COUPLE FOUND SLAIN

An account of the aftermath of a violent crime.

Brian Bechtold was 22 when he killed his parents in 1992. After a week or two on the run, he turned himself in to the police. Bechtold was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; he was ruled “not criminally responsible” for his crime and spent almost three decades in a psychiatric hospital. In the introduction, Brottman, a writer and psychoanalyst, claims that while “most true crime stories focus on the buildup to the crime, the incident itself, and the quest for justice,” this book—an account of Bechtold’s institutionalization—“is about another part of the story, the part that begins when the verdict is announced, the sentence handed down.” That overture begins the author’s plea on Bechtold’s behalf. Throughout his time at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Maryland, Bechtold maintained that while he had certainly suffered from a mental illness at the time of his crime, he had since recovered. He tried to convince hospital staff of his health, attempted to escape, and took the hospital to court—all to no avail. Brottman, who met Bechtold while teaching a Focus on Fiction class at Perkins, is clearly on his side. The author’s meticulous research is evident throughout, and she mostly handles the information deftly, making for a smooth narrative populated by a variety of colorful characters. Her lack of objectivity is the book’s major flaw, and it leads to statements like the following, which describes Bechtold’s reluctance to take increased doses of medication: “He’d done perfectly well on the low dose and felt mentally stable.” Perfectly well according to whom? Bechtold has an obvious stake in maintaining his own sanity. The doctors at Perkins claimed that Bechtold was paranoid, and while Brottman shows effectively that forced hospitalization could make anyone seem paranoid, she fails to prove that, in this case, both could have been true at the same time.

A quick and intriguing read marred by a lack of objectivity.