The Man in the Monster Read Online Free PDF Page B

if his years on death row had made him depressed. I suspected that his real motives might have been state-assisted suicide rather than a selfless act to help give the families closure.
    Initially, Michael had been consumed with a desire to prove that he was mentally ill. “When I first came to death row, I was filled with anger at how the prosecution had twisted and distorted facts of my case. I was consumed with an intense desire to prove that my mental illness does in fact exist, and that the mental illness did in fact deprive me of my ability to control my actions and that my mental illness wasin fact the cause of my criminal conduct.” He said he wanted everyone to “believe that I was sick and that it was the sickness in me that did the killing. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t the animal that the state portrayed me to be.” But he said he was tired and had “come to believe that any such thinking may be simply wishful thinking.” He didn’t think anyone would ever believe that his mental illness was the cause of his lack of self-control, so he believed the only logical course of action was to accept death.
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    W hy would anyone opt for death over life? Why was Michael, who was openly opposed to the death penalty and who churned out articles expressing that opinion, willing to accept execution? Was he depressed, as many death row inmates are, and just giving up? Was he actually asking the state to help him commit suicide? Was the prospect of life imprisonment so grim that death became a more palatable option? What did the victims’ families think of the offer? To those who had followed Michael’s case—his subsequent crusade to establish misconduct on the part of the state, his one-man campaign against the death penalty, and his desire for the world to understand his mental illness—his actions were not only baffling, but also contradictory. Only a few months earlier, in December, he had written, “Executions degrade us all. They are carried out in the middle of the night, in the dark, away from us all to hide what they really are—a barbaric punishment symbolic of our less civilized past.” How could the man who had penned that now offer to accept a death sentence for himself?
    The
Northeast
article concluded, “Kill me if you must, but please don’t let it end there. Learn from this horrible experience.” What could anyone possibly learn from executing Michael Ross—or anyone else, for that matter?
    I paced around my office considering these questions. Michael’s story was both horrifying and fascinating. Was he really mentally ill and the victim of an overzealous prosecutor?
    I decided to learn all I could about the case. I gathered up all the documents and articles we had on it in the office. Together, the articles, trial transcripts, court decision, and briefs concerning Ross’s case took up a large filing cabinet and three banker’s boxes. The most difficult task was getting started, not because of the daunting amount of work, but because opening the boxes was like turning on a horror film. I started with articles that Michael had written, thinking that they would give me clues. Then I began reading the trial transcripts and briefs.
    I read some of the documents at work and took some home in handfuls to read at night. I didn’t want to bring all of it into my home because it would have been like taking Michael Ross into my house. As I began reading the material—it would take me months to get through it all—two things stood out. First, it was apparent that Michael suffered from mental illness. All five of the psychiatric experts who examined him—even the state’s expert witness—agreed that he was mentally ill, a sexual sadist. The second thing I suspected was that in Michael’s first trial, the judge, the prosecutor, and the state police’s head investigator had,