Adam Willett killed more than a dozen girls, and mutilated six of them so horribly they could only be identified through DNA.
Half his victims have never been found.
I felt the same horror and repulsion that my colleagues experienced when dealing with Adam, but much as I was repulsed, I felt it my duty to see if I could establish a relationship with Adam in the hope of recovering the missing girls' bodies.
The parents deserved closure.
I wanted my colleague, Liv Hargraves, to accompany me for moral support, but she couldn't bear the thought of staring into the abyss of evil, and I didn't blame her.
So, that left just me, waiting in the prison's observation room to see Adam, but I wasn't sure if I could bear it either.
The door opened and two attendants brought Adam in and seated him directly across the table facing me.
“You want us to stay, Doc?”
“No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”
“We’ll be just outside.” The large, burly attendant nodded toward the plexi-glass windows and the waiting area.
“I’ll be fine.”
The boy stared ahead morosely.
“Do you remember me, Adam?”
He nodded.
“I thought we could talk.”
“What’s the point?”
He said it flatly—not belligerently, but with a note of sad resignation that pulled at my heart.
“You’re going to be in here the rest of your life, Adam. You’re twenty-three. That’s a long time. Don’t you want help?”
“I won’t last that long.”
“Are you planning on harming yourself?”
He snorted derisively. “Don’t have to—he’ll do it.”
“Who will do it—who are you talking about Adam?”
“Him—You don’t think I did this, do you?”
I took a deep breath.
“There was nobody else at the scene, Adam. Just you and the girls’ blood all over you.”
“Doesn’t mean I did it.”
“Okay. Let’s assume it wasn’t you. Then who are you talking about? Give me a name.”
“Suomo.”
"Did you make that up?”
“No. He’s real enough.”
“Who is he?”
“A demon—a strong one too—Pushed me up against the window—held me so tight I couldn’t breathe.”
“You’re telling me a demon named Suomo killed those six girls?”
“I’m telling you the truth. He speaks to me at night. Levitates me out of bed and shows me horrid things—he’s a sick bastard.”
Despite preparing myself for the horror, I still felt my skin crawl. There was something bland and mundane about the way Adam could recite horrors, and his lack of passion sickened me all the more.
“What kind of things does Suomo tell you, Adam?”
“He says he chose me. I belong to him. He changes shape—sometimes he’s a snake.”
I laughed inwardly at the crude Freudian image. “A snake, Adam?”
“You don’t believe me—I wouldn’t either—I didn’t believe, until he bit me in the arm and told me I was his.”
“What’s the point, Adam—what does he want?”
“He wants to use me—to get him sacrifices.”
“So, you bring him girls and he kills them?”
“Yes!”
The interview was going nowhere. I felt Adam was fogging.
“So what’s going to happen now?”
“He doesn’t need me any more. He told me if I got caught, he’d come back and kill me too.”
“So, how does he do it—take over your body and use you to torture and kill the girls?”
“No—doesn’t need to—does it himself—just needs a witness.”
“Why?”
“How the bloody hell do I know? I told you—he’s a sick bastard—he makes me watch.”
I sat there staring at the boy. His story was so infantile—so improbable, I felt like laughing. But then I looked in his eyes and saw all the hope had drained out.
The guard rapped on the window.
“Our time’s up, Adam. I’ll be back and we’ll talk again.”
“I won’t be here,” he said simply.
“The two guards came in and began leading the boy away.
“Wait!” I walked over to Adam and pulled up his sleeve. His arm was bare.
“No scar?”
His eyes glittered as if he were on belladonna. “Other arm,” he said.
I pulled up the sleeve and saw the unmistakable imprint of fangs.
I knew what the boy said was delusional. Some times hysterics can make marks appear on their bodies.
So, I wasn’t surprised even when I heard reports from the prison hospital of bite marks miraculously appearing on Adam’s arms and chest—it happened even when guards were present. The mind has mysterious powers.
Sam Colson, the prison chaplain saw it otherwise.
Sam said the bites reminded him of a case in the Philippines where a young girl was repeatedly attacked in the same manner. The authorities finally locked her in the main prison, but the attacks still continued, until a visiting American evangelist heard of her plight and exorcised the demon.
When I told Liv, she rolled her eyes. I expected nothing less.
Liv has explanations for everything—except what finally happened to Adam.
Yesterday morning, the guards brought Adam’s breakfast and discovered him lying in his bunk, horribly mutilated, just like the girls.
But the video replay showed absolutely nothing. On the tape, he’s untouched and lying asleep.
The video shows guards arriving and recoiling in horror, but when the video is zoomed, the boy’s body is totally unmarked.
I have no explanation of what happened to the boy—even less of what happened to the girls.
Liv sticks to her view that hysterics can mark their bodies—but can they erase or alter videotapes?
I’m back to fighting things inside me that are pagan and superstitious, but for the life of me, I don’t know any other way to be.
He had a snake mark on his arm. But it's gone. His dead body is pure and unblemished.
I have no explanation.