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“I wanted to get better,” Torben said. “I wanted to prove to my family that I wasn’t a monster.”
“And do you remember killing these three women?” Charlie asked, holding up the photographs again.
Torben looked at the pictures but shook his head.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember that either.”
Valerie leaned forward, her face earnest. “Have you ever blacked out and not known what you did in the hours leading up to it?”
Torben nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve woken up in strange places, with no memory of how I got there. Sometimes I’ve even had injuries that I don’t remember getting.”
Valerie felt some sympathy building inside for the tormented man sitting across from her.
“It’s clear that you’ve been suffering from blackouts and memory loss for some time now, Mr. Torben,” she said. “And we believe that it may be connected to the deaths of these women.”
Torben looked utterly defeated as he slumped in his chair. He knew deep down that he was responsible for those deaths, and yet he couldn’t remember them at all.
“You need to tell us what happened,” Valerie urged him gently. “We can help you get the treatment you need so that this never happens again.”
Torben looked up at her with tears in his eyes, uncertainty written all over his face. But finally, he nodded.
“Blackouts don’t mean that he committed a murder,” Linford the lawyer interjected from across the table. “He could simply be misusing ...”
“Are you suggesting Mr. Torben medicates his psychiatric illness with alcohol?” Valerie said, finishing the lawyer’s point. “I’ve heard that excuse a hundred times among violent offenders. It’s never an excuse.”
But Valerie didn’t quite believe what she was saying. She felt there was something wrong here. A doubt was building in her mind.
“Mr. Torben,” she said. “You mentioned that you woke up in strange places with injuries you couldn’t remember getting. Can you describe one of these instances to me?”
Torben thought for a moment before replying.
“I remember one time I woke up in an alleyway,” he said. “I had a cut on my hand, and I was covered in blood.”
“And what did you do?” Valerie asked.
“I went to the hospital,” Torben said.
Valerie knew that the DNA results from the victims yielded no material from under their fingernails. But it was possible that Torben could have been struck or bruised during a struggle.
“Had any blackouts recently?” Charlie asked.
“No,” Torben said. “I stopped drinking months ago. That’s why my parents let me leave Elmwood and go back and stay with my Uncle Bill.”
“Uncle Bill?” Valerie repeated. “So, you don’t live at home with your parents?”
“No,” he said, seeming far less threatening than he had done on the roof. “I stay with Uncle Bill in that house you chased me through.”
“Why did you run?” Valerie asked.
“I thought my parents were going to have me committed in a worse place than Elmwood.”
“So, you thought we were there to put you in another psychiatric ward?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah. I heard the stories about places like that from some of the other patients. There was no way I was going anywhere just because my parents think I killed our dog.”
“But you said yourself, you did?” Charlie added.