‘The friendship I can’t easily explain’ – by Editor, Liz McCann

‘The friendship I can’t easily explain’

I am friends with a man most people would never want to acknowledge exists. On hearing of his crimes most would turn away from any sort of contact with such a person. I didn’t. Choosing to be his friend is something I question more than I defend. But I stay. And we will remain friends until either of us dies, or he is executed. He is on Death Row.

Serial killers are the stuff of nightmares. I was a child in the 70’s and can recall my mother sat with a friend drinking tea in the kitchen of our childhood home discussing the latest victim of the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ – the perpetrator turned out to be a man named Peter Sutcliffe. This man spent five years terrifying women mostly in west Yorkshire and Manchester. Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. He was described by a criminal psychologist, David Holmes, as being “an extremely callous, sexually sadistic killer.” It was a sunny day and I have a vivid memory of thinking that I wanted to get away from this conversation and I ran outside to play on a swing my dad had made hanging in a huge oak tree at the end of our garden.

Wind the calendar forward about fifty years and today I find myself friends with a similar type of man to Peter Sutcliffe. I started writing to X about three years ago. He was a lonely and isolated character and presented as nervous and fearful. Our written correspondence at the start reads very formally and polite. No probing questions of each other, just an outline of family life from myself whilst X detailed his daily routines and life on Death Row. X opened up as the months progressed telling me about his ex-wife, his children and indeed his grandchildren. We are the same age, late 50’s, yet he is a grandfather. His background and childhood made being a parent from an early age predictable. By now I had read a lot about his crimes and got informed as to his up to date legal status. He is out of appeals, the reality is he will die in prison through illness, old age or execution. I suspect the former.

X was convicted many years ago of four rape/murders. His crimes were opportunistic. Goodness only knows what these women went through prior to taking their last breath, it is horrific that anybody should suffer this ending and my heart goes out to the families left behind. How do you rejoin a happy day to day life when your mother/sister/daughter has their life ended in such a violent and brutal fashion? There is of course a backstory to this. I delved into X’s backstory reading what is online and more importantly pieces of information that his lawyers were able to share. I offer this, not in any way as an excuse, not to justify, not to seek sympathy – but to offer some sort of understanding as to how this all happened. It’s important as the more we understand about what leads to this, the more we might be able to prevent.

X was born into trailer life in poverty. His mother was a drinker and enjoyed hanging out in bars until the early hours. X was frequently covered by his coat and left sleeping as a very young child behind the bar. Countless times his mother was arrested for driving her truck home drunk in the early hours with X asleep on the backseat. His father was a savage, regularly beating his wife and his kids. The mother had an obsession with X’s younger brother, shielding him as best she could. X she left to fend for himself. As family life deteriorated further the father left the family trailer only to return one night and set fire to it with mum and the two boys inside. Luckily they survived, however the trauma lines now ran deep. X was kicked out of school for unruly behaviour and then spent some time in a juvenile detention centre. He carried out a kidnapping on an elderly female neighbour and tied her up in her basement. Thankfully another neighbour heard a commotion and managed to set her free. It is hard to understand why at this stage X was not fully psychologically evaluated. He was clearly exhibiting dangerous and difficult behaviour tendencies and was shy of any diagnosis and treatment. The years that followed were devastating, not least for the victims and their loved ones. It is a tragedy.

I’m not seeking approval from anybody in writing this, I offer this as an invitation to sit with something that is profoundly uncomfortable. I have had a lot of internal conflict about having such a close friendship with a person capable of such violence, I do believe that I am able to care about a person’s humanity without defending their actions. I offer my friendship and support as I recognise the differences between a person many years ago and a person who is now being medicated for childhood trauma and who suffers from a personality disorder, amongst other medical issues. There will always be moral tension in showing empathy to such a man however he is interesting, funny, kind and very supportive of me when life challenges. And for the record, I’m not in a romantic relationship with him or any of the other death row prisoners in my life. I love them all as if they were my brothers. That’s how I roll.

I run a non-profit organisation called ‘Humans Remain’. It is an advocacy endeavour supporting death row, Mississippi. ‘X’ is 30 years into a death sentence for his crimes in another state in the US. He has recently being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and is mostly wheelchair bound.

29th April 2026