Black Box Part 2 ...Coping With the Unthinkable
We were on the trail of a serial killer but two more murder/mutilations occurred before we got our first break. A concealed Nanny Cam captured the grisly details of the slaying of a single mother in Queens. I almost breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the first grainy images of the killer.
At least I now knew we were dealing with a flesh and blood human being.
The killer was fastidious—clad head to toe in protective gear like a surgeon, or a lab technician in a clean room. He worked with antiseptic proficiency, even harvesting the blood.
“Great,” Tom grumbled, “We’ve got an anonymous human and a partial M.O. of his crime. How he gets in and leaves undetected, we have no idea.”
“Why not run the parking tags for all the crime scenes,” I suggested “—that’s how we caught Son of Sam.”
“Already on it,” Tom smiled.
The next day, they had a match and within minutes arrested a young male university student, living at home with his parents in Yonkers.
My first glimpse of the killer was disappointing in a way. I’m not sure what I expected. I supposed his physical appearance would be deformed in proportion to his crimes—it wasn’t.
He looked non-descript, even banal.
His name was Henry Jenkins—it might as well have been John Smith. There was nothing remarkable in him that we should fear—and that, for me, was reason enough to be astonished.
The young man was polite and cooperative—soft-spoken and even reserved in his manner. He was dressed impeccably and well groomed. Even his fingernails were manicured.
There was nothing at all in him that we should take note of him and that caused me great alarm. Already the police guards seemed bored and unimpressed.
He admitted to all the crimes. The Prosecutor seemed underwhelmed.
At the bail hearing, only a handful of reporters were present and no throngs of curious on-lookers—just the usual tired, bored courtroom crowd.
Jenkins was remanded without bail and passed off to the jails with about as much thought as one gives to the ticket taker in the subway or the bus driver on the way to work.
When I interviewed him, I found myself stifling a yawn.
“Why did you murder these six people, Henry?”
He paused and gave the question some thought.
“I guess I did it because I could. I saw a TV show on cattle mutilations and wondered what would happen if someone tried it with humans–so I did.”
It was as if a little voice inside my head said, Next
Apart from the chilling proficiency with which the victims had been murdered and then mutilated, there was nothing extraordinary about the crimes.
Jenkins didn’t so something spectacular like mail the victims’ genitalia to their family or the press—he was just a bland, average fellow.
He killed perfect strangers, simply because he wanted to.
He wasn’t a loner or motivated by sex. He wasn’t abused as a child or driven by a compulsion to kill or a need to get caught.
Most significantly, he wasn’t an evil genius or brilliant or even insane.
Henry Jenkins was just an ordinary man who did one extraordinary thing—and then repeated it seven times.
He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Even the description of his crime—aggravated murder—seemed a bit extreme, seeing as there was nothing extreme about Henry Jenkins at all.
That Christmas, he sent me a card. I almost felt I should include him on my list, poor fellow, wasting his life walled up forever.
Immuring people seemed so primitive, I thought.
Yesterday, I was on my way to work when I passed a truckload of pigs bound for the slaughterhouse. I began to cry—in fact, I had to pull off the road and throw up.
It was the first time it hit me—this normalization of unthinkable acts—made to appear acceptable because it’s part of our routine.
I imagined trainloads of Jews bound for Auschwitz, herded like cattle and transported to be gassed. The men driving the train, or processing the prisoners, or turning on the gas jets were acting according to routine.
Even the men operating the earthmovers and digging mass graves were not necessarily conscious of doing terrible things—as long as those things were done in an orderly and systematic way.
Even living in the twenty-first century with out nuclear weaponry and chemical and biological weapons feels normal.
It reminded me of the Iraq war and the mainly defenceless Iraqis being killed during the siege of Baghdad and generals joking about the ease of their slaughter.
It all seemed so offensive to me
Henry Jenkins is living out his life without possibility of parole. In a way, it's cruel and unusual punishment to me.
Execution would have been more humane.
The young man despite his horrific acts is paradoxically a nice fellow. I think I’ll send him a Christmas card next year.
That's very unsettling. I don't know how to respond to that story yet.
I find profiling serial killers very unsettling - I don't see much illumination in studying the darkness - but much of reality is incomprehensible, I'm afraid
I think that was one layer of the unsettling, but then the other was that your hero ended up thinking he was still a nice guy!
The banality of evil - we transport and slaughter pigs without qualms and sometimes we butcher humans in war and consider the most adept worthy of medals and praise. So, an individual's bizarre behaviour we punish - I don't understand people who hurt animals or people - I find TV series about profilers trying to fathom the darkness of the criminally insane to be on the level of porn, but for some it's fascinating and compelling - a form of entertainment, hence the dark irony of the ending. BTW, my wife hated the story - made me feel bad for writing it. I personally prefer today's story, A Sunday Kind of Love, but the hand having writ move on...