Couple Found Slain
After a Family Murder
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
“Mikita Brottman is one of today’s finest practitioners of nonfiction.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Critically acclaimed author and psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman offers literary true crime writing at its best, taking us into the life of a murderer after his conviction—when most stories end but the defendant's life goes on.
On February 21, 1992, 22-year-old Brian Bechtold walked into a police station in Port St. Joe, Florida and confessed that he’d shot and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He said he’d been possessed by the devil. He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and ruled “not criminally responsible” for the murders on grounds of insanity.
But after the trial, where do the "criminally insane" go? Brottman reveals Brian's inner life leading up to the murder, as well as his complicated afterlife in a maximum security psychiatric hospital, where he is neither imprisoned nor free. During his 27 years at the hospital, Brian has tried to escape and been shot by police, and has witnessed three patient-on-patient murders. He’s experienced the drugging of patients beyond recognition, a sadistic system of rewards and punishments, and the short-lived reign of a crazed psychiatrist-turned-stalker.
In the tradition of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Couple Found Slain is an insider’s account of life in the underworld of forensic psych wards in America and the forgotten lives of those held there, often indefinitely.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sobering account, psychoanalyst Brottman (An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere) picks up where most true crime books end—after the investigation and sentencing. On Feb. 21, 1992, 22-year-old Brian Bechtold surrendered himself to police in Port St. Joe, Fla., and confessed to murdering his parents after suffering schizophrenic paranoid delusions. He was found "not criminally responsible" on the grounds of insanity and remanded to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital. Though Brottman briefly covers the family members and their psychological histories, she focuses on Bechtold's life post-sentencing, during which he's attempted suicide, filed lawsuits, and sought regular criminal incarceration to escape his perpetual confinement. Through in-depth research, patient interviews, and police and medical records, Brottman delivers a horrifying account of life for the "criminally insane," who are often drugged into submission, abused by overworked staff, victimized by other patients, and held at the mercy of subjective and conflicting psychiatric assessments that can lead to confinements far longer than the traditional sentences for the original crimes. Brottman draws with authority on case studies and criminal statistics to dispel the common misconception that the insanity defense is preferable to prison and amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card. True crime fans looking for a provocative approach to the genre will be rewarded.
