Looking back now, I have to wonder if it was me, or simply the way I was brought up that left me in this strange situation. I’m only 23 but my life is effectively over. How did it happen? Let me tell you about it and see if you can help me.

I was raised on a council estate, the middle child of three boys. My parents had a two bedroom flat so all the boys shared a bedroom. Of course we fought, but we had a deep ingrained respect for one another as well, we were family after all. The house was a mess. There was rubbish everywhere, the kitchen was full of dirty dishes and the main room with the TV was a potential death trap with syringes discarded on the floor and bits of foil and burned teaspoons on an old secondhand wooden coffee table. Whenever we went in the main room, which wasn’t very often, we had to be extremely careful. Food was scarce and usually heat and serve rubbish which had little no flavour but plenty of E numbers. I was a skinny runt of a thing but at least it meant I could run fast with little ballast slowing me down. 

We used to get visitors, mainly at night and that’s when the shouting became constant. We tried to sleep with our heads under the pillows to cope with the noise. About once a month we would get a visit from more adults called ‘the social’. They would look at us, with our unkempt hair and clothes that have the smell of poverty about them, with both pity and disdain in their eyes. They would talk to Mum and accept that she was simply doing her best. We spent as much time out of the flat as possible, running round the streets and creating havoc with our mates. We would rob people of their bikes and mobile phones and we always ran if we saw the police, even if we hadn’t done anything. One day I was at school, which was a rarity, and I overheard Miss saying to head of year that I was feral, whatever that meant.

I guess I was about 10 when one morning I got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Mum was there looking odd. Her head was on the kitchen table, one arm in her lap and the other arm spread across the table with a syringe sticking into the crook of her arm. I called her name, but she didn’t answer. Looking at those wide, staring eyes, scared me and so, in my underpants and vest, I ran out of the house to get Jane from next door. She arrived and quickly took me and my brothers back to her flat. I was never allowed back home; the police came and the social and they took me away. My brothers went too but I don’t know where I certainly never saw them again.

The social took me to a big house out of town. There I was introduced to Brian and Tracey and told they were going to look after me. They had two other children, a boy and a girl, both older than me. They were smart and tidy, were in clothes that didn’t smell damp and musty. The front room was tidy too with space on the sofas to sit and a big TV that wasn’t covered in dust. I was given my own bedroom with my own bed and my own drawers. It took me a while, but I soon adjusted to this new more peaceful way of life and in time I got on with my new siblings and also started to enjoy my new school. I made friends and began to play rugby. I was enjoying my life but there was always something missing. I never forgot my mum or my brothers and how they were taken away by the police and the social. By the time I was 16, I was able to do my GCSEs and pass them. This is something that I know my former friends would not have done. Brian found me an apprenticeship on a building site, and I was to learn to be a scaffolder. I continued playing rugby for the local team and spent a lot of time in the gym where my body changed dramatically from its former waif like state to that of a strong young man. Outwardly things were going very well. I lived in a nice house, Brian and Tracey looked after me very well and I got on with my new brother and sister. I had money in my pocket, food and clothes on my back. I even had a new moped that Brian and Tracey bought me for my 16th birthday. But there was still something missing.

Things continued much as they were until I was about 19. It was a hot summer, I just broke up with my girlfriend and I was feeling down. It made me think about my childhood and my mother, so I jumped on my scooter and set off back to the council estate on the other side of town where I was initially raised. Going back into the estate filled me with trepidation, I was no longer used to the ghetto and my fear of authority also returned so I was left with no one to help me out. I saw the groups of youths doing exactly what I had done, and I also saw people my own age still dishevelled and emaciated. The smell of cannabis hung heavy in the air and every front garden looked like its own tiny scrapyard. I went to the pub and ordered myself an orange juice and sat in the garden wondering what my life might’ve been had my mother not died. There was a group of five or six men about my age sitting at another table. They kept glancing over until eventually one of them approached me. “Don’t I know you?” he said. I replied “I don’t think so. Who are you?” It turned out, he was my brother, two years older than me unemployed with two children of his own and a serious drug habit. I could barely recognise him. I was horrified that he was in this state, and it was made worse when he told me my younger brother was in a young offenders institute for persistent burglary.

Something inside me snapped and I left the pub. Over the next two years I worked hard as a scaffolder and harder in the gym. I passed my driving test and bought a car. It was a bit of a wreck, but it was mine. I kept in touch with my older brother and went to see him every so often. Each time my heart got angrier for what he had become. He could so easily have been sent to live with Brian and Tracey and I could so easily have been him.

On one of my visits to my brother, he popped down the alley to meet a friend. I watched from the corner and saw a package being passed between them. That was it for me. I said my goodbyes to my brother and drove round to the other side of the alley. I waited until my brother's friend emerged, and then I broke his neck. I dumped him unceremoniously in the alleyway and kicked him several times. Another person turned up and started threatening me for attacking his friend. He pulled out a knife and came for me. I broke his neck too. I’ve got back in the car and started to drive. Over the next three months. My broken neck tally rose to eight. Each time I saw someone dealing drugs, it reminded me of my mum and my brother. Each of the eight that I killed would no longer be able to make a profit from their evil trade on vulnerable individuals.

I’ve got caught of course, and I was perfectly honest with the police and with the doctors. Nobody understands why I did what I did, but they all know that if I was released I would continue to do it without any remorse. I could not rest until every drug dealer on the estate was dead. They said I was mentally unbalanced and a danger to society, I don’t quite get it and I don’t suppose it matters now to me. I’ve been given a hospital order which means I spend my life locked in a psychiatric hospital until such time as the doctors think I’m safe to be released back to society. The judge said that will take at least 35 years.

What I don’t understand is why me? Was I born this way with such a desire to protect firstly, my family, and secondly, society in general from the terrible drug world we live in? Was it a product ingrained in my early years, that resurfaced once I returned to that world? Had I never gone back would I be free now and would I be a danger to society? I don’t know and never will. It is what it is, and I don’t regret anything other than being caught.