'The Killer Within'

One cold night in 1955, a college student named Bob Bechtel drove to his home, got some guns and a piece of coconut cake, then visited the dormitory of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he intended to enact the worst school shooting in American history. After killing a single student named Holmes Strozier, Bechtel turned himself into the police. He was declared unfit for trial by reason of insanity, and sentenced to life inside a hospital for the criminally insane. After serving less than five years, he was released (thanks in part to a letter of forgiveness written by Strozier's parents), and went on to become a loving husband, devoted father and respected member of his community.

Bechtel's story is the genesis of director Macky Alston's documentary The Killer Within, the opening night film for The 4th Annual Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Festival held at the Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver. The festival, organized by Dr. Harry Karlinsky from the UBC Department of Psychiatry, offers a variety of screenings, workshops and panel discussions on issues related to mental health. It is a noble ambition, and the programming is mostly strong (Methadonia and Wide Awake, which both played at the VIFF, are excellent films).

The Killer Within, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired. It couldn't have come at a more timely moment, given that the shooting at Virginia Tech is still very fresh in the minds and hearts of most people. The opportunity to ask someone who was planning on undertaking something similar, but lived through the act and its consequences, is akin to documentary gold. Does one act define an entire life? Can you do something terrible and then go on to lead a perfectly normal, even happy, existence? Is one life more valuable than another? But many of the most pertinent questions go unanswered, as even more troubling issues are raised.

Violence questions unanswerable?

More than five decades after his crime, Bob Bechtel made the decision to come out of the killing closet, as it were, and talk openly about the murder. One might well ask, why now? His decision to tell his friends and family about the murder is perhaps understandable, but it becomes far less understandable when Mr. Bechtel decides to turn his experience into an Oprah moment, a personal quest to reveal the terrible costs of bullying. Mr. Bechtel claims he was teased and bullied from the age of four to 22, a relentless campaign that finally drove him to a desperate act. His decision to speak out is supposedly an effort to uncover the silent danger associated with bullying.

That is all fine and good. But the film doesn't dwell on the bullying aspect; rather it seems at some pain to dismantle this part of Bechtel's story. Incidents at Swarthmore, including one where a group of boys took Bechtel's bed outside and peed on it, are definitely nasty, but are they enough to drive someone to murder? Interviews with faculty members at the college dispute that there was any bullying in the dorms at all, and Holmes Strozier, the boy whom Bob Bechtel murdered, is remembered as a sweet, good-natured kid. Truth is a slippery creature, and as the Rashomon-like aspects of the story become more apparent, your level of trust in Bob Bechtel starts to erode.

The mutability of memory and perception are well-established problems in reconstructing murder, but the state of mind in which Bob Bechtel undertook the decision to kill is difficult to ascertain. A clear diagnosis is never really given; although it is obvious his mental condition was definitely irrational. (The coconut cake is only one weird element in the story.) The one defining thing Bob remembers is a sense of elation, that he was going to finally take decisive action to end his suffering. But his family and friends ascribe to his story "a lack of emotion," or "no real feeling for the family of Holmes Strozier." Others describe the murder as, "a real piece of evil." Bob, himself, recounts the murder in a flat manner, punctuated every so often by a strange little giggle. Many of the facts of his crime are presented obliquely in media interviews, lectures that Bob gives at universities or asides to his family as they return to the sight of the original crime.

Murder and self absorption

The film is frustrating in that it dances around questions of guilt and responsibility. The figure at the very heart of the story never really answers any of the most obvious questions. Instead, much of the narrative is carried by Bechtel's daughter Carrah, a weepy, self-involved young woman who can't seem to get beyond how the story affects her. In lieu of analysis, the film offers mostly sentiment, and the solipsistic talk of closure and healing quickly becomes off-putting.

Part of the problem might be that Bechtel's wife and daughters simply lack the ability to get much beyond their own personal reactions. This is understandable; they are, after all, normal people. Bob's wife Beverly and his step-daughter Amanda both allude to the fact that Bob has a darker side, a violent part of his personality that frightens his wife, and causes his daughter to reassess her sense of herself. When Amanda was told the facts about Bob's story, she says that it came almost as a relief, that Bob's anger wasn't caused by the fact that she was a bad kid. While it's impossible not to have some sympathy for the Bechtel family, especially his two daughters, they don't offer any deeply critical thought on his story. The film focuses a little too often on the two sisters weeping, these emotional reactions aren't terribly useful, and they occasionally border on self-dramatizing. The person who appears the most reasoned and thoughtful is, oddly enough, Holmes Strozier's brother who talks about his fantasies of revenge, and his family's need to forgive Bob.

Reconstructions of a killer's mindset are pored over endlessly after a school shooting, but by that time the perpetrators are usually dead. Here, the filmmaker had a chance to ask someone who lived through a similar experience what it was that drove them to that instance of brutal action, but the question is never directly raised. One of the counsellors interviewed in the film talks about the need to commit violence as a masculine act, which is also the central idea of a speech given by Jackson Katz about recent school shootings. Whether Bob Bechtel's decision to kill was the result of a culture of masculine bullying, or whether he, himself, was the victim of a brain disorder, the larger question about the social ramifications of mental illness and violence are never sufficiently addressed.

Mental illness and violence

There are a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme court, currently arguing these very ideas. The U.S. Surgeon General recently stated, "The overall contribution of mental disorders to the total level of violence in society is exceptionally small." Often, it is the other way around, people suffering from mental illness are themselves more likely to be subjected to violence. The level of intolerance against mentally ill people who commit crimes has not been helped by the case of The Virginia Tech gunman, Cho Seung Hui, who is described not only as deeply troubled young man, but as "mean." It is doubtful, had Cho Seung Hui lived after his rampage, that the state would not have sought the death penalty in his case.

The desire for vengeance is almost as well established in U.S. culture as the belief that the right to bear arms is an inalienable right. The pairing is often a deadly combination. But is government-sanctioned revenge any better than the kind enacted by a sick young man? The culture of an eye for an eye can be terribly hypocritical. If Bob Bechtel were to perpetrate the same crime today, his fate might be very different. Does this mean that the justice system in 1955 was in some way more humane in dealing with mental illness than it might be currently? Perhaps.

According to a recent Harper's Index, the statistics are little grim:

• Percentage of American adults held in either prisons or mental institutions in 1953 and today, respectively: 0.67, 0.68
• Percentage of these adults in 1953 who were in mental institutions: 75
• Percentage today who are in prisons: 97

Such figures don't speak to a growing level of understanding or compassion for people who are suffering from mental illness. The idea that a murderer can be a kind and loving person isn't particularly earth shattering. Anyone who has ever seen active combat during wartime has had to deal with similar issues. The most compelling part of Bob Bechtel's story isn't the murder, but the idea that a mentally ill young man, could get better, and be offered a second chance at life. If Bob Bechtel had been put to death, the many people whom he affected in his lifetime (his wife and kids, his students, his family and community) would never have had the opportunity to know and love him. But Holmes Strozier's life might also have been just as rewarding, had he the chance to actually live it. The questions are theoretical, since there is no way of answering them. The best the film can do is to invite the audience to make up its own mind, opening a path to rational discussion about an irrational act.

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