Conclusion

JJ Muggivan

When Tony and I first embarked on the task of telling Brendan O’Donnell’s story, we assumed that we already knew the story and that all we had to do was write it. Little did we know then how much more we were going to discover. Years later, we are continuing to make discoveries. We are sure our account is not the last word on how and why he came to behave the way he did, but we hope that we have added substantially to what is already known about what motivated him. As I look back on our account of his life, I have found myself asking questions only touched on so far. There is one question that has always been in the back of my mind: how did Brendan feel as he heard the story of his life recounted during his trial? In other words, what kind of sense did he make of what he heard about himself?

He listened day after day to details of his life. He heard accounts of how he had reported worms coming out of his ears when he was a young child, of seeing animals in his food, and of how he feared being harmed or poisoned by germs. He heard about how he could not sleep alone because of monsters in his room and how he was afraid to go to school. He heard about his early problems with aggression, wetting his bed at night and wetting his pants during the day, and his strange habit of laughing when in distress or pain. He heard about his strange tendency to become rigid and turn pale when under stress.

He listened to accounts of his mother’s depression, her need for large amounts of medication, her unhappy marriage, and her trips to doctors and hospitals. He heard of how she was always in distress, depressed, or wanting to die. He heard about his mother’s attempts at suicide, her death, and her burial. He heard of how he was restrained when he tried to jump into her grave to stop the burial, thinking she was being buried alive.

He could see the looks and glances directed at him in the courtroom. He could hear the gasps of horror as testimony of his violent actions was presented. As the story of his life unfolded in front of him, he recognised most of what he heard. The story was familiar to him: it was his life.

He heard the gardai describe his response to the news of the discovery of the first body, how he screamed that he must be worse than an animal, and that his mother could never forgive him now. He listened as they described his remorse and guilt.

He was unable to make sense of what his life was about and it is unlikely that what he heard helped him. He had given up on understanding why he was the way he was and he no longer expected anyone to help him. The best he could hope for from the proceedings was assignment to the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, as opposed to Arbor Hill Prison.

Throughout the proceedings, Brendan learned very little about what disorder or disorders he suffered from. However, he learned criteria for a successful insanity plea, or at least enough to

help him make an attempt to manipulate the jury into sending him to a hospital rather than a prison.

Ironically, his attempt to manipulate the jury is revealing about both his symptoms and how he learned to use them. I am concentrating on two particular symptoms to demonstrate how Brendan was capable of rationally using serious health symptoms to achieve a purpose. The two symptoms I discuss here are his fear of being poisoned and his unusual laughter at times when he should have been manifesting distress or pain. These two symptoms were evident early in his life and persisted until they were suppressed by the powerful anti-psychotic medicine he was administered in the months before his trial and death.

Not long after he was imprisoned, Brendan stopped eating. He claimed he was on hunger strike and gave political reasons for not eating, such as claiming he was a member of the IRA. He lost an alarming amount of weight and, reportedly, was at risk of dying from starvation. I believe his ‘hunger strike’ was caused by a new upsurge of his life-long paranoia about being poisoned by something in his food. However, he was able to use rationally what resulted from paranoia as a protest against his imprisonment and as a ploy to be hospitalised. He was prescribed large amounts of anti-psychotic medicine to help him with his appetite and force him off his hunger strike. Meanwhile, his paranoid belief about being poisoned continued to go undetected. Most likely, the antipsychotic medicine helped him with his appetite because it relieved his paranoia. The medication suppressed his paranoid fear of food so effectively that he became obese in the following months. In fact, the medication even suppressed his fear of cigarettes. He had never smoked before in his life, but in the months of imprisonment prior to his trial, he became a chain smoker. Brendan’s strategy had worked. Because of his ‘hunger strike’ he had been transferred from prison to hospital.

The second example of Brendan using a symptom strategically to achieve a rational purpose was his use of his unusual laughter. When he was called to testify, he wanted to impress the jury that he met the insanity standard. He had become familiar with this standard from talking to experts and, in particular, from listening to Dr Smith’s testimony. Dr Smith catalogued the symptoms required for an insanity verdict and testified that Brendan did not have those symptoms.

Having heard the criteria for an insanity plea, Brendan used his life-long symptoms of unusual laughter and hallucinations to embellish his account of how and why he killed his victims.

He was exploiting what the jury had heard about his laughter by giving an account of how he ‘enjoyed’ doing the ‘devil’s work’. He described how he laughed at what he was doing when he was killing his victims, how he heard the devil issue commands and how he followed these commands because he enjoyed doing what the devil ordered. In this way, Brendan was attempting to meet the criminal insanity standard laid out by Dr Smith, namely, the need to hear hallucinatory commands to perform the wrongful actions. It seems that this was a spontaneous embellishment produced by Brendan as he sat in court. He may even have surprised his own experts, as well as his barrister. He certainly surprised everyone when he described what the devil looked like in his hallucinations.

These two examples of Brendan’s mental-health symptoms, and how he used them to manipulate, demonstrate what can be deceptive features of paranoid delusional disorder. On the one hand, an individual can have a very serious and dangerous mental-health disorder, and on the other, he can appear rational and symptom-free.

Brendan always knew that he was different. He knew that there was something seriously wrong with him. He was always baffled by the way his brain functioned. He didn’t know why he lived with such fear, anxiety and paranoia. He didn’t know why he heard voices when there was no one there. He didn’t know why he had a strange laugh. He didn’t know why he feared food or how this fear started. In short, he didn’t know why his brain played tricks on him.

Few understood that he was living in the prison of his injured brain. Those who were close to him knew there was something seriously wrong but didn’t have the resources to help him.

Now, we may be able to connect his symptoms to what produced them. This was something Brendan could never do. When he presented his symptoms to experts, they were not understood as symptoms of a serious — and dangerous — mental-health disorder. The best he could do with his symptoms was exploit them to escape prison in order to go to a hospital for the criminally insane. When he did this, he heard himself described as a cunning person, attempting to avoid the consequences of his wrongdoing. He was described as ‘bad, not mad’. In reality, his ability to exploit his

symptoms was a result of his life-long familiarity with his own strangeness.

He was the ultimate fugitive, running from his fears and demons. What he was running from was within him. He was unable to give his demons form or identity; thus he was unable to fight them. He produced fantasy enemies as a way of externalising his inner world of fear and terror. He created dangerous situations and practised strategies for self-preservation and survival. This caused him to spend his life in readiness for danger and attack. His life was dedicated to preparing for fight or flight — the ultimate survival instincts. In times of intense fear and paranoia, he was capable of destroying anyone or anything he imagined might stand in the way of his survival.

When Tony and I talked at the beginning of the telling of this story, we were determined not to produce an account of a ‘mystery’. We agreed that producing an account of a ‘mystery’ would not be worth the effort required. We hope that if others re-examine this story for more insight and more knowledge, they will also have this aspiration. We need to continue our efforts to understand young people like Brendan so that we can give the necessary help in time. Shrouding a story like this in mystery and intrigue might be entertaining but, in the final analysis, gaining knowledge and insight is what counts.

We tried to keep the focus on Brendan O’Donnell. We tried not to focus on the victims or their families. We did not wish to cause any additional pain. We know that any reminder of what was suffered by the victims will cause their families pain. We hope that we have been sensitive. We believe that what we have uncovered about Brendan will help us to recognise young people like him

before they can inflict such pain on themselves, their families, and, above all, on their potential victims.