UTOPIAN DREAM

I was deeply grieved by what I had done. Despite all the ill treatment I had received from my in-laws. I still wished that they were still alive, though not as they were. I always thought there was some good in everyone that made them worth saving. Anyway, I do not think that I meant to kill my father-in-law, otherwise I would have carried on using the dagger until he had fallen to the ground, dead. According to the post mortem report, he had died from intra abdominal haemorrhage due to a stab wound through the left lobe of the liver. The only other serious wound was a penetrating stab wound in the left arm. There were numerous superficial cuts caused during the confrontation. Someone told me that I had stabbed the tobacco tin in his pocket a couple of times, which prevented serious injury at that stage.

As regards injuries to my mother-in-law, the post mortem report described four major wounds, two of these were to the heart, one to the right lung, probably caused as she was lying on the ground, judging by the direction of blood flow, whilst the fourth stab wound was to the left side of the neck, almost severing the ear lobe, and was probably inflicted as she fell backwards.

The post mortems also detailed the health of the victims prior to the killings, Helen had a heart condition. Evidence existed of a myocardial infarction, heart attack to you and me, and ischemia, which is localized loss of blood circulation resulting in destroyed vital tissue around the heart. Atheroma, partial blockage of coronary arteries caused by calcium build up, as a result of cigarette smoking, eating fatty foods or lack of exercise, was also present. As for Glyn, he had chronic bronchitis in the lungs, probably caused by smoking, resulting in past attacks of pleurisy. As with Helen, severe atheroma was also present. Much to my surprise, apart from the stab wound, his liver was perfectly healthy. Reading these reports, I could not help thinking that if my in-laws had put off their visit a month or so, then with any luck they would have died from natural causes. Why I had been totally ignorant of their medical condition, I simply could not understand. I knew that Glyn had endured gout on occasion, probably due to his excessive drinking. Were they aware of the state of their health, and did this instil in them the feeling that they had nothing to lose from such a confrontation?

After I gave myself up to the police, I was afraid that I had harmed my wife and sister-in-law as I could not remember what had happened to them. I was afraid to ask, but fortunately they were all right. It had been like a bad dream. A nightmare. For five and a half years I had turned the other cheek, and the first time I put my foot down, it ended in disaster and ruin. I knew then that I had lost my home, Fluff, and above all, my wife.

What I did was against everything I believed in, and I am deeply sorry for that. Words cannot express the deep seated grief that I felt then, and would probably always feel. I had let down my relatives, my wife and her relatives, and finally our friends. How I will live with it in the future, I do not know. At the time of writing this, over three years later, time has made me realise that I will have to live with those thoughts for the rest of my life. I wished that those killed had been anyone but my wife's parents. Killing them had split my marriage, irretrievably I thought, for how could a woman forgive the man who had killed her parents, no matter how bad they were. As far as I could see, my marriage would end in divorce, but I put the thought out of my mind, for there was enough to think about. I realised that what my wife needed at that time, were relatives and friends who would give her the love, care and comfort, that she needed most.

In the years since, I have often asked myself how I could have let it happen. There is no doubt in my mind, that my in-laws wanted me to become violent on numerous occasions, so that they could use it against Karen, or even get me put away in prison, or a mental hospital, but why?

There are a number of possible motives, and they are as follows:

I . They had few real friends of their own, so it is possible that they wanted Karen to keep them company, just like a pet. They had no regard for what Karen wanted. Helen often came around, saying that she wanted Karen to keep her company whilst her husband was on the boats, but in the last six months Glyn had been at home with a fractured arm.

2. They simply regarded Karen as a piece of property that belonged to them. They certainly did not care about her. At her parent's place, her bed had been filthy and dilapidated, whilst her dolls, which were passed on to me, were so ragged and filthy that I burnt them. They were at least ten years old and presented an obvious health hazard. In a way, they could not accept that she was grown up and that times had changed. Helen would refer to Karen as hogen bach (little girl). However, I do not think that this was an important factor.

3. They felt that I could not do the job of looking after Karen. They were over protective. I do not think that this fits either, as at no time did they give me any form of constructive advice.

4. They felt guilty at having an imperfect child, and wanted to keep her out of the sight of the world. In my opinion my in-laws were incapable of feeling guilt about anything.

5. They did not want me because I was English and they were Welsh. My in-laws did not have strong Welsh views. They would not even watch Welsh television programmes, which surprised me.

6. They wanted my wife's DHSS benefits. My in-laws certainly did not want me to have them, and complained bitterly about how I was spending the backdated payments but my in-laws hatred of me started well before our marriage, when I did not even know that these allowances existed. I once asked my solicitor whether Karen could get compensation for her illness from the NHS, since her meningitis had been contracted in hospital. He simply said that it was too late to do so. As far as I know, her parents made no such approaches.

7. My in-laws were afraid that I would find some skeleton in the family cupboard. Whether it be child battering, incest or rape, I simply do not know.

8. My in-laws did not get on well with their relatives. They had not wanted Glyn to marry Helen all those years ago. I think they felt that Glyn had married below his status. It maybe that my in-laws adopted a hostile and vindictive attitude towards their relatives, and later towards me, as a means of self protection. Certainly Helen had a guilt complex about being common, justifiably so in my opinion.

9. Helen wanted Karen back, so that whilst she was working Glyn would have to look after his daughter, who would in turn be keeping an eye on him. Helen would then be able to worm out of Karen where they had been, just as she did when Karen went out with me. Helen did not want Glyn to go off with other women. Karen had once pointed out one of his mistress's to me in the Tinto Club, and I later heard that he had made a woman pregnant.

10. They were incapable of feeling any empathy towards anyone, including Fluff, and therefore felt that total control over Karen was more important than letting her get married.

Whether there was any basis to section seven, I am not certain, but there are reasons for mentioning it. Normally Karen liked everyone, as she had a very trusting nature. There were only four people she did not like. These were, Glyn's mother, Gaga; her father's mistress; one of our neighbours at Gwalchmai; and Helen's father, John. I never asked her why she hated these people, and because of Karen's condition, I did not take it seriously. However, an incident later occurred that caused me to change my mind.

One day Karen and I went to see a couple we knew in Gwalchmai, Mary and Greg. As we sat there in their kitchen, it transpired that Mary had a very interesting story to tell. Whilst out walking her dog one morning she passed greetings to one of our neighbours, Peter. Out of the blue and to Mary's disgust. Peter casually asked her to go to bed with him. She could not believe her ears and hurried off.

Suddenly Karen spoke up, telling us all about the time she went into his bungalow. No sooner had she entered his lounge, than he dropped his trousers and exposed himself. Karen beat a hasty retreat, so she said.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" I asked incredulously.

"I was afraid of what you might say," Karen replied.

There was nothing that I could now do, as Peter had died from cancer a few months after the incident. I was to learn in the remand centre, that some terminally ill people tend to commit illegal acts that they otherwise would not do. Why Karen hated John, I simply do not know. I do know that he looked after Karen at home, whilst the rest of the family were working. Whether he abused Karen would be pure speculation. All I know is that Karen would not hate anyone without a good reason. Her hatred of Gaga and her father's mistress were obviously instilled into her by Helen, but I could not imagine her hatred of John being produced in that way.

I personally believe that the reason for my in-laws hostility towards me was a combination of factors six to ten inclusive.

With hindsight, it is easy to see that I should have gone to see my solicitor, and request him to obtain a nuisance order from the courts, in order to keep my in-laws away. At the time I simply did not know that such a means existed. Even with a nuisance order disadvantages existed. The nuisance order would have well and truly drawn the battle lines for the future. It would also have depended on me being resolute enough to go through with it and maintaining it year after year, knowing full well the effect it would have on my wife, who still liked seeing them, particularly her sister and her kids. It is unlikely that I could have kept the nuisance order going for long. Also, the area had a low population density, with few towns in which to go shopping. Inevitably our paths would have crossed, with who knows to what result.

It was unfortunate that I did not have a telephone in my bungalow, but although I had enquired about them on a number of occasions, I simply could not afford to have one. I did not know which of my close neighbours had a working telephone. I would certainly have had to go a fair distance to find one. Had I have telephoned the police, it is doubtful whether they would have come to my assistance in time. Although Gwalchmai had a police station, there was normally only one police officer on duty at any one time. It is doubtful whether he would have come alone. It would have taken fifteen to twenty minutes for police to come from nearby towns. Owing to masses of police being seconded from the area to keep an eye on the National Union of Mineworkers' secondary picketing at coal mines and power stations, the manpower for my common domestic dispute, may simply not have been available. In addition to this, my past record of assistance from the police, had been very discouraging.

The off putting incidents were as follows:

1. When someone tried to break into my flat in Birmingham, the day I took a lorry driver to court, the police did not even bother to come around.

2. When my car skidded on ice and hit a wall, the police were only too willing to get a conviction.

3. When my in-laws came to Birmingham on the train, and dragged Karen away, I dialled 999, but the police did not want to know.

4. When we eloped and got married, the police would not even tell my in-laws the good news.

5. When I had sheep in my garden, eating my flowers, the police did not know to whom they belonged to.

6. I went to my local police station twice regarding my neighbours building materials, and saw three policemen, but none of them would come down and have a look.

There were many people who thought that Great Britain had the best police force in the world, without realizing that the best form of policing is in fact self policing, prompted by the way we are brought up by our parents, and taught at school. I could not help thinking that had I lived in a more caring society, with proper community policing, then the deaths of my in-laws would not have taken place. There was no doubt in my mind that the root cause of my problems had been unemployment. Had I lived in a full employment society, I would have had no trouble in selling my home, thereby moving out of my in-laws' reach. The absence of a full employment society and proper community policing, were symbols of an inept or uncaring system of government, possibly both. At the time I felt very bitter towards the British Government, and still do.

Had Great Britain a community policing system, in which representatives of police, welfare, employment, health and education visit each home once per annum, then it would provide a basis for a better community. In my case, I could have mentioned my problems to them, not just those concerning my in-laws. Trained civil servants would have known how my problems could be sorted out in ways which I would have been ignorant of. Community policing was shunned by politicians, and other do-gooders, as an infringement of personal liberty. It is only when you become a victim of circumstance that you realise how essential crime prevention techniques are in maintaining a civilised society. Without a proper community policing system, the police knew very little about what was going on on their patch, whilst at the same time they were alienated from the people they were meant to help. I was to learn that only in prison do you experience infringement of personal liberty in a truly repressive way. By that stage most people are beyond help, whilst many will give up the rat race and re-enter prison time and time again. Whilst the cost of community policing cannot be ignored, the cost of not doing it is astronomical. My case alone would have cost the tax payer at least a million pounds, not just for the trial and imprisonment, but also the years of enforced unproductive welfare dependency afterwards.

I have come to the conclusion that the establishment of a crime free society should be the aim of all caring governments in developed countries. Certainly the scientific means already exists, but law enforcement agencies are ham strung by the lack of political backing. Were they given the legal powers, it would be technically feasible for each citizen to visit his local police station annually to take a lie detector test, in order to ascertain whether he or she had committed a serious crime in the past year, or was thinking of committing one. Lie detectors (polygraphs) do work in expert hands. Truth drugs should be made available to those who request them, and should be made compulsory for those appealing against conviction. In a society where the competence of expert witnesses is being increasingly brought to question, and where over enthusiastic police ill-treat the accused and rig evidence, the establishment of better means of ascertaining the truth should be made available. Such methods are based on the assumption that the accused is initially neither guilty nor innocent. I came to the above conclusions during my imprisonment, which led me to believe that there had to be a better way than the archaic system that already existed.

Present methods of policing, in which officers were sent out on the beat, had remained little changed for a hundred years. Better communications and scientific techniques had had a marginal effect on detection rates, but had certainly not led to a better society. What was needed most was a political change of attitude. Politicians and ordinary citizens alike should be made to realise that freedom is not something we are simply born with, it has to be fought for every day, in order to maintain the high ideals and values that make up such a society. A 'free' society should not be one where anything goes, where long established social rules are thrown away in the urge to experiment. A society based on freedom should be one where the social rules promote peace, prosperity and good health, both in body and mind.

Only a victim of crime understands the anger which I feel, towards the incompetent way in which society is governed. There are many victims of crime in prison, as I was to discover. There, one could see the true cost of having a free society. The man who kills his lesbian wife. The man who kills or rapes, whilst under the influence of illicit, or irresponsibly prescribed NHS drugs. The long term alcoholic, drug addict, or sex offender who commits more terrible crimes, after being released back into society, without receiving proper effective treatment whilst inside. The hitch-hiker who stabs to death the queer that picked him up.

Through my years in prison, I slowly came to realise that a 'free' society was nothing less than an uncaring one. The cost of a free for all society where anything goes, can be found in hospitals and prisons throughout countries where politicians give little thought to the social impact of their irresponsible policies. If it was not for the welfare state, then the riots which occurred during this period, would have been far worse, causing the thin blue line to crumble, with who knows what result.

My experiences with the police and other departments of government, may well have encouraged me to rely only upon myself. My opinion of the National Health Service (NHS) at this time, was pretty low. The low esteem I had for the NHS was probably one of the factors which caused me not to see my GP, regarding my mental illness. Years previously when my in-laws had wanted their daughter to under go an EEG, they found that they had to take her all the way to Liverpool to receive such a service. God knows where they would have sent me.

Various incidents had occurred in recent years to instil such a low opinion. They were:

1. My father-in-laws mother, Gaga, died from a stroke weeks after she entered hospital.

2. My mother-in-laws father, John, died from a hernia, one day before he was due to have an operation.

3. My wife had apparently been taking the wrong tablets for years. She was also given doses of Rivotril which far exceeded the manufacturer's recommendations, something which should have been obvious to her GP at the time.

4. For six months my father-in-law had been suffering with a fractured arm. He had been obliged to seek treatment from the Seaman's Hospital in London and a private hospital in Liverpool.

All the indications were that it would be best for me not to take my mental problems to my GP.

The circumstances as regards how I came to have a commando dagger, are quite innocent. I am not the sort of person who goes around with a chip on my shoulder. Neither do I collect military regalia, nor read military magazines. I am certainly not a survivalist, nor have I ever owned or used firearms. I do however read magazines that contain details of military aircraft technology, but only because I am interested in the articles on space research which they contain. I have never had a morbid interest in violence, and I have certainly never been a fitness fanatic. Until this incident I had not been in any serious trouble with the police, with the exception of traffic offences.

I kept my commando dagger in the draw by my bed in case of burglars. I bought it thirteen years previously, at an iron mongers in Northamptonshire. At that time I had had various jobs after coming out of the merchant navy. Shortly after the IRA bombings at Aldershot, I applied for an 'S' type engagement with the parachute regiment, and bought the knife probably thinking that it would come in handy in the army. I went down to Aldershot for an interview, and was asked to stay the night as there were no late trains running, I was told.

The following morning I was asked to go on the assault course, along with about ten other lads in my situation. Unlike me they were either ex-army, or wanted to be transferred from their existing regiment. The assault course was in the woods and consisted of obstacles made out of scaffolding poles and railway sleepers, in the main. I got around the course all right, only to find that I had another lap to do. At the end of each obstacle was an unavoidable pool of muddy water, which penetrated my clothing, supplied generously by the army. The wet clothing weighed me down, but my mind was already weighed down by the fact that I was not only last in the race, but that the other contestants were out of sight. Although the army wanted me, I decided that I simply did not have the build to enable me to run umpteen miles each day, neither could I understand the broad Geordie accent of the other guys, something which I considered essential as regards life preservation on the battlefield.

I had never used the dagger before for violent purposes. I broke the tip of the blade soon after I bought it, when I tried using it as a screw driver. Also in the bungalow was a Swiss army pen knife, a knife that incorporated an adjustable wrench, and a sheath knife with marlinespike, all of which I bought whilst in the navy, over fifteen years before. As with many of my belongings, I was not to see these items again.

It is all too easy for someone to dismiss the mental condition which I had, since the only person who saw it at first hand was my wife. Although the police attempted to obtain a statement from her the day after the crime, she was in too distressed a state to say anything reliable without prompting from her sister. In my opinion the police gave up too easily. It was not the only vital statement not to be made. Months, perhaps years later, I learned that my next door neighbour Gwilym Owen, had refused to give a statement to the police. My father-in-law's sister, one of the few people who knew my mother-in-law's bad ways, also refused to make a statement.

As for my mental state, that originated from the stress and suffering inflicted upon me by my in-laws and the DHSS. I would apportion eighty per cent of the blame equally between the two, the remaining twenty per cent being taken up by the strain of trying to get a job, looking after my wife and home, and putting up with my next door neighbour. There is no doubt in my mind that what I went through with the DHSS, changed my personality. I learned to hate the DHSS and Mrs. GG's government, as the only means of avoiding depression. It was my responsibility to my wife which caused me to do this, as a means of preventing myself from committing suicide.

During the final months before the killings, we received apologies from the DHSS for all the delays we had endured, but you cannot live on apologies. There was no compensation in way of interest payments with our backdated allowances. For the uninitiated the welfare benefits system was frighteningly complex, made worse by the ever changing benefits regulations. We were not eligible for family income supplement as we had no children, so opting for a low paid job was not a realistic alternative.

In late 1980 we survived on unemployment benefit, tax rebates, and earnings related unemployment benefit. Within eight years, the last two benefits had been abolished. Unemployment benefit became taxable, which meant that if you did get a job, your earnings were likely to be taxed out of existence. If you became unemployed without good reason, then the period for which you were not eligible for unemployment benefit was increased during this period, from two weeks to six months. In April 1988 the British Government turned the screw again, by replacing supplementary benefit with income support, replacing extra needs payments for the unemployed with repayable loans, assuming the loan fund was initially available and had not been exhausted. At a time when job security simply did not exist, the above measures were simply a disincentive to find work. The danger of short term employment is that when made unemployed after a short working period, it could take many weeks to sort out your entitlement again. I knew in 1980, that because of our mortgage repayments, our supplementary benefits (SB) would be higher than all the previously mentioned benefits put together, but I was unemployed six months before I was to get SB, let alone AA, HNCIP and ICA. The structure of the welfare benefits system can, by its very complexity, generate as much stress as the initial trauma of being unemployed.

SB covered most basic needs, but it did not pay the capital on my mortgage. If you had an endowment mortgage linked to a life assurance policy, then the situation was even worse. The capital on our mortgage came to about fifteen to twenty pounds per month, which I paid regardless. There was also no allowance made for a TV licence, travelling expenses, a telephone, and as stated earlier, home contents insurance, lack of which was also a source of stress. I found that travelling expenses were only paid if you asked for them, and then only if you were called specifically to the DHSS for interview. I cannot recall being invited to my local DHSS, although there were many times when I had to go there for information.

Holidays, hobbies such as gardening, and leisure activities, such as going out for a drink with friends, are essential if you are long term unemployed, since they are the only means of dissipating stress. A car is essential in country districts, where bus services are often infrequent, erratic or non-existent. The closure of sub post offices in villages and the deregulation of bus services, will eventually result in depopulation of the countryside, placing added strain on the housing sector in nearby towns. It will encourage the buying of second homes, which will remain empty for much of the year. In the meantime, the absence of sub post offices and bus services will necessitate many unemployed walking long distances to cash their giros. A town or city dweller who is unemployed is far better off in this respect, as buses and trains not only exist, but are more frequent. There are also many leisure activities, subsidized by the rates, which are easy to get to, such as evening classes and sport. Although my wife had a disabled persons bus card, she could not use it most of the time as we used day rover tickets whenever possible, which were not covered by the scheme.

Having to deal regularly with four DHSS departments, my experience was more devastating than that of most claimants. My problems when dealing with the DHSS, often repeated many times, were as follows:

1. Letters to the DHSS, particularly to my local office, went unanswered.

2. Telephoning the DHSS, often after walking a quarter of a mile through high winds and rain, I would find that either the telephone did not work properly, usually consuming my money in the process, or the call went unanswered. In Birmingham, where I did have a telephone, I found that the telephone at the DHSS was left off the hook, and only put back on immediately after closing time. As a result, I never did manage to arrange an appointment to be interviewed there. I later learned from a civil servant, that the business with the telephone also upset the staff in the UBO, who could not get in touch with the DHSS either.

3. For about two years I had to take my handicapped wife with me on the bus, in all weathers, just to sign on every two weeks.

4. I found it very difficult to get information from the UBO and DHSS. Little if any information was ever volunteered, without specifically asking for it first. It could have been easy for the DHSS to overcome this problem, and thereby save themselves a lot of hard work later on. The main problem was that the DHSS never asked enough questions on the questionnaire they handed out, it being devoted mainly to SB. Also, they never handed out basic leaflets listing the rates of current benefits (Ni196). the serial numbers of leaflets available and where to get them (Ni146), and more importantly the booklet which described each current benefit (Which Benefit? 60 ways to get cash help, (FB2). By keeping claimants fully informed, a lot of stress on both sides of the counter could have been avoided, not to mention savings in administration costs, and NHS costs.

It took me a long time to acquaint myself with the system. During my four years as unemployed I amassed thirty-five different leaflets and three booklets from various sources. During this same period I received numerous letters and forms from various government departments, most of which I kept. The score was as follows:

As I was unemployed for a total of forty-five weeks, this represents an average of two letters or forms, delivered to me during each week I was unemployed. Also, during the period July 82 to April 83, I received ten solicitors letters relating to my problems with the DHSS, for which the British tax payer was kind enough to contribute legal aid.

5, There were the never ending procession of forms, which always seemed to ask the same question, but never asked enough. There was for instance no question on the standard application form for SB which asked:

'Is there anyone listed on this form who is being looked after, due to illness or handicap?' And,

'Is there anyone listed on this form who is looking after someone who is ill or handicapped?' And,

'Is there anyone listed on this form who is unavailable for work due to illness or handicap?'

If such questions had existed, then our problems would have been drastically reduced,

Why was it that those questions did not exist?

6, Every other week I got a letter from the UBO or DHSS, and I use to dread opening them. The UBO would send me letters saying that my unemployment benefit would soon come to an end. These computer generated letters were evidence of an unfeeling and uncaring establishment. To anyone not knowing the system which led to SB, receiving such a letter could result in suicide. In the last of these letters from the Department of Unemployment, dated 19-1-82, they notified me that under the social security act 1975, section 18(2), and the social security miscellaneous provisions act 1977, and the social security short term benefits transitional regulations 1974 reg 8(1), I was now skint as the coffers were bear. After reading such a letter I wondered how many people had collapsed with a heart attack or stroke. Did they seriously expect people to look up such regulations, if not, then why mention them. I could only conclude that they did it in order to camouflage the contents of the third paragraph, which informs the claimant that he is entitled to supplementary allowance, but it did not state where to apply, namely the DHSS. Its proper title is supplementary benefit, not social security as some people say. I made the same mistake in the UBO Llangefni, The staff turned to stone, speechless. I could read their minds, 'We are not programmed to respond to the left wing slang of the non-working classes.' If you could not get the title correct, then you got nowhere. Fortunately, much has changed for the better since those days, but I still dread the 'system.'

7. The complexity of the benefits' system was staggering. I would often be unable to get the right advice or action from the DHSS, Citizen's Advice Bureau, or even a specialised solicitor. Some allowances were added to SB, which was the basic allowance, whilst others were deducted from it. Some allowances were only paid if you were in receipt of others. Often I applied for allowances, neither knowing whether we were entitled to them, nor even if we would be financially better off. We had in the end, three allowance books, which I cashed at the local sub post office. The system of benefits was changed in November 1984 with the introduction of severe disablement allowance, but by then I was past caring.

8. Very often I would go to the DHSS, after signing on at the UBO, to try and get the answer to a query, only to be confronted by a new clerical officer who knew considerably less than I did. I got the impression that low pay for civil servants, and inadequate training, prompted ignorance in staff and claimants alike, and that this was a deliberate government policy. In the early 1980's the DHSS employed 65,000 to 81,000 staff in 500 offices scattered around the country, whilst the Department of Unemployment employed 26,000 and the local authorities employed 7,800 people engaged in working out housing benefits. The DHSS administered claims from the over 60's, the sick and the unemployed. In the six years from 1973 to 1985 of Mrs. GG's rule, the rate of claims doubled whilst staff numbers fell, due to the governments policy of transferring unemployment review work to the D of U. Owing to the amount of work and antiquated methods, many staff succumbed to psychosomatic illnesses, both physical and mental. As a result, in some inner city offices, staff turn over was sixty per cent per annum. During my years on the dole I often wondered what type of humanity existed in the upper echelons of government, that were responsible for perpetrating such a system.

9, When dealing with the DHSS at Norcross, I originally thought that there was one person up there who was dealing with all my claims. It took me a long time to realise differently, that there were numerous departments in numerous office blocks employing hundreds of people. I later came to realise that a department could not deal with my claim until another section higher up the chain had already approved a related entitlement, and past my file on. I could not understand why the DHSS centre at Norcross existed, except as a glorified job creation exercise, rather like the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC) at Swansea, which the government decided to privatise in 1988. I could see no point in having Norcross when it took up to a year or more to process a claim. The local DHSS could process it in a month, since they had direct access to claimants, doctors and other relevant details.

10, Receiving gobbledygook from the DHSS was far from funny. On one occasion I received a three page letter, but I failed to understand any of it. I was obliged to go to the Citizens Advice Bureau for a translation (it was already in English). The D of U and the DHSS were perhaps the only major organizations I dealt with who did not issue their letters and forms in Welsh as well as English. Were they to do so, it might force them to think more logically about the content and layout of their documents.

11, Threatening the DHSS with legal action, by going to a solicitor, was to me like taking the entire government to court. It all seemed unbelievable. The mistake by the DHSS in over paying our benefit for months, resulted in them refusing to pay our rates. This underlines the importance of a claimant understanding how a benefit has been calculated. For some reason which I fail to understand, the DHSS notified claimants of their benefit rate on form A14N, and would only tell a claimant how it had been worked out, on form A124, when the claimant asked for it. Unfortunately, if you did not know about this form, then you could not ask for it. Since all benefit claims had to be calculated anyway, I could see no point in using A14N instead of A124, except to cover up the mistakes of the DHSS, which my local DHSS tried to make me responsible for. As far as I know, I notified them of all changes in my mortgage rate. At this time one in eight claims were miscalculated by the DHSS, even though it cost the tax payer 1,600 million pounds to administer 37,200 million pounds in allowances, which went out in the form of 100 million giro cheques and 53 million order books per annum. Half of this money went to pensioners, twenty per cent to families with children, and seventeen per cent to the unemployed.

12, The hypocrisy of the system was nowhere underlined more than when the DHSS admitted, according to their cold callous calculations, that 886 million pounds went unclaimed in one year alone. The use of the word unclaimed fills me with a seething desire to produce some kind of violent response.

13, The most agonizing feelings were produced by the months of waiting. No matter how simple the task, there was always the waiting. For a person like me who detests queuing, the waiting and the frustration it produced, were to have unforeseen results.

Because of all these problems, I would pace up and down in my lounge at a loss to know what to do. I felt powerless and resentful. Finally my feelings turned to hate. I had nothing but contempt for the senior civil servants that were ruining my life, and the lives of millions of other people in similar situations. I wanted to kill those purveyors of misery. Kill them all. I regarded them as the real spongers off the state, sitting in their offices doing little except pencil twiddling and doodling, until the day their index linked pensions arrived. Was their any real difference between those faceless pen pushers and Adolph Eichmann, that insignificant clerk (so he said), whose job it was to arrange the final train journey for millions of people? Could it be that the final solution for the unemployed was already being contemplated by officialdom? After all, what was the point in the government enticing companies to develop and use robots through the offering of government grants, plus the negative incentive to employ people through high rates of company national insurance, whilst at the same time paying those displaced persons to exist on state welfare benefits? Since their was no policy by the British Government to create a leisure orientated society, there could be no other inference. Like the freedom fighters in the Warsaw ghetto, I was determined to fight on against all comers. My life had become an eternal battle for survival.

It is all too easy to disbelieve what I have written here, if you have no first hand experience of these things. There were no starving bodies in the streets, no long queues at soup kitchens, just the occasional tramp who chooses of his own accord to opt out of society. But look a little deeper, and it was possible to see the signs of a society undergoing financial and moral decay. The busker or begging punk rocker in the subway, the blond sun tanned call girl caressing the arm of her client in the pub, the unemployed woman who married for the love of a man's money and the easy divorce settlement that will follow, the new army of street cleaners employed by the local authority, the newspaper advertisements, put there by individuals, begging for meaningful employment, the single parent who cannot find a spouse with adequate financial means, the marriage shattered by economic strain, the para suicides filling up the hospital ward beds, the soaring crime rate coupled with the growing lack of trust between people, the never ending prescriptions for tranquillizers, the rigged unemployment figures that do not show the numbers of people the government has banned from receiving benefit or has put on meaningless training or work experience schemes, or on sickness or invalidity benefit instead. These are the signs of a society at odds with sanity.

The one overriding lesson I was to learn when dealing with the DHSS, was that I was not going to get anywhere without fighting for my rights. Originally the fight began in my mind, then extended outwards through my letters, and ultimately via my solicitor. But as the recession deepened I began to realise that the violence within my mind and the violence on the picket lines, were against a common enemy. It was a fight against the lunatic policies of an ideologically bound government. In other words, I was beating my head against immovable obstinacy in high places. Just why government behaved in such an uncaring way, I was at a loss to understand. I think it is because government is such a huge bureaucratic organization that its inertia overcomes any attempt to increase its efficiency. It does not have an uncaring nature. It simply does not care, one way or the other. Basically there is no incentive large enough, for any individual politician or civil servant to overcome the inertia within government.

The outcome of this situation could be read in any newspaper of the time. All too often there were stories of families wiped out, often ending in suicide for the remaining one who had gone berserk. I realise how the pressures of society can produce such tragedies. They will only end when a more caring society is established. To leave it in the hands of the courts would be to act too late. The deaths of my in-laws was news for just a few days, and then only locally. Now their deaths are just statistics. Their deaths and my mental condition, were as a result of long term unemployment. A number of reports were published at this time linking unemployment with mental illness, crime and death. In prison I had plenty of time to read newspapers, given to me by the staff. I jotted down statistics avidly, since I had nothing else better to do.

A study titled 'Unemployment and Mortality', compiled by the British government's Office of Population Census Surveys (OPCS) at City University, London, showed that at least 2,800 men and women would die in 1984 as a result of unemployment, almost eight people per day.

Upon entry to remand centre's, all new inmates were specifically asked whether they were unemployed at the time of their crime. Although the data existed, reports specifically mentioning figures were rare. However, in the USA, where a more open system of government prevailed, a report was published in Scientific American in September 1984. This report was compiled by the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, for the United States Congress. The following figures relate to the USA. Although the welfare state system is more restricted, gun ownership more extensive and drug abuse more prevalent than in the UK, you should not forget that the recession in Great Britain at this time, was greater than in the United States. Bearing in mind that the unemployment rate for the county where I was living was officially put at 17%, and that it was far higher in the village where I lived, the report states that for an increase of ten per cent in the unemployment rate, the following happens:

This suggests that during the recession of 1981 and 1982 75,000 additional people died in the USA as a result.

Allowing for population difference, that would mean that 9,400 people died each year during the UK's recession of the early 1980's, assuming that the recession was no worse and no better in the UK, than in the USA. The figure of 9,400 is three times higher than the results in the OPCS report, probably due to the different methods employed in reaching the final figure, or maybe we can endure more crap than Americans.

The British government no doubt had similar figures. One wonders therefore why projects such as the Trident missile programme, costing nine billion pounds, can have priority over the main purpose of any government. Namely, to create a better society and in particular a more pleasurable society for the majority of people, than the one the politicians inherited upon coming to office. The insane logic of government was slowly creating an insane society, from which my mind could only rebel.

Upon my entry to Risley Remand Centre I was interviewed by Dr.Shrink, and later his boss, Dr.Shrunk, who recommended to my solicitor that I be seen by a Dr.Shrank, a medical practitioner from Lancaster. I was interviewed for an hour by Dr.Shrink, and for three hours each by the other two doctors,.I underwent two electroencephalograph (EEG) tests, the first at Risley, and the second at Lancaster. I was later told that these EEG's confirmed an abnormality in the temporal lobe region of the brain, possibly caused during child birth. This abnormality was believed to be related to my fits, possibly some form of temporal lobe epilepsy. No attempt was made to produce these fits whilst undergoing an EEG test. It was never suggested to me. Had I known how long I was to remain in Risley, then I would certainly have demanded it, since I knew it was possible to induce such fits by reading emotive articles in newspapers. Since eighty-five per cent of people have something wrong with their brains, the EEG's appeared to prove nothing. However, I was never told the detailed findings, neither did I ever see the medical reports, so I have no idea what the doctor 's conclusions were.

When I entered Risley I was experiencing a strong sense of relief. Relief that all the insults, physical assaults and mental trauma had finally come to an end. During my time at Risley I took various drugs to treat my dyspepsia and headaches. Although I entered Risley in a very calm state, and began dreaming for the first time in years, though within a couple of weeks the stress began to build up again. My fits started up again. These occurred only during the day, never at night as before. The fits I had at Risley were mainly minor. As far as I know, no member of staff saw me have one, although some inmates noticed. Within a month of entering Risley, I asked for some medication to help me sleep. As a result of this request, I was prescribed Prothiaden (Dothiepen). I did not know it then, but at least a year later I found out that it was an anti-depressant. In Risley I never regarded myself as depressed enough to need such drugs. Being kept in dismal surroundings for so long certainly depressed me, as they would any average person. Having seen numerous cases of chronic depression, I can certainly say that I was never in that category. I was kept on Prothiaden for seventeen months, and it took almost a year for its effects to wear off. The incident left me with an intense distrust of doctors.

Prothiaden had little effect on my fits in the long term. I often had them whilst sitting at my bed reading a newspaper. There was little else for me to do in Risley. It is my belief that I should have been prescribed Priadel (lithium carbonate) for my fits and Diazepam for my anxiety state, and that I should have been transferred to a mental hospital immediately after my trial in order to receive behaviour therapy. I got a clear impression from the doctors at Risley, that despite everything that I told them during the interviews, and the detailed description of my medical symptoms in an eighty-six page statement typed out by my solicitor, they believed that I was suffering from a depressional illness. They seemed to go by what they observed in that depressing dump, and not by what had gone before. Whether this apparent mistake was a major contributory factor in the way my case was later mishandled, I simply do not know. What I can say for certain is that whilst I was detained, I never received proper medical treatment. When I was ultimately released, I was still as mentally ill as the day I first entered Risley. The events that led to this situation can only be described as inexcusable, and the DHSS must carry much of the blame. Whether their action, or rather inaction, was based on a desire to get even, I simply do not know. As for my motives for writing this book, I can state quite honestly that revenge is uppermost in my mind.

Since the killings I have often asked myself how I feel about what I had done. Most of the time I feel absolutely nothing towards those that I killed. Whilst in Risley I was more concerned about the loss of Fluff, and not knowing anything about Karen. Writing it all down drained my brain of emotion. It is only when I read in this manuscript, all the incidents that occurred with my in-laws, that my mind explodes into another fit. At those moments I possess strong feelings of hatred. I want to kill them again and make them suffer the way they did me. Glyn and Helen got off lightly in my opinion. Fortunately those feelings are becoming less frequent. Time does not heal over the psychological wounds, whilst talking about it only opens them. Moving to a distant location and starting a new life, does help one to get over such trauma, but in such depressing economic times it is not easy. In my mind, my in-laws were people I could not come to terms with, and are therefore best forgotten now they are dead.

If someone had asked me the day before the killings, whether I was a danger to society, I would have said, "No."

If asked the same question today, I would reply, "I am less of a danger to society, than society is to me."

It is unlikely that I would intentionally subject myself to such stress again. The circumstances surrounding the killings were rare and therefore unlikely to be encountered by most people in their lives.

During my years of confinement I attempted to find out more about my illness. Progress in this direction was slow. Most of the hospital staff knew nothing, and the only books readily available were novels. Asking the librarian for books on psychiatry was strictly out. I did however subscribe to three magazines, one of which contained the occasional article on medical science. It was in the seventh of June, 1984 edition of New Scientist that there appeared an article on psychiatric epidemiology. This referred to a standard question and answer procedure carried out by psychiatrists. I decided to answer the questions, and they are as follows:

A, Loss of appetite or body weight; Loss of body weight was experienced through financial restrictions imposed by unemployment. After receiving attendance allowance I made very good meals, but I almost lost interest in eating. At meal times I experienced nausea, but I was never physically sick. I ate all my meals as I wanted to set a good example to my wife.

B, Sleeping; We usually slept from midnight to midday, because there was nothing to do in the mornings, except switch the heating on and cook a meal, all of which cost money. I would find it difficult to drop off to sleep, and would wake up at all hours of the night. I would often wake up sweating all over. Often I would have a fit whilst lying in bed, and lash out with my fists into the air or into the mattress. I very rarely dreamed, if ever.

C, Lack of interest; I found it very difficult to be interested in anything. I rarely did the gardening. I cooked only one meal per day. During the summer of 1983, I bought at least ten cans of paint for decorating the interior and exterior of my bungalow, but I only got around to painting the outside during that last year at Sunny Dale.

D, Agitation or slow movement; I would often get agitated over my insoluble problems, particularly when my wife did something wrong,.I would very often become speechless. It was pointless telling her off, as I knew it would not sink in. In my youth I had been a moody person who shouted a lot when angry. Since then my personality had swung in the opposite direction. I did not suffer from slow movement, and never have.

E, Loss of pleasure; Most interests were suspended as we had neither a car nor the money to pursue them. Making love to my wife was not easy at the best of times. No intimacy took place during the last two years we were together. For some reason I found it childish.

F, Feelings of guilt; The lengths I went to in trying to get a job, and in making money from letting my bungalow whilst claiming supplementary benefit, produced feelings of intense guilt. As a failed husband I also felt guilty. I was no longer the bread winner, and felt that I had to be punished for that.

G, Indecision, slow thinking and lack of concentration; I found my problems impossible to solve, and I was always undecided about what to do next about them. The more problems I had, the more undecided I became. My speech became slurred. I found it very difficult to concentrate on reading the newspaper and watching TV programmes. I would day dream a lot.

H, Suicide and death; I always thought about suicide. It was having to look after my wife which gave me a reason for living. Because of the pains in my body, I often thought that I would soon die. I do not think this feeling finally left me until I left the hospital at Risley Remand Centre.

The above questions and answers were designed to determine the scale of depression / anxiety that a person is likely to have been suffering from. To be considered a person with a major disorder, one should have suffered from at least four of the above for at least a week.

The reasons for my high levels of anxiety become obvious when my 'life events' are considered, together with the amount of social interaction I had, otherwise known as my vulnerability factor.

I was suffering from six major life events, most of which were of long duration. They are as follows;

1. I endured almost four years of unemployment, during most of which I was looking for work. At no time did I feel satisfied with being on the dole.

2. My stepfather suffered from a coronary thrombosis attack one month before the killings. I liked my stepfather very much.

3. I had put up with verbal, physical and mental abuse from my in-laws for five years.

4. I had put up with the antics of my next door neighbour for four years. He regarded the letters and visits from solicitors and the local authority as just 'piss and wind.

5. I looked after my wife for 4.5 years without either of us having a real holiday.

6, I had to put up with the long winded bureaucracy of at least four departments of the DHSS and also the Department for Unemployment, for almost four years.

7, Other life events considered serious were; marital separation during training courses in particular, sexual difficulties, the large mortgage loan, and the pressures during our last Christmas together.

The lack of social interactions was brought about by three vulnerability factors. They are as follows ;

1, As we had very little money, we could not afford to go anywhere. Living on the dole therefore, was like living under house arrest.

2, I could not confide in my wife, as she was unable to understand the problems which we faced. The only people I confided in to a very limited extent, were my mother, whom we saw about every four months, and my mate Bill, whom we saw about every two weeks, during the period that he had a car.

3. During the period that I was unemployed, many of my friends also lost their jobs. I could not afford to see them, and they could not afford to see me.

Some months later I read an article in the March 1984 edition of Reader's Digest, which had been lying around the ward for sometime. The article titled Body v Mind by Catherine Houck was about psychosomatic illnesses, meaning the bodies reaction to stress. It was in that article that for the first time I learned that the clenching of my jaw was a common sign of anxiety. It was good to know that I was not a freak. I was most interested in the recommendations the author put forward as a way of successfully surviving stressful situations:

1, On the occasion of a bereavement, express your feelings; I do not think my in-laws would have been very pleased to see me dancing over John's grave. The truth is that when John and Gaga died, I felt absolutely nothing, probably because my other problems were far greater in magnitude.

2. When confronting a problem, do not go into a rage; Well I tried the polite approach with my in-laws on that fateful day, and it simply did not impress them one bit. There were times at Risley when I tried diplomatic means to get things done, some of which amazed me by their success. Other inmates not use to the art of tact, ended up in a stripped cell.

3. Avoid making too many changes at once; I must admit that there were times when I took on too much unnecessarily, but in the main these were short term problems. Unfortunately, western society is not geared to complying with such ideal requirements. How for instance, do you move to a new job a hundred miles away, without making too many changes quickly? I could just imagine going up to the governor and asking him not to impose too many changes at once.

4. Relieve stress through deep breathing, stretching & meditation; I had always hated exercise, ever since I was forced to play rugby at college on a playing field covered by sheep's droppings. I was highly sceptical about whether this would work. At Risley, the gymnasium was out of bounds to hospital inmates. The staff there, never once told me to exercise. Some inmates exercised on the wash room floor, but there was no one around to talk me into it. One hour exercise periods in the court yard, had little if any therapeutic effect.

5. Make plenty of friends; My problems at Gwalchmai seemed to extinguish any desire to make friends, to the point where I felt that I was on the verge of death. Under such circumstances it is difficult to make friends, more so if one lives in a city where people tend to be more distrusting. In Risley I encountered the other extreme of having too many people around me, and not enough privacy as a result. Making real friends there was difficult, since few were of similar intellect or standing.

6. Work; Through employment one can make friends, and achieve a more positive attitude to life, but neither on Anglesey, nor in prison, was I to find challenging, satisfying employment.

In the seventh of February, 1985 edition of New Scientist, I read an article titled The Healthy Neurotic by Dr.Clive Wood. As I read it I could not help realise the similarity between many of the indicators mentioned there, and those in my own life. Neuroticism, be it anxiety neurosis or neurotic depression, is considered to be based on emotional instability factors, such as guilt, low self esteem, shyness, mood swings, frustration, helplessness, irritability, tenseness, and emotional sensitivity, which can produce depression, anxiety or both. I was interested to learn that neuroticism could last for ten years in some cases and that it was particularly noticeable in the caring professions. I well remember the feelings of despair I felt when dealing with Karen. On many occasions I simply flaked out in an easy chair feeling totally run down, both physically and mentally, saying nothing, but thinking that this state of affairs could not go on.

I was also interested in the article's inference that cancer patients tended to be people who were loath to express anger to adults (type N), whilst those that expressed anger a lot (type A) usually suffered a coronary. Since I wanted to die from neither cancer nor heart disease, I searched for the middle road. Words like self assertiveness appeared. Well I thought, I had tried that, and look where it had landed me. Near the end of the article it suggested that neuroticism stemmed 'from the over activity of the autonomic nervous system which controls many of the involuntary reactions of the body. Was that a reference to my fits? The answers to my questions were to be long in coming. As things turned out, this article was of little use to me, as by then I had already had my trial.

Just why I carried on for so long at Gwalchmai, enduring the unendurable, whilst many men would have thrown in the towel many years before, stems from my stubborn refusal to admit defeat. I was not a hard fighting man, at least not physically. I only grabbed the dagger on that fateful day because it seemed to be the less violent thing to do. It never occurred to me that I might have to use it. I certainly could not bring myself to hit them with my fists. During my life I had been beaten up twice in unprovoked attacks by intoxicated individuals. On neither occasion did I fight back, as it simply was not in my nature. Now it is. As the years went by after the killings, I felt that my sane self was struggling to regain control. There seemed to be no lasting cure, and the nagging thought that my mind had been permanently warped kept reoccurring time and again. When my in-laws refused to be deterred, it was a devastating blow to me. I now realise that when deterrence fails to deter a fanatical enemy, it is only a matter of time before the ultimate weapon is used. I had been educated wrongly. I am certain that through Karen my in-laws knew the seriousness of my mental state, and like vultures, were prepared to wait. They never asked me about my health, which seems strange unless they intended to capitalize on it.

The incident resulting in the deaths of my in-laws, was I am certain, a systematically planned form of provocation, designed to have me put away. In these circumstances it can only be called entrapment, since I was presented with no safe alternative. After every move I made, they put me in check. It simply could not go on like that.

The killing of two unarmed middle aged people, by repeatedly stabbing them, one of whom had an arm in a sling, I find repugnant. There is no way that I could have committed these killings unless my mind was highly disturbed at the time. Just as when a cat fights back when it is cornered by a dog, so my subconscious exercised its inalienable right to defend my sanity, and possibly also my wife's freedom, since having devoted five years to looking after her, the bonds were very strong. She was more than my wife, she was my life.

Naturally I wish that the incident had never happened. Many times I have since wished that either I or my in-laws, had never been born. I do not believe that I was insane at the time that I killed my father-in-law. It was I believe, a combination of provocation and impaired thinking, otherwise known as diminished responsibility. In the circumstances surrounding the death of my mother-in-law, insanity appears to apply, and this I find most worrying, for I believe that at that moment something possibly irreversible occurred within my mind. For insanity to apply, three factors had to be present. These are;

1. That the killer was unaware of any conscious decision to kill.

2. That the killer had no feeling of guilt or retribution at the time of the offence.

3. That the killer was unaware of what he was doing.

All of the above factors were fulfilled as I was killing my mother-in-law. I do not believe that failing to remember this act was caused by intense feelings of guilt, since I felt none afterwards. I do not believe however that I was insane, since apart from those few seconds, I was always aware of what was going on around me, except during my fits. I also firmly believe that an insane act should be an irrational one. To kill either of my in-laws at that moment, was not in my opinion, irrational.

I have slowly come around to the conclusion that what I did was an act of self defence, protecting my own sanity through the use of orders originating from my own nucleic acids, the building blocks of the brain, the carriers of hereditary intelligence that control body function, immune system and self preservation. Acts of self preservation, such as the fear of heights, and the blinking of ones eye when someone's hand comes too close, are automatic, requiring no conscious decision making. This is however an hypothesis, since I am referring to matters currently on the cutting edge of medical science. On the other hand, it maybe that my incessant daydreaming, at times became so intense, that it outstripped the capabilities of the involuntary control functions of my brain. Who knows? The trouble is, no one apparently.

I am a seriously minded person, deeply disturbed by the direction the so called civilised society of the 1980's was heading. As productivity through increased automation climbed, so did the unemployment figures. As the world's trading systems fought to protect their own interests, the third world economies were pushed out into the cold, their overseas borrowings turning into crippling debts, stunting their capability to acquire high tech products and services from the developed world, exacerbating unemployment here. As the pace of an economy slows down, meanders and ultimately dries up, so society disintegrates, like the cracks in a dried up river bed. The number of serious crime convictions in the UK increased at the rate of eight per cent per annum, whilst half of adult male prisoners returned to prison within two years of their release, many of them because they were sick of the problematical society into which they were released. In the USA, according to figures released by the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five Americans suffer from some form of mental illness, whilst one in a hundred suffer from schizophrenia. I would not be surprised to learn that similar figures exist for British citizens.

Imprisonment in a long term British prison is less harsh. One can read almost anything, including pornography, watch television, video tapes, and films. Your laundry is done for you. You get three square meals per day without the problem of cooking it for yourself, let alone finding the money and buying it from a supermarket. In prison there is no one to look after, not even yourself in the main. The use of the gymnasium and sports fields is free. Basic education and training courses are available, along with the opportunity to pursue model making and chess, etc. Employment is freely provided, with no need to post numerous resumes and attend dispiriting interviews. In a society full of distrust, prison is a welcome relief, an excellent place for making lots of friends, provided you keep your belongings locked up and out of sight. You are never alone and the screws always make you feel wanted. If it was quieter, cleaner, better mannered and more constructive, then there is no doubt in my mind that I would go back there any day. To inmates who have known nothing better, prison is the equivalent of what a five star hotel is to me. Is it not surprising therefore, that imprisonment fails to deter.

To the dregs of society, and to many that are not, prison is not a terrible place that should be avoided like the plague. To many prison inmates, imprisonment is a fact of life, to the extent that they loose all interest in putting up a determined defence at their trial. Many regard imprisonment as an occupational hazard, which is accepted in the same way as going into a normal hospital. There is no doubt in my mind, that anyone who is long term unemployed, or a refugee from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somali, etc., would be better off in a long term prison. My only regret is that I was not able to experience such conditions at first hand. I was to become entrenched in the worst part of the British prison system. Had I known what fate had in store for me, then there is no doubt that I would have gone on hunger strike, or an IRA style dirty protest.

Without a doubt I was to become the exception within the prison system. From my exceptional vantage point, I was to see at first hand over a long period of time, how the Home Office treated prisoners on remand. I was to meet many infamous people during this stage of my sentence, and discuss their cases at length with them. During the entire period I was inside, I kept a diary, which was a continuation of the statement relating to my crime, which I wrote out for my solicitor. It filled six exercise books, and through a process of chance and perhaps fate, I was able to get it out of prison. It does not make pleasant reading.

The competence and caring nature of a government, can be ascertained by the state of that government's prison system, for only there will you find a microcosm of society, designed by and maintained by government. It reflects how a government really feels towards those that need its help, especially the unemployed, the aged, and the sick. This text is a glowing epitaph of the bloody minded, uncaring nature of successive British Governments.

God help us!

I arrived at Risley Remand Centre on Saturday, April 28th, 1984, after a long drive in a police car. As we approached it from the motorway, I felt nothing but curiosity. It had a high perimeter wall with a large diameter pipe structure on top, to render grappling hooks useless. We entered through the double gates, after the police credentials were checked. The car was then driven past the visiting hall and chapel, to prisoner's reception, where the vehicle was parked in a large square. With the reception buildings on my left and the main gate behind me, the cream coloured three story concrete building in front of me, was the hospital, where I would be incarcerated.

Behind the hospital were the prison wings for the adult male prisoners. The young person's wing (YP's), for males under eighteen years, was to the far right, adjacent to the hospital. To my immediate right, across the square, were the single storey administration buildings, whilst the tall building adjacent to them was the gymnasium, behind which in the far distance was the women's wing. Behind the chapel was the staff canteen, and behind the prisoners' reception was the prisoners' kitchens and stores, whilst behind the main prison wings was the new boiler house, still incomplete. Most of the buildings were of fairly modern construction, the place only having existed as a remand centre for not more than twenty years. Around the square were lawns and flower beds, which had the effect of lulling the visitor or new inmate into thinking that it was not such a bad place after all. It reminded me of a Nazi extermination camp.

I was taken into the prisoner's reception area, handcuffed to a police officer. I was signed over to the prison staff, after which I went through the standard procedure for new arrivals. I gave them my full name and address, and the fact that I had been unemployed. I was given my identity number, H19992, which I was to retain throughout my sentence. I was told to remove all of my clothes in front of prison officers, which I did. I was given a towel and told to get a bath. The only gripe I had with the police, was that they would not let me have a shower at the police station, even though they agreed to it in my presence. Maybe they thought it presented too much of a security risk. Anyway, it was not long before the dried blood in my hair and the gardening dust on my body, had well and truly been washed away.

After my bath I collected my prison clothes, size eight shoes, size thirty-two trousers and size fifteen shirt. The well worn trousers were too long, whilst the flies kept coming undone. Buttons on the shirt were also missing. In addition to the brown denim trousers, and blue and white stripped shirt, I was given a grey pullover, sleeveless vest, white briefs with the letters RIS stamped on them, a pair of grey nylon socks, and a black plastic comb. They were standard prison clothes. I would wear them for one week, after which I would collect a fresh set from the linen stores. The soiled clothes and sheets would go to the laundry, located at another prison. These clothes would then be returned to the stores for another inmate to wear next time. It was a far from ideal situation since many inmates had poor hygiene standards. Female inmates wore their own civilian clothes, whilst male inmates on the wings could wear there's, but where I was going, prison rags were compulsory. As with most other male inmates, I had instantly lost my identity. My own clothes had been put in a box for safe keeping. I was to need them for my remand appearances, trial, and hopefully, final release.

The next stage of the dehumanization process was the cage, a grubby room measuring about five metres square, containing four rows of fixed benches and a toilet in the corner. Opposite the grill door was a large window, made up of opaque glass blocks, over which was a steel grill. Inmates were kept locked up in there for hours at a stretch, until finally their names would be called. They would then be escorted by one prison officer, through numerous locked doors and along corridors, to either the adult male wings, the hospital, or through the hospital to the YP's wing. The waiting in the cage could take up to four hours, during which you were obliged to stay calm amidst upwards of fifty inmates, consisting mainly of young delinquents. I dreaded the place.

Finally, my name was called, "Allen!"

I walked over to the grill door.

"What's your number?" Asked the prison officer.

"H19992," I replied.

He checked his list. "Correct, Come with me," he said.

We walked along corridors, known as landings in prison, through two or three locked doors, then we were there, in the hospital. I was handed over to hospital officers, who were sitting in the main office on the ground floor. Whilst working, the hospital officers wore white coats, in contrast to the dark uniforms they came to work in. The only difference between these uniforms and those of the ordinary officers, here after known as the screws, was the letter H on their epaulette's.

There was an odour about the place. It was the smell of urine and excrement. I was to spend the next two nights in a ground floor cell, on my own. The cell walls were filthy, and the blankets stank. The large cell windows, two metres high along the entire length of the outer wall, afforded an excellent view of the lawns and flower beds bordering the square. The cell was a three metre cube, with cream walls and a wide light blue steel door, which had a barred hatch. The cell contained a tubular steel bed, having steel mesh instead of springs. On the bed was a foam mattress and two blankets. The pillow was missing. There was also a tubular chair and a high wooden locker with Formica top, at which I stood to eat my meals. In the corner of the lino floor, was a plastic chamber pot with lid. The walls throughout the hospital were reinforced concrete. All the windows in the hospital were the same. They were polycarbonate or acrylic, supposedly unbreakable, set in steel window frames. The steel bars on the windows were spaced every one hundred millimetres and made of twelve millimetre square steel section. The outer doors of the building were in pairs and kept locked at all times. Each member of staff had his or her own set of keys, on a long chain secured at the waste. In the main ground floor office was kept the riot gear.

The hospital plan was shaped like a letter T. On the ground floor of the two opposing wings was located the closed wards, in one of which I was initially detained. Each closed ward consisted of ten ordinary cells and three unfurnished cells, known as stripped cells. In each stripped cell, which was three metres square, there was one mattress on the floor, and one cardboard piss pot in the corner. The floor was red, whilst the walls had a rough cream finish. There was a window high up on the outer wall, made up of opaque glass blocks. This wall was in fact an inner wall. Between the usual outer wall and the inner wall, was a radiator, which conducted its heat through a perforated steel plate set in the inner wall. This made it impossible for the occupant to damage the heating system. The steel door was the usual blue, incorporating an armoured glass observation slit. A stripped cell is stripped of all but the barest essentials.

Troublesome inmates were kept in these cells, naked. Some for a month or more. Thick rip proof grey blankets were provided, and occasionally brown nylon shorts or smock. This clothing was usually reserved for drug addicts who could behave unpredictably whilst being dried out. One of the stripped cells on each closed ward had double overlapping doors and a sunken floor, to prevent 'liquids' flowing under the door and onto the landing. Also, in each closed ward there was a bathroom containing one bath, a wash room containing four hand basins, a urinal, two flush toilets, each cubicle having a door only one metre high affording little privacy, and a sluice, down which the cleaning buckets and chamber pots were emptied. Each ordinary cell had a push button mounted on the wall linked to an alarm board in the ground floor office. The stripped cells had a buzzer and red light mounted outside the cell door. Each cell had white and orange lights, for evening and night respectively. The occupant of an ordinary cell could switch these lights on and off at will, provided the flap on his cell door was open. Occupants of stripped cells had no such option. One of their lights would always be on.

On the Sunday afternoon, within twenty-four hours of my arrival, I was interviewed by the assistant medical officer, Dr.Shrink. The doctor's offices were all on the ground floor of the third wing. I sat in an ordinary chair in front of his desk as he asked me questions about myself, and the crime. The interview lasted about an hour.

"You will find that there is nobody here who is going to beat the hell out of you, for what you have done. You maybe surprised to learn that," Dr.Shrink said.

Frankly, it never crossed my mind that anybody would. I had never considered my actions as being anything other than self defence. A view which I still have.

"There is no longer any death penalty for murder in this country," the doctor then said.

Quite frankly, I was reassured to hear that, as it had been nagging away at the back of my mind. I do not think that the death penalty could have deterred a crime like mine. Had the death penalty existed, then I think I would have dispatched a few more people to the other world,.I most certainly would not have given myself up. Reintroducing the death penalty for the killing of prison officers, police and 'sickening' crimes, would not have helped matters, as at the time of the killings, I was not in a state of mind capable of differentiating the finer points of British Law. The death penalty will never deter a killer whose mind is highly disturbed, or confused, which just about covers all killers. Some of the nicest people I was to meet, turned out to be killers.

One of the first questions Dr.Shrink asked was, "Do you know where you are?"

"Yes," I replied, "Risley Remand Centre."

"And what's the date?" Dr.Shrink asked.

I had to think a bit harder for that one, as when you have been on the dole for a long time, all the days seem the same. You have no need for dates, only the knowledge of when your next signing on date is.

"Sunday, April 29th, 1984," I replied correctly.

The question was not as difficult as I first thought, as upon my arrival at Risley I had been given a letter sheet, with the address of the remand centre stamped on it, and my arrival date written on it. I was not sure whether Dr.Shrink was trying to ascertain if I was thick, a liar, or both. The thought did occur to me that the doctor might be stupid, but I dismissed the idea. All the answer seemed to prove was that I could read. I was never given a proper intelligence test, probably because the doctors were soon in receipt of a police report on me, which probably included my resume, which mentioned my recent TOPS courses. Many inmates were however given such tests. In one of these tests the doctor would give the inmate an orange snooker ball.

"That's an orange, I want you to peel it for me," the shrink would then say.

The standard reply to this would be, "Well I'll peel it, if you eat it."

We always made sure that new arrivals knew that one. During my initial interview, I found the doctors attitude slightly hostile at times, but I later learned that a doctor trained in psychiatry will change his mood, in order to achieve a particular response from the inmate.

Like the police questioning, the questions from Dr.Shrink, and about a week later by Dr.Shrunk, I found too restrictive, being based on already known facts. They never came straight out and asked me whether I thought I had any form of mental illness, or had displayed any weird symptoms. Considering the behaviour of some inmates I was to meet, mental and social problems ranked highly in their reasons for being behind bars. I was to come across many inmates who could not converse intelligently, neither could some of them speak clear colloquial English. What hope had they of getting through to the doctors, I thought. It must be bloody impossible to make a proper psychiatric examination at times.

Half way through the interview Dr.Shrink asked me about my garden. I described to him the layout, and listed the plants in it, including the moisture loving plants around the fish pond.

"What sort of fish have you got in it?" Dr.Shrink asked.

"Oh, gold fish, shubunkins, golden orfe and some koi-karp," I replied.

As soon as I mentioned koi-karp, he sounded enthusiastic. Evidently Dr.Shrink's hobby consisted of breading koi-karp. He had a large water tank which filled the best part of his garage. In this controlled environment he bred his koi-karp, taking them to shows around the country. His fish evidently cost hundreds of pounds. He had obviously put a lot of money and effort into his hobby, and certainly knew his stuff.

I could never have afforded such a pastime, unfortunately. I came away from the interview thinking that he was not such a bad chap after all. Unfortunately, we never got down to discussing the really important facts about my case. I went back to my cell thinking that my quiet nature had got the better of me. Must try harder next time, I thought, or you are going to be put away for a long time.

The psychiatric examinations I went through at Risley Remand Centre were, I found, a bit of a let down. I had visions of lying on a couch in a dark room, listening to some soft Harley Street patter, sounding much like Herbert Lorn, the actor in the television series 'The Naked Jungle.' In reality, it was nothing like that. I was later to learn that psychiatry had been replaced by drug therapy, which was all right provided the doctors had sussed out what was wrong with you, and knew exactly what drug to give you. Interviews always took place with me seated at a chair in front of a desk, much like applying for a job. Since I was hopeless at job interviews, I knew that it would be very difficult for me to put myself across to the doctors, with the added stress of knowing that the stakes were even higher. It later surprised me to learn that many inmates gave up at this stage. They had gone through so much trauma that they look upon imprisonment as a long rest.

One of the questions that psychiatrists like to ask is, "Do you hear voices?"

Not being offered an example of what they meant, made it difficult to answer in my case. I have never heard voices. I have never had a split personality, and have never received messages from God. I had noticed that in the year prior to the killings, I did talk a great deal to myself, particularly in the bathroom. I have long conversations with myself in my mind, I think I can safely say that I think too much, but speak to others too little. If I was not thinking of my own problems, then I was thinking of the problems of mankind. Cut off from friends, and unable to have an intelligent serious conversation with my wife, I had resorted to the last resort, talking to myself. Afraid that this really might be the first sign of madness, I simply told the psychiatrists that I definitely did not hear voices.

Another question the doctors asked was, "Have you had an obsession?"

"No," I replied.

The next morning, I decided to clean the entire cell after slop out. I was doing an excellent job, cleaning the walls and floor, when the staff came to see me during their morning visit. A senior officer looked at me cleaning the walls.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"All right," I replied.

The senior officer then turned to the hospital officers present.

"He can go upstairs today," the senior officer stated.

The other officers nodded in agreement. Later that day, I carried my sheets, pillowcase, towel, etc., up to A ward on the second floor. Upon my arrival I presented my identity card to the hospital officer. The only thing marked on my card was my surname and number. This information was marked up on the board in the ward office, against my bed number. I was allocated bed number three, five metres from the ward office and adjacent to the dining area, above which on a shelf, stood the colour television set. There were about fifteen inmates on the ward, and the atmosphere was, apart from the occasional incident, friendly.

Little did I realise how worse off I would eventually be by going upstairs.