Couple Found Slain: After a Family Murder
“Mikita Brottman is one of today’s finest practitioners of nonfiction.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Critically acclaimed author and psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman offers literary true crime writing at its best, taking us into the life of a murderer after his conviction—when most stories end but the defendant's life goes on.
On February 21, 1992, 22-year-old Brian Bechtold walked into a police station in Port St. Joe, Florida and confessed that he’d shot and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He said he’d been possessed by the devil. He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and ruled “not criminally responsible” for the murders on grounds of insanity.
But after the trial, where do the "criminally insane" go? Brottman reveals Brian's inner life leading up to the murder, as well as his complicated afterlife in a maximum security psychiatric hospital, where he is neither imprisoned nor free. During his 27 years at the hospital, Brian has tried to escape and been shot by police, and has witnessed three patient-on-patient murders. He’s experienced the drugging of patients beyond recognition, a sadistic system of rewards and punishments, and the short-lived reign of a crazed psychiatrist-turned-stalker.
In the tradition of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Couple Found Slain is an insider’s account of life in the underworld of forensic psych wards in America and the forgotten lives of those held there, often indefinitely.
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Community Reviews
This book was really difficult to take as a serious work of non fiction, more like working off the whims of a mental patientâs delusions.
Like âwhy hasnât he been released?â - oh yeah, he used a sharp object and took a hostage to escape when he had been in the hospital for a few years, and also hates Muslims and Black folks. Then the author takes the tactic of âbut look at what the other mental patients did! Heâs not THAT bad.â
He also seems to suffer from manic toxic masculinity, and the author from internalized misogyny. The author glazes over the fact that Brian insisted on defending himself in court, versus having a defense attorney of any kind. Typically when a man (itâs mostly men) decides to defend himself, that is a clear indicator that he thinks he knows better than trained professionals and feels (imo) like a marker of narcissism.
I struggled through this, and would not recommend as a true crime novel. If you want a well written true crime book where the author clearly has a shine for her subject, Iâd suggest The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule instead.
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