Even as a baby, he had an evil look about him. So, it wasn’t surprising that my kid brother became a bully and always got in trouble in grade school. He was destined for infamy. Our parents were sure he’d end up in prison. He had an incredibly high IQ, which made him doubly dangerous. When a little older, he began torturing and offing neighbor’s pets and not getting caught, I wasn’t surprised.
The signs were there. I knew like beasts in jungle born to kill, he was born to kill and a bit more, to kill and torture people. Because he was my kid brother, I didn’t want to believe what I knew – that he was destined to become a serial killer. I stuffed what I knew deep in my mind and locked it away.
I left home at 18, when my brother was in the 9th grade of high school and still getting in trouble. I joined the Army, having no skills and not cut out for college, with the hope of getting some training I could use for a good job when I got out. I was thrust into a deadly war zone, a place I never wanted to be in. I didn’t sign up to be killed or have to kill. But after killing a few enemy soldiers, I learned I loved to kill, a compulsion that gave me thrills and made me unimaginably high.
When I came home from the military 8 years later, I lost control of my civilian restraints. The compulsion to kill, the thrills and the high, ruled me. I became the serial killer I always thought my brother would be. My brother became a pastor, perhaps because God delivered him from his demonic infamy, and service to God was my brother’s way of thanking Him. Even our parents said he’d changed and called it an act of God.
I sit in a prison cell, the clock ticking down the days till my execution. I keep tearfully praying to God, begging for forgiveness for my murderous sins and some leniency when I die. My pastor brother is praying for me too. I hope despite the seven women I murdered, he hears my and my pastor brother’s prayers and doesn’t send me forever to Hell.
Bob Boyd