Interrogating a serial killer required me to dive into the abyss of their minds. Locked into their eyes, time stood still in the abyss, yet at the back of my mind I was aware of detectives patiently, and sometimes impatiently waiting, for the clock is ticking and there is only a window of opportunity to secure a confession. Quite often the interrogation was the last time I saw most of the serial killers – unless I testified in their trials or rarely when I was requested to tend to one or two of them in prison; some wrote me letters to which I never responded, but I never really got the chance to sit down and talk to them.

In 2001, I was the external examiner of Brin Hodgkiss’ Master’s thesis titled “A Multivariate model of the offence behaviours of South African serial killers”. As Head of the South African Police’s Investigative Psychology Unit, I needed someone to build up a research archive on serial killers and Brin volunteered.  I resigned from the police, but Brin continued by interviewing South African serial killers in prison. The bulk of his work later formed the basis for his doctorate’s degree.  Dr Brin relocated to England and for 15 years he worked for the UK police as a crime analyst and strategic intelligence manager.  Now he is the head of Transformation Management at UK NHS.  

For years, the tapes of his interviews were gathering dust, until he was contacted by podcast presenter of True Crime SA, author Nicole Engelbrecht and through their cooperation, the book: Killer Stories, conversations with serial murders, was born and published by Jonathan Ball this year 2024.

As a research psychologist, Brin used the methodology of narrative psychology to delve into the minds of the serial killers. Brin had the courage to enter that abyss as well, but unlike me, he dallied there much longer as he was not pressed for time, and for the first time in almost 30 years, through Brin’s remarkable work and book, I get to revisit that abyss, but this time my former student has become my companion and valued colleague.  

According to ethical research principles, Brin allocated pseudonyms to each of the killers presented in the book. Nicole was responsible for writing the factual history of the murders each one of the killers had committed, but Brin unlocks Pandora’s box, giving the reader more insight into the minds, motives and memories of these men, as told in their own words. Brin identifies and allocates a narrative theme – like The Fog, Isolation, Revenge, Disintegration and The Other, to each of his subjects.   Significantly he touches upon the topic that serial killers are not monsters – that sitting at a table across them, one is struck with their humanity and that they differ so much from the media persona projected on them.  I have commented on the synthetic sensationalism of the media, and I am in total agreement with Brin on this. Instead of a two-dimensional photograph on a newspaper front cover, Brin introduces them to his readers as humans, in all their dimensions.

He describes the ominous appearance and the contrasting quiet polite demeanour of one of the killers and then unexpectedly he notices the killer’s soft hands, and then reminds himself of the crime scene photographs and what those hands had done. This particular killer has often been depicted by the press as a monster, and I recognised him immediately and readers probably would too, but respecting Brin’s ethics, I will refer to him by his pseudonym as Micheal. In this man’s narrative Brin identifies the characters of Avenging Monster, Saviour Monster and also the Wounded Child, and the disintegration that exists between these characters. 

As the Wounded Child, the killer in his own words describes when he was raped as a child: “I was in a single room and I cried out, I screamed ‘God help me”, but nothing came. God didn’t help me…Every time I see a child raped, I have that, I have pain because I know what it feels like to go through it.”

In the character of the Avenging-Monster he elaborates on how he took revenge on his wife’s infidelity and prostitution by killing prostitutes. He also talks about what I have often called the omnipotent power serial killers feel when they kill: “I want to show God that I am God”, and “I want to show God, you weren’t there when I needed you, So I, I am God. I will preside over life and death. When doing these murders I transformed, I became bigger…”

The character of the Savour-Monster is more complex. Michael’s narrative is that he murdered the children, to save them from living a life as he had as a sexually abused child: “I always said you musn’t abuse a child because then I will take the child. Then I will hear, I want God to hear how that child screams…”  and “They cry out, cry out for God, like I did when I was raped.  Then in the process of raping them, I murder them, I kill them.” About killing his own daughter, he says he believed she was sexually molested by her stepfather, despite her denying this: ”Many people wonder why I took my daughter away.  They don’t know. It was because she was raped. I didn’t want her to grow up like I grew up. Maybe one day she would grow up to be a murderess, because her dad was a serial murderer.”  Michael admitted to Brin he confessed because he “decided to work with the police to protect children”. 

What struck me about the book and something that Brin also referred to in a later podcast with Nicole, is that the narratives of these serial killers do not match the psychological explanation that forensic psychologists provide for the motivation of these killers.  My own explanation for the origin of serial killers is based upon Freud’s theories, particularly psychosexual developmental phases and Melanie Klein’s work on subconscious childhood sexual fantasies.  One can understand that the serial killers themselves are not psychologists, and would obviously not have this background to analyse themselves and secondly these motivations are embedded in the subconscious – therefore they are not aware of them. Most people are not aware of their own shadow lurking in their subconscious.  No-one would easily admit to believing Melanie Klein’s theory of child’s pre-verbal fantasy of scooping out the contents of a mother’s breast, unless they see the evidence on a crime scene of a killer having cut the breast of a victim and eating her nipples, because he was not breastfed.  I have witnessed this on this particular serial killer’s crime scene, so Klein’s theory makes sense to me. One can simply not expect a serial killer to have this kind of psychoanalytical training or insight.  Most of them blame others for “making them kill.” 

So, in their narratives they find other, more understandable explanations for their crimes, such as he killed and raped the children to punish their parents for abusing their children, to show God that he (the killer) was omnipotent and to save the children from a life of living as a victim of rape, he would rather send them to a place of peace. This is justification, blaming and avoiding accountability. Brin refers to this as a condemnation script – the belief in being a helpless victim helps justify each set of crimes. 

I do not think the serial killers ask themselves deep philosophical or psychological questions about why they kill when they kill, but years of incarceration may prompt them to start wondering and then, as Brin rightly points out, they need to spin their narratives and bits of their story just doesn’t make sense.   “It’s just the way I am,” they said. 

Brin asks a tantalizing question: “So how can you, the reader, avoid falling victim to your own version of a killer story? How can your secret selves become your ally rather than your enemy?”  and gratefully he proceeds by providing guidance in changing your own narrative. “The secret selves with which you populate your inner narratives can trap you or set you free.  Whichever of these you choose to follow is up to you.”

Both Brin and Nicole are candid about their own redemption narratives, as Brin writes: “The more I showed people my secret self, the more I understood that being undermined by our inner stories is not the sole prerogative of serial killers. It happens to all of us. If it could happen to someone like me growing up surrounded by love and support, privileged in almost every sense of the word, then no-one is safe. That is why I wrote this book.”

Brin refers to generativity – a psychological shorthand term for whether a person is concerned about guiding the next generation. Kudus to you and Nicole for writing the book, Brin.  One candle can light up the dark, but one candle can burn out – if we band our generativity together, we build a lighthouse that shines into that abyss. Thank you for shining your light. 

Please get a copy of Killer Stories, Conversations with South African serial murderers by Brin Hodgkiss and Nicole Engelbrecht, by clicking on this Amazon link.