by Jon Ronson
“Where’s the tribunal happening?” I asked.
“Right here,” Tony said. “Just down the corridor.”
Journalists hardly ever made it inside a DSPD unit—my meetings with Tony had always been in the main canteen, the Wellness Centre—and I was curious to see inside the place. According to Professor Maden, the chief clinician there, it wouldn’t exist without Bob Hare’s psychopath checklist. Tony was there because he scored high on it, as had all three hundred DSPD patients, including the famous ones like Robert Napper, the man who killed Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common, and Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and so on. Britain had five DSPD units—four for men and one, in Durham, for women. That one was called The Primrose. Tony’s was called The Paddock.
The official line was that these were places to treat psychopaths (with cognitive behavioral therapy and anti-libidinous drugs—chemical castrations—for the sexual ones), teach them how to manage their psychopathy with a view to one day theoretically sending them back out into the world as safe and productive people. But the widespread theory was the whole thing was in fact a scheme to keep psychopaths locked up for life.
“They’re just a scam,” Brian had told me when I’d first met him for lunch, some two years earlier. “Give the prisoners—sorry, the patients—some CBT. Define some casual conversation over lunch between a nurse and a patient as therapy. If the patient chats back, they’re engaging with the therapy. They’re being treated. That way anyone who scores high on the Hare Checklist can be locked up forever.”
The DSPD story began on a summer’s day in 1996. Lin Russell and her two daughters, Megan and Josie, and their dog, Lucy, were having a walk down a country lane when they saw a man watching them from his car. He climbed out and asked them for money. He was holding a hammer.
Lin said, “I’ve got no money. Shall I go back in my house and get some?”
The man said, “No,” and then he started beating them to death. Josie was the only survivor.
The killer’s name was Michael Stone, and he was a known psychopath. He had previous convictions. But the law stated that only patients whose mental disorders were considered treatable could be detained beyond their prison sentences. Psychopaths were considered untreatable, and so Michael Stone had to be freed.
After his conviction for the Russell murders, the government decided to set up a series of treatment centers—“ ‘treatment’ centers,” Brian had said, doing that quotation-mark thing with his fingers—for psychopaths. Soon afterward, the DSPD units were built. And indeed, during the ten years that followed, hardly anybody was ever released from one. Once you were a DSPD patient, there seemed no way out.
“Oh, by the way,” said Tony on the phone to me now. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. A favor.”
“Oh yes?” I said.
“When you write about me in your book,” he said, “please name me. My real name. None of that stupid ‘Tony’ business. My real name.”
The Paddock Centre was a clean, bland, modern, calmingly pinecolored fortress, a secure unit inside a secure unit. The lighting was glaringly, purposefully bright, eliminating any possibility of shadow. The walls were a pastel yellow, a color so innocuous it barely existed. The only flashes of anything like an actual color here were the bold reds of the many panic buttons. They lined the walls at exact intervals. The central heating sounded like a long, loud sigh.
A security guard sat me on a plastic chair in a dull corridor— it was like a brand-new Travel Inn corridor—underneath a panic button.
“Don’t worry,” he said, although I hadn’t asked, “no patients can get into this part.”
“Where are the patients?” I asked him.
He nodded toward the end of the corridor. There was a kind of observation room. Beyond it, behind thick, clear glass, lay two large, clean, featureless open-plan wards. A few men shuffled around inside them, the psychopaths, eating chocolates, looking out the windows at the rolling hills beyond. Somewhere in the near distance, through the snow, lay Windsor Castle, Ascot Racecourse, Legoland.
An hour passed slowly. Nurses and security guards came over to say hello and ask me who I was. I said I was a friend of Tony’s.
“Oh, Tony,” said one nurse. “I know Tony.”
“What do you think of Tony?” I asked him.
“I do have strong thoughts about Tony,” he said. “But it would not be appropriate for me to tell you what they are.”
“Are your thoughts about Tony strongly positive or strongly negative?” I asked.
He looked at me as if to say, “I am not telling you.”
More time passed. There were four of us in the corridor now: me, the nurse, and two security guards. Nobody said anything.
“I feel quite privileged to be in this building,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Really?” the others said in unison, giving me puzzled looks.
“Well,” I said. “It’s mysterious.” I paused. “Outsiders don’t get to see inside here.”
“We’ve got some spare beds, if you like,” said the nurse.
And then, suddenly, there was activity. People were coming and going—lawyers, nurses, psychiatrists, magistrates, security guards—all in a big rush, having private, huddled chats, hurrying off to make frantic calls, going off into private rooms together.
“Is it always this busy?” I asked a guard.
“No,” he said. He looked surprised. He sat upright in his chair. “This isn’t normal. Something’s happening.”
“Something to do with Tony?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. His eyes darted up and down the corridor like a meerkat’s. But nobody called on him to help out with whatever big thing was unfolding, so he slumped back into his chair.
A man stopped to introduce himself. “I’m Anthony Maden,” he said.
“Oh, hi,” I said. Even though I’d been exchanging e-mails with him on and off for a while, this was the first time I’d met Tony’s clinician, the chief one here at the DSPD. He looked younger than I imagined he would, a little scruffier, nicer.
“It’s a roller-coaster morning,” he said.
“Because of Tony?” I said.
“All will possibly become clear, or possibly not clear, as the morning progresses,” he said. He started to dash away.
“Oh,” I called after him. “Tony wants me to name him in my book. His actual name.”
He stopped. “Ah,” he said.
“But what if he does, finally, get out sometime in the future,” I said, “and some prospective employer reads my book? How will that help him? If the world finds out he’s spent half his life in the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder unit at Broadmoor?”
“Quite,” said Anthony Maden.
I lowered my voice. “I’m a bit worried,” I said, “that he only wants me to name him because of item two on the Hare Checklist. Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth.”
His face brightened as if to say, “So you DO understand.”
“Exactly,” he said.
A nice-looking, elderly man stopped. He was wearing a tweed suit with a bow tie. “And who are you?” he asked me.
“I’m a journalist,” I said. “I’m writing about Tony.”
“Oh, he’s a very interesting case,” he said. “I’m one of the tribunal’s magistrates.”
“I think he’s interesting, too,” I said. “Professor Maden has always been a bit mystified as to why I want to write about Tony and not, you know, the Stockwell Strangler or someone. But he is interesting, isn’t he?” I paused. “So ambiguous!”
The magistrate looked at me, his face suddenly darkening. “You’re not a Scientologist, are you?” he asked.
Members of the CCHR frequently turned up to tribunals like this one.
“No!” I said. “No, no, no! No, no! Not at all. Absolutely not. But it was the Scientologists who first got me into Broadmoor. And I think one is coming. A man called Brian.”
“Scie
ntologists are a funny bunch,” he said.
“They are,” I said, “but they’ve been helpful to me and haven’t, you know, demanded anything weird. Just nice and helpful without wanting anything in return. I know. I’m surprised, too. But what can I say?” I shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
(Actually, they had recently asked for something in return. The BBC was planning a documentary attacking them, and they e-mailed to ask me if I’d take part in a riposte video, testifying about how helpful they’d been over the time I’d known them. I said no. They quickly said okay, that was fine.)
Brian arrived, flustered, out of breath.
“Have I missed anything?” he asked me.
“Only a lot of mysterious busy activity,” I said. “Something’s happening but nobody will say what.”
“Hmm,” said Brian, looking around, narrowing his eyes.
And then, suddenly, a flash of color, a maroon shirt, and some clanking. Clank clank clank.
“Oi oi!” said the guard. “Here he comes!”
Tony looked different. His hair had been short and cropped when I’d first met him. Now it was long and quite lank. He’d put on some weight, too. He was hobbling on metal crutches.
“What happened to your leg?” Brian asked him.
“I got raspberry rippled,” said Tony. He looked around. Then he urgently whispered to Brian and me, a pleading look on his face, “The guards beat me up.”
“What?” I whispered back, startled.
An expression of righteous anger crossed Brian’s face. His eyes darted around the ward, looking for someone to urgently take the matter up with.
“Just kidding.” Tony grinned. “I broke it playing football.”
It was time. We entered the tribunal room. The hearing lasted all of five minutes, one of which involved the magistrates telling me that if I reported the details of what happened inside the room—who said what—I would be imprisoned. So I won’t. But the upshot—Tony was to be free.
He looked as if he’d been hit by a bus. Back out in the corridor his barrister, and Brian, and some independent psychiatrists he’d co-opted to his side, surrounded him, congratulating him. The process would take three months—either to find him a bed for a transitional period in a medium-secure unit, or to get him straight out onto the street—but there was no doubt. He smiled, hobbled over to me, and handed me a sheaf of papers.
They were independent reports, written for the tribunal by various psychiatrists who’d been invited to assess him. They told me things I didn’t know about Tony, about how his mother had been an alcoholic and used to regularly beat him up and kick him out of the house, how he’d be homeless for a few days at a time and then his mother would let him back in, how most of her boyfriends were drug addicts and criminals, how he was expelled from school for threatening his dinner lady with a knife, how he was sent to boarding and special schools but ran away because he was homesick and missed his mother.
I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.
Tony went off into a side room to sign some things with his solicitor. I continued riffling through the papers.
Extracts from Broadmoor Case Notes
27th September 2009
In good form.
25th September 2009
Bright in mood.
17th September 2009
Settled in mood and behaviour. Spent the whole afternoon in association interacting with staff and fellow patients.
5th September 2009
Showed staff a character he’d created on the X-Box. The character was female, black-skinned and had deliberately been designed to look unattractive—almost zombie-like in facial features. He said he designed the character after a member of staff. The staff member talking to him said that was nasty and inappropriate and told him to change the name of the character several times. He refused and said she should be able to take a joke. The creation of this character would not appear to be a genuine joke but an expression of his dislike and disrespect for her.
(My son Joel had been doing a bit of that lately, too, by the way: creating an avatar that looked like a monstrous caricature of me. I also felt that it was not a genuine joke but an expression of his dislike and disrespect for me. Actually, that’s not true. I thought it was a joke.)
25th August 2009
Volley ball today. Later interacting with fellow patients and staff appropriately.
Then there were the conclusions.
Opinion
The issue is entirely dangerousness. He is not unintelligent. He has remained clean all along. If he goes out and commits a further offence he will get IPP [indeterminate sentence for public protection] with a very long tariff—there is no doubt about that whatsoever and he must be told that, which I forgot to do.
I would recommend absolute discharge. I think the evidence is that his mental disorder is neither of a nature or degree which makes it appropriate for him to be treated in a psychiatric hospital any longer. I do not think he needs to be detained in the interest of his health, safety, or for the protection of others. I do not consider he is dangerous.
“The thing is, Jon,” said Tony, as I looked up from the papers, “what you’ve got to realize, is everyone is a bit psychopathic. You are. I am.” He paused. “Well, obviously I am,” he said.
“What will you do now?” I asked.
“Maybe move to Belgium,” he said. “There’s this woman I fancy. But she’s married. I’ll have to get her divorced.”
“Well, you know what they say about psychopaths,” I said.
“We’re manipulative!” said Tony.
The nurse who earlier had cryptically told me of his strong opinions about Tony came over.
“So?” I said.
“It’s the right decision,” he said. “Everyone thinks he should be out. He’s a good guy. His crime was horrible, and it was right that he was locked away for a long time, but he lost years of his life to Broadmoor and he shouldn’t have.”
“Does everyone feel that way?” I asked. “Even Professor Maden?”
I looked over at him. I thought he might seem disappointed, or even worried, but in fact he looked delighted. I wandered over.
“Ever since I went on a Bob Hare course, I’ve believed that psychopaths are monsters,” I said. “They’re just psychopaths, it’s what defines them, it’s what they are.” I paused. “But isn’t Tony kind of a semi-psychopath? A gray area? Doesn’t his story prove that people in the middle shouldn’t necessarily be defined by their maddest edges?”
“I think that’s right,” he replied. “Personally I don’t like the way Bob Hare talks about psychopaths almost as if they are a different species.”
Tony was standing alone now, staring at the wall.
“He does have a very high level of some psychopathic traits,” he said. “He never takes responsibility, everything is somebody else’s fault, but not of others. He’s not a serious, predatory offender. So he can be a bully in the right circumstances but he doesn’t set out to do serious harm for its own sake. I would also say you can never reduce any person to a diagnostic label. Tony has many endearing qualities when you look beyond the label.”
I looked over at Tony. I thought for a second that he was crying. But he wasn’t. He was just standing there.
“Even if you don’t accept those criticisms of Bob Hare’s work,” Professor Maden continued, “it’s obvious, if you look at his checklist, you can get a high score by being impulsive and irresponsible or by coldly planning to do something. So very different people end up with the same score.” He paused. “One needs to be careful about Tony’s endearing qualities though—many people with very damaged personalities have charisma, or some other quality that draws people in.”
“What do you think will happen to him?” I asked.
“His destiny is in his own hands.” He shrugged.
Tony’s destiny, a
s it turned out, was not in his own hands. He was indeed released from Broadmoor, but when he called me a few months later, he was, he said, “out of the frying pan and into the fire. They’ve sent me to Bethlem, Jon, formally known as Bedlam, and they don’t seem to be very keen to let me out.”
Bedlam: an institution with a history so fearsome it gave its name to a synonym for chaos and pandemonium.
“When I say out of the frying pan and into the fire, I mean it,” Tony continued. “The other night someone actually tried to set the ward on fire.”
“How do you spend your days?” I asked him.
“I sit here doing fucking nothing,” he replied. “Getting fat on takeaways.”
“What are your new neighbors like?” I asked. “They can’t be as intimidating as the Stockwell Strangler and the Tiptoe Through the Tulips Rapist, right?”
“They’re way worse. There’s some real head cases here.”
“Like who?”
“Tony Ferrera. Look him up. You’ll find him a real piece of work. He was living in a crack house and he was out walking one day when he saw some woman. He raped her, stabbed her, set her on fire. He’s here. There’s Mark Gingell. Double rapist and whatnot . . .”
“Are any of them all right to hang out with?”
