Free The Man in the Monster by Martha Elliott Page B

at times Michael could even have difficulty in knowing what was real and what was not.
    Based on all of his testing, Dr. Cegalis found that Michael was “immature, egocentric, manipulative, driven to a kind of sexual satisfaction that fuses aggression and sexuality together in a highly abnormal way.” He said that Michael was also paranoid and unable to control his emotional impulses and that he acted out his anger in violent ways. His overall diagnosis concurred with that of Dr. Berlin’s; Michael suffered from sexual sadism.
    In my early conversations with Michael, I got a sense of how complex a person he really was. He was compulsive and had frequent mood swings. One call would be upbeat and positive, and by the next week,his defeatist attitude would have taken over. “Why bother?” he would ask rhetorically. “There is no way I’ll get a fair trial. Nobody wants to know the truth.”
    â€œBe careful about making such big pronouncements,” I cautioned. “I’m not a nobody, and I did and do want to know the truth. You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself—at least if you want me to listen.”
    Sometimes he would call and the first thing out of his mouth would be “Got a pencil?” The next words out of his mouth would be instructions about whom I should call or what I should look up. He would give me the names and numbers or the general instructions about where I could get the information. He’d also want to know if I had read the latest installment of documents he had sent. Often they were things that had come in the mail the day before, and I would have to tell him that I couldn’t drop everything to read what he sent me. I had a job and a family.
    In this initial stage of our dialogue, it became increasingly obvious that Michael wanted to forgo another trial not only because it would be too painful for the families, but also because it would be too painful for him to listen to a litany of what he had done. I had a lingering suspicion that his offer to die was a suicidal act, the result of depression from living on death row, although Michael denied that he was suicidal. For a time, I stopped pushing him on the suicide issue. In retrospect I know that he could not have been honest with me at that point, because he did not trust me yet.

6
BROOKLYN, CONNECTICUT
    1958–1966
    Michael Ross’s hometown of Brooklyn, Connecticut, is nothing like the borough of New York. A rural community of about six thousand, located in eastern Connecticut, Brooklyn seemed poor and provincial—much the opposite of Fairfield County, where I lived, the New York suburb in the western part of the state. When I visited in 1996 and 1997 to learn more about Michael’s past, many of the farms that dotted the countryside seemed to be eroding with the landscape, victims of a changing economy. The Ross family farm was no exception. Once a thriving business, it was then dormant except for a few apartments and a trailer. Some of the coops had been torn down, and the area had the look of a makeshift junkyard. In the state it was in, I had a hard time understanding why Michael wanted to return to it after Cornell.
    In 1995, Brooklyn was essentially a crossroads where three state highways—Routes 6, 169, and 208—converge. The biggest landmark in town is the county fairground that comes alive once a year and is situated on a side road off Route 208. There’s a church, a nursing home, a town hall, firehouse, and even a jail scattered along the three routes, but no town center.
    Brooklyn’s biggest claim to fame, or infamy, was that a serial killer grew up there. Most people did not want to talk about Michael. Noneof Michael’s family and very few of the people who had known him growing up would speak with me. At that time, his arrest and trial had been too painful, and with the prospect of another trial, most refused interviews because they felt I was the