Envious Moon (19 page)

You can't even understand how much I have hated you for what you did to my husband, and to my baby girl. During the trial it took all I had to look at you, and you looked so smug to me, like you didn't have a care in the world. And yet you took two lives. They may have been imperfect, but who knows what could have come if they had continued to live?

It was very hard for me to write this letter. It took a number of years for me to draw the strength I needed. In the end, I did it for Hannah. I wanted you to know the type of person she was, the type of person she might have been. She was so much more than an object for your sickness. She was a beautiful girl, and more beautiful inside than out. She could have had an amazing life. Sometimes I think about her in her thirties, married with children, happy, living in the kind of marriage that I always wanted. She would have learned from my mistakes, I think, and avoided many of the pitfalls. She would have been a great mother.

I don't hate you anymore. I haven't forgiven you either. And I won't ever try to understand what you did. But Hannah in her short life did not like hate. There was too much difficulty in her own home. She did everything she could do to bring light to the world.

My only hope is that somehow this letter gets through to you. That perhaps you can take something from it that will allow you to fully understand what you have done.

The subject, Anthony Lopes, came to Edgewood at eighteen years old after a successful insanity plea in the trial of a murder of another teen. With very little formal education, he had worked as a commercial fisherman before his arrest. Nevertheless, the subject is hyperintelligent, articulate, manipulative, and generally very lucid. He manifests all the obvious traits of narcissism. He can be very persuasive and charming. He will explain in great detail the nature of his crime though he shows very little outward emotion. There are no signs of auditory or visual hallucinations,
as one would find in schizophrenia. It is difficult to ascertain, of course, but the subject may have had olfactory and tactile hallucinations.

It is the conclusion of this committee that the subject suffers from an acute, and rare, form of delusional disorder, erotomanic subtype. The subject has always maintained the victim of his murder had been in love with him, and that in fact, the two had been engaged in a loving relationship over the course of several months. While it is unusual for the erotomanic subtype to be present in males, some forensic samples do contain a preponderance of males. Many of these patients are associated with dangerous or assaultive behavior. There is no evidence to suggest that the victim was ever in love with the subject. In fact, the overwhelming evidence presented at the trial shows that the delusional disorder may have begun after the subject encountered the victim during a larceny. Following that event, the subject became convinced that the victim was in love with him and that he was in love with her. He developed elaborate rescue fantasies, consistent with erotomania. He then proceeded to act out these fantasies, abducting the victim at her family home and keeping her hostage for several weeks. After being apprehended, he managed to escape custody and reached the victim once again, abducting her a second time. This abduction resulted in her death, in what appeared to be an attempt at a murder/suicide.

What separates this case from others in the literature is the length of time of the delusion, and the fact that the delusion has survived the death of the object of the erotomania. There has been no transference to other victims. The subject has been repeatedly exposed to other patients of the opposite sex and has demonstrated no interest. Other than a brief trial of somatic treatment—the subject was given atypical antipsychotics for a six-
month period with no sign of benefit—the treatment has been confined to individual psychotherapy. The subject's reticence to acknowledge a disorder and to view the events in question in any other light but the delusion has made treatment largely ineffective. The subject's intelligence and manipulative behavior have also impeded the therapy.

While the feeling of the committee is that the subject no longer presents a threat to himself or others, without progress in addressing the underlying delusion, there is nothing to recommend release.

With gratitude, I would like to thank the following:

 

My talented editor, Jennifer Pooley. Also at Morrow: Lisa Gallagher, Kevin Callahan, and Ben Bruton. I truly appreciate everything you do in publishing my work.

My agent and friend, Nick Ellison, and his terrific colleagues, Sarah Dickman and Marissa Matteo.

My early readers: Maura Greene, Daniel Greene, David Greene, Susan McCarthy, Jennifer O'Connor, Margaret Gendron, Judith Austin, Alex Lehmann, and Big Al Donovan.

Dr. Susan O'Doherty, who provided professional advice about psychology and the mental health system.

My parents, for their remarkable support. And my wife, Tia, my first editor, my best friend, the reader whose opinions matter to me above all others'.

And finally, to my daughter, Sarah, to whom this book is dedicated. At six months old she cannot yet read my words. But her smile when she sees me would not only make the moon envious, it makes me want to write down every story I know, so that when she is old enough to read them, they will always be there.