num_pages: 256
description: The New York Times Book ReviewCritically acclaimed author and psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman offers literary true crime writing at its best taking us into the life of a murderer after his convictionwhen 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 hed shot and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring Maryland. He said hed 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. Hes 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 Cuckoos Nest Couple Found Slain is an insiders account of life in the underworld of forensic psych wards in America and the forgotten lives of those held there often indefinitely.
language: English
title: Couple Found Slain: After a Family Murder
publisher: Henry Holt and Co.