In my line of work, everyone has that one story. The story that can't simply fade away like the others, instead it lingers in the forefront of your subconscious nagging at you with its constant incessant reminders. I'll always remember that story, that file, and Walter Ketch's journal. I write this at the behest of my wife and my best friend, who have stood beside me the past years, since I discovered those notebooks. They hope that getting it out there into the world will take some pressure off my sanity and give me some ease.
So, I guess I should start by saying that my name is Kaz and I am a former journalist. I worked that job for four years prior to the events of 2014. The job was dull. I spent most of my time twirling my thumbs or writing puff pieces or constantly scrolling through the Internet looking for the latest trend to latch on to. In college, I had been under the impression that journalism was a career for those exposing life's most concealed truths. I wanted to be in the big leagues sitting down interviewing presidents, celebrities, and the other society's privileged. Needless to say, I wanted something more from the job I had poured years of schooling to qualify for and I had found it in a craigslist ad. The username of the man was Californiaman67 and he was selling the property of inmates that were slated for death row. As you can expect, this was perfect for me. I could get my name out there and possibly make some decent connections with the networks, who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to hear the confessions of the mentally deranged or life of a serial killer or a manifesto of a domestic terrorist. So, five emails, a plane trip, and an hour drive later, I had arrived at the storage facility that was our meeting place.
Californiaman67, was a guard at the Vigo County Penitentiary and looked like you would expect: military man, short buzzed hair, muscle bound. He carried himself with an air of authority as if every step he made commanded you move. He shook my hand when we met with a vice grip and nodded towards the gate. He tried not to ask, but I could see the confusion in his eyes when he saw me. I was, and still, a rail thin man with almost no muscle mass, piercing green eyes, wearing at the time a dingy gray hoodie. He asked as we rounded the one steel box, "Why do you want any of this shit?" He probably assumed I was part of some kind of perverse fan club. People, who are usually so lost, find solace in these cult of personalities, build shrines to them, send them underwear, and follow their every move. I assured him that I was not one of these fanatics, instead that I was a low level journalist looking for his big break. At this, he gave a heavy, gravely laugh, "Of course, you're one of those journos. How 'bout you keep my name out of whatever article you write and I'll give you 30 off what you pick out. How's that sound?" I agreed of course and we continued on in silence until we reached the storage shed marked 324.
When he opened the rusted gate, the aroma of mildew paper spilled outwards into the hallway. Californiaman gave me an almost apologetic smile and with a shrug bluntly, "The weather may have gotten to a few, but you can find something of use right."
A few is what he said, but a few was not what I inevitably came to find. Most of the cardboard boxes were soaked through and were starting to grow mold. The ones that didn't have water leaking out of them instead held spiders or some other type of insects. I found a couple mouse nests in the ones with the most papers, but eventually I found one that was the least soaked and the most intact. The box was labeled W.K. Inside was a necklace with a small silver ring around the chain, a deck of cards, a picture of a blonde boy and a dog. These weren't the things that caught my attention or interest, instead it was two composition notebooks. One was filled and the other only half contained writing. The header of each read My Story by Walter Ketch.
Walter Ketch was a name that carried with it a feeling of glee. Walter Ketch was a notorious serial killer and an enigmatic one at that. In the seven years he sat on death row, he had never taken an interview, never talked to the police or psychologist to answer their one question. Why? What caused a little boy from Indiana to butcher so many people? I brought the box to Californiaman, gave him the ninety dollars he charged me, and left towards my hotel room.
The Woodridge Inn was a nice small place located on the outside of Terre Haute a few miles from the highway. The room was quaint with a small kitchenette, bathroom, and TV. The beds were firm and of little comfort except for the pillows that were the pinnacle of comfort. The shower pushed out lukewarm water from its lime-covered nozzle. I washed quickly, toweled, and shaved the three day stubble from my face. I picked up my phone and dialed my fiance. The phone rang two times before her voice came through the receiver.
"Hey, Babe. Enjoying your fishing trip?" she said with a hint of the smile in her voice. "Oh, yeah. I caught me a Biggin'," I laughed in the best southern impersonation I could do, which to be fair was awful.
"So, what did you get?" she asked after the formalities of `days, gossip, work'. I looked over at the notebook sitting on the counter across the small room.
"Something, good. Trust me. As a matter of fact I gotta get started on it." She grumbled a sarcastic fine, before saying that she loved me and hung up after I said the same. I was alone now in the chilly room with the journal. My hand trembled with subtle anticipation of the night of reading ahead of me. I turned the cover and began to read.
Entry 1
I am what I am. A phrase and a statement that holds little water in the modern concept of self- identification. The self is eternal as well as internal. There is no force that any society can enact except death to change the fundamental nature of the self. So, I am what I am. Let that be the legacy of these writings. I do not write this as a confession of remodel. I do not repent for the life I have led or the lives I have ended. Instead, I offer this to you as a deconstruction of the view commonly shared of my kind. History, as any well informed scholar would attest, is decided and skewed to the view of the victors and the vocal. So, in hope that my voice will be heard in that chorus, I write this.
As with most things, the beginning is often the best place to start, especially when it comes to your first time. Your first lover or your first kill, all of these are etched in the annals of your memory, every detail of their skin, the feeling of nervousness within you, but underneath it all the unmistakable sense of purpose in the act. The date was I believe August 13, 1988. The summer storms had broken, small streams of light cascaded through the gray clouds peppering the damp sidewalks with its warmth. I stepped out of my home excitedly, eager to go to the woods. My intention was to see the state of the work shed.
The work shed was an abandoned shack I had found on one of my numerous adventures into the woods around my home. I hadn't the foggiest notion of its original purpose, but it had become my work shed, a place for me to tinker away from the prying eyes of my parents and others. As I moved through the foliage calmly, my thoughts drifted wondering about Oscar. I wondered what he had been eating while I had been away, had he begun eating the other? I hoped not. It had taken me a while to get them to fit my specifications, however nebulous and unrefined as they were at the time. I still detested the idea that the mongrel could have or did desecrate my hard work.
When I had arrived at the partly dilapidated shack, I noticed a change from the way I had left it a few days prior. The door, which had been fashioned with a shiny combination lock I had been given for my bike, stood a jar combination lock left discarded and battered on the ground in the mud. I felt my gut drop at the realization that my workshop was found, and even more prescient that the discoverer could still be in the area.
In that exact instance, I felt a quick pain and saw a few stars as I fell backwards into the mud. I, at the young age of nine, hadn't been in many fights, even fewer still that involved violence, but some part of me knew what a punch to the back of the head felt like. I fell forward into the shack, turned over, and saw the perpetrator. Dustin Sawyer stood above me in the shack's old doorway, his scrunched in a mask of abject fury. His fury was understandable, Oscar was his dog after all and obviously he had found out what the neighbor boy Wally had done. I attempted to stand up, but received a quick kick in the side from the twelve year old.
"Please!" I said more in an attempt to get him to stop hitting me.
"You sick piece of shit. Where's the key?" Dustin asked as he wound back again to kick me. I managed, by some miracle, to catch his foot before it connected to my collarbone as I stood up. I pushed back on his leg, causing him to stumble and fall backwards into the work shed. I scrambled to climb on top of the boy. Punches connected as he fought against me. Oscar weakly barked from the metal cage in the corner, as I drove my knee into his master's crotch four times as hard as I could, feeling a noticeable pop on the third knee. Dustin howled and stopped throwing punches. I stood breathing heavily, trying to regain my composure, watched as he attempted to crawl away, and felt a small smile begin to form on my face. He reminded me of Oscar, after I broke his back legs. A chuckle escaped my lips as I took hold of the ball hammer from my workspace counter. Dustin looked back at the sound and saw me moving towards him and whimpered, "Please don't do-"
I shushed him by bringing the hammer down on his head, hearing a faint crack before Dustin went limp. His raspy breathing and Oscar's weak barking were the only sounds in the shack. I stood up and began to drag his unconscious body through the door. The following two days were filled with a lot of experimentation and discovery. On the final day, an idea occurred to me. How would I hide this?
When it came to the dogs, I just tossed the bits out to be eaten by other creatures of the woods to clean up my mess. But this bloodied mess of a creature that laid strapped to my work counter was a human. Even at that age I understood that this could prove a severe negative and definitely a hindrance to my activities. I racked my brain for answers to the predicament. Dustin wearily watched me pace trying to find some solution. I looked over to a small can of paint thinner. I grabbed some wood from outside and set it in the middle of the shack, and looked over to Dustin Sawyer.
His eyes met mine and I saw something I had only seen in the dogs. I pulled the knife from my pack and walked over to him. He didn't whimper or try to struggle against his binds this time when he saw me holding it in my hand. It was like a quiet calm acceptance of this moment, of his death. I ran the blade across his throat in one almost masterful stroke and watched the blood bubble up from the slit. I waited a little longer until his blood had dried before I began to move his body.
Dustin's body was heavy and I was gasping by the time I drugged it to the makeshift fire pit, reached into his pocket and pulled out a small lighter. I lit the pile of wood and tipped the can of paint thinner over. I watched the liquid stream towards the fire and quickly left the shack.
The fire raged late into the afternoon. Eventually, the fire Marshals managed to put the blaze out and what they found were the charred remains of Dustin Sawyer, known delinquent from a toxic home and perfect image of an accidental arsonist, but to me he was my first. He had shown me the truth of this world in that final moment. The world is organized and oriented around hierarchy. All things in nature have their hunters and I was one of them.