not want to discuss, with him or anybody. I’d been slammed by certain family members after the first season of Dark Minds aired (which Jesperson was not involved with—we used a serial killer codenamed “13,” a guy John Kelly had groomed as a killer consultant), after I spoke my opinions and shared certain facts about Diane’s life. Her and my brother’s children wanted my head after the episode premiered. There were things I shared on “The Woodsmen” episode during season one that the kids were not prepared to hear. They had been so young when everything happened. They were unclear about certain facts. I should have discussed what I was going to say with them before I aired it on national television. That was my mistake. I owned it.
In defense of what had been edited into that episode, however, when you’re out on the road for months filming such a personal series as Dark Minds had been, living it around the clock, you get caught up in your own pathos. The episode weighed on me because it had hit so close to home, in more ways than just logistics (Worcester, Massachusetts, is about forty-five minutes from my office). After sitting with the family—two sisters and mother—of a victim, interviewing them for the episode, sharing in their heartbreak, taking in all of their pain, crying with them, trading personal anecdotes, the crew and I went out and shot some scenes of me sitting on a bench in the woods talking through my brother and Diane and what happened. Without realizing how much honesty poured out of me (we shot about an hour’s worth of material), in the throes of nostalgic emotion, I said some things I shouldn’t have.
Now I had the Devil whispering in my ear, wanting to step inside that world and help untangle it. He, nor anyone else, knew I’d been digging into the case myself for years. I’d spoken to a cop in Hartford I knew. “Let it go,” he told me after I asked how the investigation into Diane’s murder was coming along. I was even told back in the day that I couldn’t go into the prison and run my alcohol/drug abuse meeting because Diane’s killer was thought to be one of the inmates attending. So I quit going up to the prison altogether. These types of family tragedies, especially those that involve the murder of a loved one, become messy, sensitive, and difficult to come to terms with for immediate family. I understood that directly as a writer dealing with victims’ families every day. As you immerse yourself in the heartbreak, the pain, the darkness, you need to sometimes trick yourself into believing it happened to someone else.
I’d go to morning Mass, sit, pray, and think about Diane, the tumultuous history I’d had with her and my brother at the end, how much they meant to me, their kids, what had transpired among all of us, but could never find solace or answers, spiritual or otherwise. Every time I went back, I’d end up at the same place: All of us wanted Diane out of our lives for good and, suddenly, unexpectedly, shockingly, one day she was gone. Like my old neighborhood, it was an emotional powder keg. Revisiting it would no doubt blow things up for me. So as I dug into Diane’s murder over the years and didn’t get very far, I pushed it all into a corner, placed a sheet over it.
Now here I was one afternoon, talking to Jesperson, him pressing me to explain what had happened.
So I told him.
26
THE TERROR OF DAMNATION
“He will never have true friends who is afraid of
making enemies.”
—William Hazlitt