William "The Mutilator" Macdonald

Confessions

"Why did you murder those men?" I asked, hopeful that I had assessed correctly that he would like to talk about the circumstances surrounding his crimes. "Is it true as they said in your defence at your trial that as you were killing them that you saw the face of the fusilier who raped you when you were a teenager and turned you into a homosexual and gave you a life of misery?"

Incredibly, he answered. "I didn't murder those men," he said matter-of-factly. "Physically I did, there's no doubt of that. But it is the other person who lives inside me that actually killed them. As a young boy I was diagnosed as schizophrenic and I still am today. Schizophrenia means split personality and it was my other personality that killed those men as an act of revenge on the soldier who raped me. I then mutilated each one in a manner so that he couldn't rape anyone ever again.

"When I read about the murders in the paper the following day it was as if it was all a dream. I knew that it was me that had done it but it was as if I hadn't done it, if you can follow what I mean. Then I would resume my life as normal until the urge to kill the soldier came over me again and then I'd go on the hunt again."

"So you were only insane at the time of the murders?" I asked. "These days we call it diminished responsibility which is roughly the same as temporary insanity."

"There is no doubt that I was insane at the time of the murders," he says. "As you say, temporarily insane. Or in my case the other personality had taken over. And even though they found me to be sane at my trial I knew that I wasn't and these urges to kill kept coming over me. After my trial they took another look at me and realised that I was insane and needed help. That's why I was in Morisset psychiatric centre for 16 years."

"Why do you think you chose derelicts to kill? Do you think it was because they were the easiest targets or was it the decent side of you saying that if you had to kill and couldn't stop it then at least you were only killing people who would be the least likely to be missed?"

"That's very difficult to answer. The other part of me that committed the murders could possibly answer that but I can't. I think the second of the answers makes sense though because I'm not really a bad person."