Not Criminally Responsible

In 1992, a young man walked into a police station and said he wanted to turn himself in for a crime. When the police asked if there was someone at home who they could call, he said, “That’s who I killed. I killed my parents.” Mikita Brottman’s book is Couple Found Slain. Tickets for our brand new tour, Don't Worry with Phoebe Judge, are on sale now! Learn more and see all of our tour dates at ⁠thisiscriminal.com/live⁠. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Phoebe Judge?

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• 0:44Phoebe Judge?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We talk all about attending a fashion show in Paris together, throwing dinner parties, and making her Broadway debut in other desert cities. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.

• 1:46Phoebe Judge?

  This episode contains descriptions of violence. Please use discretion.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  In 1992, a young man turned up at the police headquarters, saying that he'd just fled the scene of the crime and that he wanted to turn himself in.

• 2:03Phoebe Judge?

  This was in Port St. Joe, a small town along the Gulf Coast of Florida. The man told the police officer, his name was Brian Bechtold, and that he was 23 years old. The officer asked when the crime had taken place. Brian said he couldn't remember exactly, maybe 10 days ago, or maybe seven. The officer asked where he'd been seven days ago. Brian said he'd been at home in Maryland. And then the officer asked if there are any relatives home who would pick up the phone if they called.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  And he said, "That's who I killed. I killed my parents."

• 2:43Phoebe Judge?

  We're hearing from author Makita Brotman. She says at first, the police didn't believe Brian. He told them that he'd been, quote, "insane" for six or seven years. An officer asked why he did it. He said, "I'm not sure exactly. There were a lot of things going on at the time." Brian was able to tell the officer some details. He said he'd used a 12-gauge shotgun, and that his father had been eating breakfast, and his mother had been sitting in a recliner. But he also said, quote, "I'm not sure about what I remember and what happened. It seemed like I was possessed. It seemed like I wasn't alive.

• 3:27Phoebe Judge?

  It seemed like something on TV or something like that, like I wasn't there, like it wasn't going on."

• 3:35Speaker 02

  And because he was being so confusing in his responses, the officers didn't know what to do. They thought maybe he was on drugs, or maybe he was mistaken.

• 3:46Phoebe Judge?

  Brian also told them that his parents traveled often and had a mobile home in Deland, Florida. An officer asked if it was possible his parents were just at the mobile home and hadn't been killed. Brian said, "I'm sure it happened." But immediately after that, the officer asked, "Is there a possibility you dreamed it or thought it?" And Brian replied, "Yes, there is." They went back and forth for a while, but then Brian said, "I wish it didn't happen. I wish that something else happened. But I don't know. I don't think so. I think it happened." I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 4:40Phoebe Judge?

  Brian Bechtold was the fifth and youngest child of George and Dorothy Bechtold. Brian was much younger than the rest of his siblings. When he was born, his oldest sister was 17. The family moved around a lot, and Brian lived in three states before he was five. They eventually settled in Hillendale, Maryland. Tell me a little bit more about Brian's parents. Who were they?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Well, his father, George, had a PhD in engineering. He was kind of like a mechanical genius. He worked for the federal government on military technology, and Dorothy was a homemaker. George, the father, was really odd. He had a very bad temper. He could be terrifying to the children.

• 5:27Phoebe Judge?

  One of Brian's sisters remembered seeing George punch Dorothy in the stomach when she was pregnant with Brian. Brian's older brother, George Jr., got in trouble often. And by the time he was 15, he and his father would get into physical fights. Once, outside, in front of their house.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  And it seemed as though George's violence seemed to make Dorothy, the mother, feel like using force was acceptable. And so she, too, began to physically abuse and also humiliate the children.

• 6:04Phoebe Judge?

  Brian's sister Kathy told Makita that once their mother gave her a black eye from hitting her in the face with a belt buckle. Another time, Brian and Kathy were at their neighborhood swimming pool.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  And Brian was hit in the head by a toy that one of the other kids was playing with.

• 6:23Phoebe Judge?

  When Kathy looked over, he was covered in blood.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  And Kathy immediately gathered him up, and they called Dorothy to take them to the hospital. But Dorothy said she was busy and couldn't deal with it right now, and so it was another friend's mother who took them to the hospital.

• 6:38Phoebe Judge?

  But doctors said they needed a parent's permission to treat Brian. When the hospital tried to call Dorothy, the line was busy. Eventually, a doctor persuaded the operator to interrupt Dorothy's call to get permission to give Brian stitches. Another one of Brian's sisters, Carol, tried running away a few times, and once ended up joining a cult in New York called the Forever Family, that, according to Carol, performed exorcisms. Once, she sent Brian an audio recording of one of them. Makita says Brian was six or seven at the time and became fixated on the idea that

• 7:20Phoebe Judge?

  someone could be possessed by the devil. Makita says that most of Brian's siblings exhibited some signs of mental illness when they were children.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  For example, George Jr., the oldest child, was really turning into a replica of his father. He became violent, rude, abusive. Kathy, who Brian was very close to, started retreating inwardly and was actually in and out of psychiatric hospitals for suicidal depression, and she actually attempted suicide numerous times. And basically, all the children just tried to get away from home as soon as possible. And Brian was left at home alone. Like I said, he was significantly younger than the other siblings. And he himself was depressed and never seemed to have any friends. And then, at one point, he mentioned to his school counselor that he had thought about suicide.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  The counselor suggested he go to a psychiatric hospital, and his parents agreed. And Brian thought that they didn't really so much want to help him as just get him out of the house.

• 8:27Phoebe Judge?

  By this point, Brian was 16. At the psychiatric hospital, he was diagnosed with depression. He was kept on a maximum-security ward for children and put on lithium. He only stayed for 13 days before Dorothy changed her mind and brought him back home, against medical advice, according to Brian's records.

• 8:51Phoebe Judge?

  For a while, things seemed to get a little better. He'd joined a karate studio and made a friend there. He thought maybe he could train to be a karate teacher after he finished high school. He started dating someone. By this time, Brian's father, George, had retired, and he and Dorothy decided to buy the mobile home in Florida.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  And they planned to spend five months there every year. But Brian wasn't invited, so even though he was only 18, he was going to be spending half the year alone in his family home in Maryland. Karate had been a great help for him for a while, but he injured his knee and could no longer go to karate. He started smoking more pot, doing PCP and LSD. The girl he'd been in love with broke up with him. He had a job delivering pizza, which he lost. He got arrested when marijuana was found in his car. So it seemed as though things were really starting to fall apart for him.

• 9:57Phoebe Judge?

  Brian was put on probation, and his parents decided to send him to rehab. Makita says he became paranoid and started to believe that other patients at the facility were secret agents that had been sent to spy on him. His doctors diagnosed him with schizotypal personality disorder and mixed substance abuse disorder. Brian made a New Year's resolution in January of 1988 to quit drugs completely. For a while, he isolated himself in his bedroom at his parents' house. With his knee injury, he knew it wasn't realistic to try to become a karate teacher.

• 10:38Phoebe Judge?

  So he applied to college, and in 1990 was accepted by DeVry University in Georgia.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  He lived in a house with roommates, but pretty quickly, he descended into paranoia. Again, he was very isolated and suspicious and took to even like holding a knife behind his back when he answered the door because he was worried about people being against him. After his second trimester, his probation officer told him that he'd violated terms of his probation on the drug charge by moving out of state. Now, his father could easily have helped him work things out with the court so he could finish college, but instead, George simply stopped paying his tuition. So Brian had to return home to Maryland.

• 11:25Phoebe Judge?

  He had no choice but to move back in with his parents. Dorothy had breast cancer and wasn't doing well. She used an oxygen tank and was in a lot of pain. Brian noticed that she would drink a whole bottle of cough syrup every evening to knock herself out. Brian told Makita that a few times Dorothy asked him to help her die.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Brian just took to living in the basement. He became like inert, apathetic, lost his appetite, started having bad dreams, began staying up all night and slept only during the day. And when his parents went to Florida, he only left the house to buy groceries. He had a dog that he really loved. He walked his dog at night. But he said that he would notice like strange shadows moving under the trees, and he felt people seemed to be watching him. Certain cars would go past at certain times of the day. He felt people were in disguise. He thought that someone had set up a device in the attic, like a machine that had a microphone that picked up his thoughts.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  And he thought there was a speaker system sending him subliminal messages. His parents said they'd see him talk on the phone without dialing a number. And then, believing that all these enemies were against him, he decided he was going to fight back. He bought a gun and kept it on him at all times, even to the point that he kept it with him in the shower.

• 12:56Phoebe Judge?

  In February of 1992, Brian stopped sleeping. Makita says at first it was on purpose, to stay alert in case he was attacked. But then, when he became exhausted, he still couldn't fall asleep. He became frustrated and started punching the walls in his room. He told Makita he thought this went on for about a week. And then, early one morning, he finally started drifting to sleep.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  And suddenly, he was jolted awake by this violent noise, which was his father yelling in the kitchen downstairs. And Brian said he was almost mesmerized and almost in a trance. All he recalls is he got the gun, went downstairs, and shot them both. And he later said it felt like his feet weren't touching the ground. He was just in this kind of strange trance-like state.

• 13:52Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back.

• 14:05Phoebe Judge?

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• 15:09Phoebe Judge?

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• 16:19Phoebe Judge?

  Brian Becktoold told the police that after he shot his parents, he got in his father's car and started driving. Author Makita Brotman.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  All the way, he was hallucinating. He was paranoid. He didn't sleep. He barely ate. He slept in his car. He thought the police were following him. At one point, he hallucinated that there were dead animals all over the highway. So he was in incredibly psychotic state.

• 16:47Phoebe Judge?

  And why did he eventually decide to go to the police?

• 16:50Speaker 02

  When he arrived at Port St. Joe in Florida, he was staying at a campsite. And at the campsite, in the office, he found a King James Bible. He said that he read the Bible all day and all night for three days, doing nothing but walking his dog and reading the Bible. And he said that as he read, he felt like his sanity was starting to return. And he said he realized that he'd been under the influence of the devil, and now God was saving him, and Jesus wanted him to do the right thing, which was going to turn himself in.

• 17:25Phoebe Judge?

  After interviewing Brian, the police in Port St. Joe contacted the police in Maryland. And officers were sent to George and Dorothy's house.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  And they found a dead woman sitting on a chair in the living room, and also a dead man lying face down on the kitchen floor. They'd both been killed by a shotgun, and they seemed to have been dead for about 10 days. And the house was just completely neglected. There were newspapers, candy wrappers, cereal boxes, and then things like a walking frame, an oxygen tank, medicine pill bottles. And there was also a TV guide open to a page. And on the page, the words "Go to Hell" had been, it seems like they'd been smeared, apparently in blood.

• 18:12Phoebe Judge?

  Brian was taken into custody in Florida. He spent four days in the Port St. Joe jail and then was transferred by an extradition company back to Maryland. Brian's sister Kathy told a detective that Brian had, quote, "never been right in the head." Makita says two of Brian's siblings were furious with him, but the other two, including Kathy, felt some sympathy for Brian.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Obviously, they were extremely shocked and grief-stricken, but they also understood that Brian had been seriously ill, and they knew that if he'd been in his right mind, he'd never have been capable of an act like this. And his sisters got him a lawyer, who said immediately that he should be given a psychological evaluation.

• 19:03Phoebe Judge?

  The lawyer they hired told Makita that his first impression of Brian was that he was a very pleasant young man, but obviously insane. He remembers that when he visited Brian at the detention center, quote, "He was constantly aware of sounds and noises in the building and gave them sinister motivations: air conditioning, doors closing, and things like that." He thought they were people watching him or devices that had been set up to observe him. In July of 1992, a psychiatrist interviewed Brian.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  The psychiatrist concluded that Brian was suffering from a psychotic illness, namely schizophrenia paranoid type, at the time of his alleged offenses, and that he could not appreciate the criminality of his conduct and his ability to conform to the requirements of the law.

• 20:01Phoebe Judge?

  The crime of killing one's own parent, or "parasite", has been called, quote, "the schizophrenic crime".

• 20:09Speaker 02

  I mean, people think that "parasite" is this terribly rare crime, but it's not. There are about 300 cases of "parasite" a year, and many of these are committed by young men like Brian, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, which begins, usually the onset is in the late teens to early twenties, usually in young men. And almost all of these incidents of "parasite" occur in dysfunctional or codependent families like Brian's. And again, often after years of physical, verbal, and sometimes sexual abuse on the part of one or both of the parents. Brian is very typical of such perpetrators. They tend to be a male, in late teens or early twenties,

• 20:54Speaker 02

  from a white, middle-class family. Like Brian, they tend to be isolated, without many friends. And the typical weapon is a gun kept in the home. And in most cases, when the murder occurs, the perpetrator reports, exactly like Brian, being in a dissociative state. And afterwards, if he can remember the crime at all, it seems like unreal, or dreamlike, or vague, almost as though it happened to someone else.

• 21:23Phoebe Judge?

  So what did Brian's mental evaluation mean? What would happen next?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Well, both the defense and the state psychiatrists found him NCR, which means "not criminally responsible", so there was no trial. And he was committed to Clifton Perkins State Hospital, which is Maryland's only maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility. And he was determined to do well. He felt like he made some friends, and he liked having order and structure in his life. And he realized that, you know, he'd been so isolated that it was really important to have the company of other people. There seemed to be very minimal therapy. There was no one-on-one therapy, just group therapy. And there were some other non-clinical groups, like choir, cooking, art.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Otherwise, there was not really anything to do.

• 22:19Phoebe Judge?

  After just over a year at the hospital, Brian was moved from maximum security to medium security. He had more freedom. He could drink coffee and wear street clothes. And the rooms were more comfortable, with air conditioning and real mirrors.

• 22:37Phoebe Judge?

  After a couple of years, Brian's doctors considered moving him to minimum security. There, he'd be able to leave the hospital occasionally, as long as he was accompanied by a chaperone.

• 22:50Phoebe Judge?

  But when Brian went before the hospital's review board, they decided he wasn't ready for minimum security. Instead, they thought he needed to be on more medication. He was already on an antidepressant. Now his doctor wanted to add an antipsychotic.

• 23:09Phoebe Judge?

  Makita says Brian didn't want to be on an antipsychotic, but he hoped it would help his chances of moving to lower security in the future.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  But within weeks, he felt very stiff. His brain was kind of fogged up. The days started to merge into one another. He'd sleep, wake up, eat, go back to bed, and started to sort of regress into a similar hallucinogenic hypnotic state that he'd been in in the past, except it was a much more inert version of that state.

• 23:45Phoebe Judge?

  Makita says around this time, Brian started thinking to himself, he shouldn't have pled "not criminally responsible". If he was in prison, instead of the hospital, he thought he wouldn't be forced to take such heavy medication.

• 24:01Phoebe Judge?

  By this point, Brian had been at the hospital for more than three years. Makita says at the time, three years was the average length of time patients stayed at Perkins.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And people who'd committed similar crimes, Brian noticed, were getting out in four or five years. So he thought he'd be there around five, six years maximum, especially since he was obeying the psychiatrist.

• 24:28Phoebe Judge?

  Things got a little better when a new psychiatrist started working on his ward.

• 24:34Phoebe Judge?

  The psychiatrist swapped Brian to a lower dose of antipsychotic medication, and seemed happy with the results. Brian was moved to minimum security in the fall of 1997.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  And that doctor was so pleased with his progress that he actually said, "A year on minimum, and in my opinion, you'll be ready to go home." So he was getting, he was very optimistic about his chances of leaving soon, especially since he saw so many other people leaving. And because he was really well behaved and responsiveness to therapy, he started to be allowed to take trips outside the hospital, supervised trips. And all in all, he took 14 supervised trips outside the hospital when he was on minimum.

• 25:20Phoebe Judge?

  But then, in a therapy session, his therapist announced there was something new he wanted to try with Brian. He'd been taking lessons in hypnosis, and he wanted to try to hypnotize him. When the therapist instructed him to lie down, Brian said no. After that, there was a note in his chart that said he'd, quote, "refused therapy". And at the hospital, if a patient refused therapy, they were automatically moved to a higher-security ward. So Brian was sent back to medium.

• 25:56Phoebe Judge?

  The doctor he liked was no longer there, and it didn't take long for the new doctor to increase Brian's medication.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  This time, it's worse. He actually becomes incontinent, and he feels like they're medicating him in a stupor. He's really frustrated because there seemed to be this constant parade of patients who arrive at Perkins and get discharged, and he's just staying in the same place, or even going backwards. And he realizes that there's a strong possibility that he was going to end up as one of those old men that he saw, wearing diapers, who just slumped in front of the television for, you know, 20 years. And to him, that was, that was a fate worse than death.

• 26:39Phoebe Judge?

  What did he decide to do next? I mean, he's, he's really stuck here.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  He decides to get a weapon, take a hostage. And if he gets shot by the police, great. If he lives, he'll plead guilty and get sent to prison. Because many of the patients in Perkins who'd been in prison actually said they preferred it in prison. In prison, you're not being judged all the time. You know, if you don't want to come for breakfast, that's fine. You don't go for breakfast. It's not written in your file as, you know, some kind of psychological deficit that you're going through. So also, in prison, you have a set sentence. You know, it's 10 years or 20 years. And Brian was starting to see that his, his time at Perkins seemed to be endless. So one day, finding himself alone in the laundry room,

• 27:29Speaker 02

  he managed to break a support strut off an ironing board. And this was a piece of metal about 14 inches long. And he filed it down by rubbing it against the grout in his shower. And he made a sling for it, and he started wearing it all the time under his clothes, waiting for a chance to use it.

• 27:51Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back.

• 28:02Phoebe Judge?

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• 29:10Phoebe Judge?

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• 29:51Phoebe Judge?

  If you're ready to hear the sound of your first sale today, then head over to Shopify.com/criminal to start your free trial today. You can start your free trial at Shopify.com/criminal. That's Shopify.com/criminal. On Sunday, December 5, 1999, around 3:00 PM, Brian Becktole stood just inside the door of the ward and waited. The nurses were just finishing their shift change, and Brian knew the guards were often distracted around this time. When a nurse unlocked the door, Brian held up the metal shank he'd made.

• 30:33Phoebe Judge?

  He told the nurse to turn around and take him out of the ward. Two security guards tried to intercept Brian, but he told them to back off, or he'd kill them. The guards didn't carry weapons, and they just let him go. Brian made it to the hospital lobby and then out into the parking lot. From there, he started running. He didn't make it far before the police found him, walking along the side of a road. An officer approached him, drew his gun, and yelled for Brian to get down on the ground. Brian faced the police officer with his arms open and said, "Come on, shoot me. You're gonna have to shoot me. I'm not going back.

• 31:16Phoebe Judge?

  You'd better shoot me in the head." After some back-and-forth with the officer, Brian turned around and ran down the street, and the officers followed him. At the end of the road, Brian turned, headed past a warehouse, and towards some loading dogs. He again told the officers, "I'm not going back. What are you waiting for? Shoot me." Nearby, there was a black pickup truck with a man inside. Brian said, "I'm gonna count to three, then I'm gonna stab this guy and take his truck, so you'd better get ready to shoot me." Brian started counting and moved towards the truck, and the officer shot him.

• 31:59Phoebe Judge?

  He was shot once in the arm and twice in the stomach. He was airlifted to a hospital in Baltimore for surgery. After weeks recovering in another hospital, he was brought to police headquarters and interviewed. When they asked him if he knew why he was there, he said, "Sure. I escaped from Perkins Hospital. I took a hostage. I tried to steal a car. I threatened a citizen. I got shot by police." He was charged with several counts of assault, but instead of going to jail to await trial, he was sent back to Perkins.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  And now, things were much worse. He was considered a high-security risk. He was put in restraints. He was tied down to a bed. He was bullied and harassed. He wasn't given any individual therapy because that was considered too dangerous. He wasn't allowed to go out into the courtyard or have visitors. He was put back on antipsychotic medication.

• 32:57Phoebe Judge?

  After Brian's restraints were finally removed, he got in trouble when a guard saw him exercising. In a psych evaluation, after Brian's escape attempt, the doctor conducting it said the results, quote, "presented little evidence for the existence of psychotic processes." But Makita says the doctor saw the test results as proof that Brian was hiding his psychosis, and therefore still had paranoid schizophrenia. In August of 2002, Brian's trial for his escape attempt took place. Perkins staff testified that Brian had never shown any sign of violence in his seven years

• 33:41Phoebe Judge?

  there before his escape, but the hospital's clinical director said this was proof he was dangerous. Quote, "This man obviously has a desperation going on that he kept from us." Brian was found guilty of second-degree assault and a weapons violation. The judge declined to send him to prison, saying doing so would be, quote, "rewarding Brian." He was sent back to Perkins and sentenced to 13 years probation. Makita says by this point, Brian had lost all hope of ever being released. Several years passed, and in 2005, he started having trouble with his health.

• 34:26Phoebe Judge?

  He was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with an eye condition. He also got a routine chest X-ray, and it came back with a shadow on his lung.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  And the doctors suspected that Brian might have lung cancer. And of course, they wanted to treat it, but Brian thought this was a great opportunity for him to get out of the hospital through death. He wanted to die. And so he refused treatment, and the hospital opposed this very vehemently. His psychiatrist said that he wasn't mentally competent enough to make his own decision, especially in a matter like this of such, you know, serious importance. And at this time, the only member of his family that he was in contact with was his sister Kathy, and she lived in Ohio, so he rarely saw her.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  He had no family or friends who were willing to act as a, you know, as a surrogate decision-maker, so... But he felt that, just like, this was a physical illness, and like anyone else who has a physical illness, he had the right to refuse treatment.

• 35:33Phoebe Judge?

  Brian decided to try to argue his case in front of a jury. He chose to defend himself and told the jury that, "If a doctor says he wants to perform a biopsy, you have every right to say no thank you and go on your way. Individuals have autonomy, and things can't be done to them without their consent." Hospital staff testified and gave examples of behavior that they said proved Brian was mentally ill and therefore unfit to make decisions about his health. For example, one psychiatrist said Brian had once stuffed his ears with toilet paper for an unknown reason.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  But Brian said, you know, he was in bed. The nurses were talking in the hall. He couldn't get to sleep. He got extremely frustrated. He'd ask them again and again. He put toilet paper in his ears. I mean, that seems to be kind of a rational decision for me.

• 36:30Phoebe Judge?

  In the end, the judge announced a mistrial on a technicality, and Brian was sent back to Perkins. The court granted Perkins temporary authority to make medical decisions on his behalf. In the months after, Brian had a chest X-ray that came back with an even darker mark on his lung, a mass 13 centimeters wide. He had a biopsy, but the doctors couldn't figure out if it was definitely cancer. And then one day, the mass vanished. Doctors decided it was something called spontaneous regression.

• 37:12Phoebe Judge?

  Makita met Brian when she started volunteering at Perkins. She's also a certified psychoanalyst. In 2013, she began leading a reading group, where patients read and discuss short stories. Brian took part.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  And he always seemed to me perfectly articulate, sensible, intelligent. I saw no sign of mental illness.

• 37:36Phoebe Judge?

  She says she was shocked when she learned that Brian had been at Perkins more than 20 years. Less than a year after Makita met Brian, she heard that he had filed a lawsuit against the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He again chose to represent himself, and his trial began in February of 2014. The judge told the jury they would be considering whether Brian currently had a mental disorder, and if so, if he would be a danger to himself or others if he were released. The hospital's chief psychiatrist testified that Brian had a very subtle kind of mental

• 38:16Phoebe Judge?

  illness that could only be identified by experienced psychiatrists that had known him and studied him for a long time. But she also said that she hadn't had much contact with Brian and had only ever spoken at length with him once, just before the trial. One witness, a social worker whose specialty was the educational psychology of deaf children, said she had only reviewed his most recent medical records. The jury deliberated for almost two days, but couldn't reach a decision.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And in the end, the judge deferred to the doctors, and this is what often happens in cases like this, that a judge will feel that he's not an expert in these cases and felt that, you know, any legal intervention like releasing him would be an impediment to his care.

• 39:10Phoebe Judge?

  Brian had lost his case. The judge told Brian, "You have been perhaps the most consummate gentleman in this courtroom that I've ever seen." Brian told the judge that he was okay with the result. Quote, "I think you've been an excellent judge. It's been a fair trial, and I really thank you for it." I mean, he didn't, he didn't show any anger, at all, it seemed.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  No, I mean, he, he was so used to dealing with authority figures who were hostile towards him, or who didn't take him seriously, or saw him as a person who was mentally ill, unbalanced, unstable, had to be treated with kid gloves. And he was really impressed by this judge who, he felt, treated him as, just as he would treat anyone else. And Brian felt that he'd been treated fairly by an authority figure for, you know, for the first time.

• 40:08Phoebe Judge?

  Brian was sent back to Perkins. Makita says he was considered an escape risk, and by the spring of 2016, hadn't been allowed to go outside for nearly a year. He filed a complaint with the hospital's Patients' Grievance Committee, but was told, quote, "Fresh air is not a human right."

• 40:31Phoebe Judge?

  Makita says, as far as she can tell, Brian is still at Perkins. Brian's sister, Kathy, has said she doesn't understand why Brian is still being held in Perkins and is offered to take care of Brian if he were to be released.

• 40:48Phoebe Judge?

  A forensic psychiatrist, not affiliated with the hospital, interviewed him four times and found him "free of psychotic thinking." He said, quote, "It is my profession, with reasonable medical certainty, that Mr. Bechtold would not be a danger to himself or others if released into the community.

• 41:09Phoebe Judge?

  We've reached out to the Maryland Department of Health and haven't heard back."

• 41:15Phoebe Judge?

  It just seems to me, when you, you know, when you see all of the steps, that you see all the other people that have been let out of the hospital, you know, hard to try to figure out why he's still in.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  I think one of the main reasons why he's still in is that he doesn't have any support on the outside. His sister's been doing what she can, but, you know, she lives in Ohio. She has problems of her own. And of course, after he's, you know, after he'd behaved in this, in this violent manner, taking people hostage and assaulting people, and of course, his, his reputation at the hospital gets worse and worse and worse. And he's been at the hospital longer than most of the doctors and most of the staff. And so they don't remember him when he was young and doing all he could to get along with the psychiatrist and following the hospital rules. They just know him now from his reputation as this, like, the only person to have escaped from the hospital in so many years

• 42:12Speaker 02

  and this violent murderer who conceals weapons in his cell.

• 42:18Phoebe Judge?

  I think there's this kind of, this, this idea that being found, you know, criminally insane or not liable because, you know, is, is the easier way out. You know, that's what you want. You want, this is, you know, let's, let's, maybe we can get, get by on this. This, this case shows a different side of that.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Right. And in some cases, like Brian's case and the case of many others who don't have support in the community and who don't get consistent treatment in the hospital, it can actually be worse than prison because, mostly because of this terrible sense of limbo that there's no end to it. It's not like you're going to do two years, 10 years or 20 years. Or even, you know, if you have life without parole, you know, there's, there's no hope. You're going to get used to your incarcerated life. But this endless sense of hope, of possibility, is just absolutely devastating and mind-limming. But the other thing is being judged all the time. If he stays in his room to read, is that a sign of mental illness?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  If he keeps quiet in group therapy, is that a sign of mental illness? I mean, is, he's constantly being judged. And there's a sense in that that you're not seen as an individual who makes their own choices, but you're seen as, you know, a mentally ill person who is exhibiting signs of mental illness. And that's really dehumanizing, I think. You're not being given your own agency. You're not being treated with dignity.

• 43:58Phoebe Judge?

  Makita Bratman's book is Couple Found Slain: After a Family Murder. We'll have a link in our show notes.

• 44:07Phoebe Judge?

  Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajikko, Lilly Clark, and Lena Silson. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julianne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me

• 44:51Phoebe Judge?

  and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.