commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Most of us can endure endless violent stimulation in the form of movies, video games and news (online and traditional) without turning into serial killers or other forms of violent madmen. Occasionally, however there may be a more delicate susceptible soul who might be influenced by this onslaught of violent fare to such a degree that he/she begins to act out in a horrific manner, particularly if this “delicate soul” has an alter-ego voice in his head telling him to murder and dismember.
The Press Association has recently reported on an interesting case out of England in which a 17-year-old-boy with a “Dexter” fixation stabbed and dismembered his 17-year-old girlfriend after his alter-ego, a voice in his head named “Ed”, told him to do so. The Press Association writes:
A 17-year-old boy with a fixation on the TV serial killer Dexter has been jailed for 25 years for stabbing to death his 17-year-old girlfriend and dismembering her body.
Steven Miles, who was 16 at the time, killed Elizabeth Thomas at his family home in Oxted, Surrey, on 24 January.
After stabbing her in the head and back, he dismembered her legs and arm, wrapped them in clingfilm and put them in bin bags.
I’m not aware that individuals such as Steven, who have been diagnosed as suffering from an autistic syndrome, have any particular propensity toward violence or that they are any more likely to succumb to violent acting out then non-handicapped members of the general population. In any event, when Steven’s sister returned home to their flat about an hour after the bloody crime, he told her:
“Ed made me do something bad.”
At the sentencing hearing at Guildford crown court, it was revealed that Steven “had a fascination with horror films and the macabre and had wanted to emulate the actions of Dexter, the lead character of an American TV series about a police forensics officer who is also a serial killer.”
Thus, it appears that the antics of the redoubtable Dexter, which merely amuse and titillate most of us, may – along with other negative influences – have had a very deleterious influence on Steven.
In the restrained and considerate manner of the Brits and our Canadian neighbors to the North, the judge, Christopher Critchlow, warned those assembled that the case involved details that were “extremely unpleasant and may cause considerable distress to anyone listening”. The judge then advised anyone with a nervous disposition to leave.
It was my lot to spend a good part of my childhood watching Gilbert and Sullivan light operas performed by a local Milwaukee, Wisconsin theater troupe. The work of these English masters is delightful and did not appear nearly as dated in the 1950s as it may today. In any event, the lyrics are memorable and many of them still stand out in my mind. A couplet from one of their songs called “A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One”, goes something like this:
“With constabulary duties to be done, to be done/A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”
The same might be applied to a “judge’s lot”. Judge Critchlow in this matter felt compelled to address both the assemblage and Steven Miles directly:
He said to Steven: “This is a case of the utmost gravity, the horrific features of which are rarely heard in any court. Nothing this court can say or do, no sentence this court can impose can alleviate the pain suffered by Elizabeth Thomas’s family for a death in such a terrible manner. There must be a life sentence.”
As the judge spoke, Steven, dressed somberly in a white shirt and black tie, stared straight ahead, showing no emotion. Were this an older novel, the author might depict him as “staring down at his shoes.”
The Crown Court further described the impact Elizabeth’s murder would have on her parents:
“It’s hard for this court to remain unemotional. Their lives have been changed forever. It’s difficult to find the right words to describe the enormity of what you did to an innocent girl of 17 and a half.”
And now comes the worst part of all. The victim, Elizabeth Thomas, had become involved with Steven despite his handicap, and had stood up for him, yet she was betrayed most foully. The Judge stated:
“You decided, at the age of 16, you had to kill somebody, you chose Elizabeth Thomas, who tragically befriended you and who had stood up for you when people described you as different. It’s chilling to read that you described her on occasion as your project.”
The judge said that he would have given Steven life in prison if he had been an adult but since he was under-aged that was not permissible by law and therefore he was sentencing him to 25 years. Judge Critchlow also pointed out that “eminent psychiatrists had agreed that Miles was not schizophrenic and therefore did not have a defence of diminished responsibility.”
Here, I must take some exception. I don’t know who these “eminent psychiatrists” were/are and I don’t always trust “eminent psychiatrists.” After all, Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron of McGill University in Canada was at one time the President of the American Psychiatric Association and he just happened to be a major player in the appalling MKULTRA brainwashing conspiracy in the dark days of the cold war.
It seems to me that Steven had severe mental problems that probably went beyond just falling into the autistic disorder continuum, and I would warrant that he would be a more suitable candidate for long-term psychiatric care (would could stretch to 25 years) than prison, but because I have absolutely no influence on the outcome of this case, my opinion is merely that — an opinion.
My suggestion is a practical one, however, because we should keep in mind that Steven is only 17 and will therefore be barely over 40 when he is released (assuming that under British law he does the full 25 years). Thus, if he is untreated, he would seem to pose far more of a threat to society than he might with proper treatment. This, though, presupposes that the treatment, which would presumably be administered by “everyday” rather than “eminent” psychiatrists, would be helpful. And of course, the British penal system may be much better at providing needed psychiatric care to its prisoners than is the case here in the US where state prison inmates with severe mental problems are often treated with appalling indifference.
In a gesture which appears to set forth in bold relief how different the British justice system is from our own (every other system is different from ours), even Steven’s defense attorney seemed to gang up on him. (An American defense attorney would typically have tended to try to mitigate the situation, no matter how impossible such a task may seem.)
Not Steven’s lawyer, Lewis Power QC, who “described the murder as a “chilling, blood-curdling and sustained” killing inspired by the TV series Dexter. He said: “He had pleaded guilty to a horrendous crime which is beyond belief because of its horrific nature.
“This was a truly gruesome killing ripped from the pages of a hit TV script. The evidence points to the defendant trying to emulate the actions of the character Dexter, who he idolised. The case is a sad testament to the perils of how young people can become entrenched in modern TV blockbusters involving violence which shockingly led to a copycat killing in real life.”
What is telling is that Power, QC, did address the “Ed alter-ego issue” stating:
“(T)he phenomenon” of Ed was not fully understood by psychiatrists but they agreed that the defendant was not psychotic.
Well how can they be so damned sure he’s not psychotic if they don’t understand the “phenomenon” of Ed. Without “Ed” rattling around in his brain telling him to “kill and dismember”, it’s entirely possible that Steven’s love and admiration of Dexter would not have led him to commit the awful crime that took Elizabeth’s life. It’s my sense that the judge, who oddly enough has come under fire in the past for handing out overly lenient sentences in domestic violence cases, was unable to get beyond the hideous nature of the offense and, thus, was unable to give proper weight to the “Ed” phenomenon.