THE EXECUTIONER'S TALE

FOR 25 YEARS, Dorothy Otnow Lewis has interviewed and treated murderers - men and women whose actions may stem from mental illnesses or organic impairment of the brain. As part of her investigations, she wanted to examine someone who was able to kill (other than in self-defence) without any signs of mental imbalance or physical damage. So when she heard about a state executioner who had thrown the switch on 19 death- row inmates - and who was willing to be interviewed - she felt that she had to meet him.

IT WAS nightfall by the time we found the trailer park that Bob Smith called home. Because his own trailer was too small to accommodate all of us and our equipment (I had asked to bring along both the film-maker George Baillard to document the interview, and my close friend Cathi Yeager), he had arranged to borrow the larger trailer of a friend for the interview. None the less, it was a tight squeeze. As I recall, by the time the two tripods and cameras were set up - Cathi had also brought along a video for backup - there was little room for George, who had either to stand or half-sit on a bookshelf. Bob Smith and I sat perpendicular to each other at the corner of a rectangular table.

What do you ask a man who has caused the death of so many human beings? Over the years, my colleague Dr Jonathan Pincus and I have examined about a dozen serial murderers. One of them, William Bonin, had murdered 15 boys. Now I found myself in a trailer park in the Deep South, seated at a table with a man who had ended the life of 19 human beings. The only person I had ever met who had killed more people than Bob Smith was the serial murderer Ted Bundy.

Bob Smith (he never told me his real name) was a good-looking man, tall, full-bearded, muscular. This man seated so close to me in the tiny trailer would have been handsome, were it not for his slightly flattened nose. I would learn that Bob Smith, like so many of the men Jonathan and I had interviewed during our research on violence, had experienced his share of bar-room brawls; the bridge of his nose had taken the brunt of several of them. Still, he projected a combination of strength and charm. He was obviously at ease as he popped open a can of beer from his six-pack and handed it to me. He then opened a can for himself and settled into his chair.

I began. "How does what you do affect you?" The response was quick and sure.

"It don't. In no way."

I was speechless. What he said didn't make sense. I thought back to my husband's question to the serial killer William Bonin, a man who had tortured and killed more than a dozen young boys. My husband Mel had listened for two hours as I interviewed Bonin. Just before ending the session, I turned to Mel, who was seated behind me, and asked if he had any questions.

"As a matter of fact I do," Mel answered in his elegant, soft-spoken English way. "What are your feelings when you do those things?" (My husband was referring to the torture and murder of the young boys.)

Bonin paused. He thought and thought, then asked, warily, "Is that a trick question?"

But that was different. Bonin was a serial murderer, a man who picked up unsuspecting young boys on the highway, squeezed their genitals, raped them, and strangled them. Bonin remembered nothing of the sexual perversions to which he had been subjected as a boy. We had to rely on his mother's memory and on the records of orphanages and hospitals and correctional schools to learn what had happened to him. That he had blocked out all memory of his childhood, as well as all feelings relating to his atrocious acts, was not all that surprising. Killers do that. But I expected Bob Smith to be different. He had nothing to hide, nothing to forget. It was inconceivable to me that Bob Smith was untouched by his job.

I paused, thinking of the other man I had known who had killed that many people and more, Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy told me that for a time he was able to satisfy his violent, sexual impulses by looking at pictures, reading books, and masturbating. Then for a period of years he abducted and raped young women. In the beginning he did not kill. However, once he murdered - once he crossed that boundary, violated that taboo - killing got easier and easier. I remember asking him: "Why didn't you get help? See a psychiatrist?"

"I thought about it. But by then it was too late. They would have told," he answered. He knew there was something wrong with him. He had some feelings about what he did; he just couldn't stop. The man talking with me professed to no feelings at all about what he did. Could it be true? Had I at last encountered a person who had neither psychotic or neurologic symptoms, who simply killed for a living?

"DO you know why I wanted to talk to you?" I asked.

"No."

"Let me explain. I do research on violence, on people who do violent things. I have talked with people on death row. I've heard things from that point of view." I was obviously struggling to word my question inoffensively and felt I was doing a pretty lousy job of it. "I wanted to know what it's like for you to do this kind of work."

"It's just a job I do," came the matter-of-fact reply. "I don't wear a mask and I don't have no nightmares."

Was that true? Is it possible for a man to lack all feeling for those whose lives he takes? And, if so, how does a person get that way? "Tell me about your childhood."

His answer was quick, as if he'd been asked the same question dozens of times. "I was drug up. We was so poor we had to knock on doors for food. That's why I got no sympathy for those who made excuses, who say they was poor or they was abused and that's why they did what they did."

"Tell me about your dad."

"My dad was a redneck."

"Where was his family from originally?"

"Germany."

"What did he do for a living?"

"The old man was a construction worker. We had to go where there was work. Clearfield, Pennsylvania; Rapid City, South Dakota; Cheyenne, Wyoming, New Mexico. I've been to all 48 states. There was no welfare or food stamps in those days."

"Did you have enough to eat?"

"Yes." I could have sworn that he just said he went door to door begging for food. Perhaps over time the inconsistency would clarify itself. I chose, for the moment, to avoid confrontation. "And your mom? Tell me about her."

"She was from the North." That was it. Next question?

"Do you have brothers and sisters?"

"Two brothers and a sister." Then, for a few moments, he became pensive, and the slightly hard, defensive edge to his voice that I had detected earlier disappeared. "I lost one brother. Just before I was born he died of an ear infection. He was three. They say I replaced him." Then, in a twinkling, the almost wistful tone was gone, and he changed the subject. I, on the other hand, was reluctant to abandon the topic of childhood.

I decided to take a slightly different tack, one Jonathan and I have often found useful. I would frame my questions about childhood in a medical context. Psychiatrists could learn a whole lot more than they do about patients if they only asked doctor-type questions; if instead of saying, "Do you see things no one else sees?" they first asked about visual acuity or eye infections, if they asked about earaches before they asked about hearing voices.

"Let me ask you some medical questions," I began, and printed "Medical History" on my pad in such a way that he could read it easily upside down. "Do you know anything about your birth?"

"I was born at 4.23am and I weighed nine pounds."

"Was your mother's delivery hard?"

"No."

"How about her pregnancy?"

"It was fine."

"Any other problems?"

"The navel cord got infected. They thought I was gonna die. They told me how hard it was on Mama, seeing as she had just lost a baby."

"What happened?"

"They put her on Quaaludes. She was on that three, four years."

Without my asking, Bob Smith was providing me with a family psychiatric history.

"Did she need any other treatment?"

"She was in and out of the mental hospital. She was brought to the hospital five or six times. They just kept giving her Quaaludes."

"Anyone else have trouble with their nerves?"

"I had a friend once who killed himself."

"Oh?"

"His old lady was fucking around, so he killed himself."

"How about you? What are your moods like?" I was delighted at the easy segue into questions about his own mental health.

"I'm moody."

"Ever get depressed?"

"Looking at bills."

"Who doesn't? I mean really depressed. Like not wanting to get up in the morning?"

"Every morning! I've heard people say 'Quit your job. Do what you want to do.' "

"Have you ever felt so sad you thought of suicide?"

"Never. What's that gonna solve?" Then he turned to me and asked, "Have you ever thought of suicide?"

"Sure," I answered. It was true. I had thought about it so often as a child that I even wrote a story about watching my own funeral.

Bob Smith looked at me in amazement. "You're the last one I'd think would consider suicide."

"I did."

"Well, not me. I wouldn't allow anyone to make me feel that way. I'd kill them, not me."

How does one respond to that? I didn't. I pretended to ignore it.

"You don't like your work?" Bob Smith was not a full-time executioner. He had told me before the interview began that he was also a master electrician.

"It's survival," came the response.

"What would you do if you could do anything you wanted to do?"

"I don't know. Work outdoors. Be a park ranger. They're in control of their life."

"Why didn't you become a park ranger?"

"I didn't go to college. You have to graduate college to be a park ranger."

"What grade did you go to?"

"Eighth."

"Did you ever repeat a grade?"

"Seventh. I had to go to remedial classes."

"How come you stopped in eighth grade?" It was clear to me that Bob Smith was intelligent.

"It was my fault. I felt trapped. I wanted to roam."

"Any special problems at school?"

"English. It was hard for me. I could never get the nouns and pro-nouns straight. But I do like to read. My brother told me by reading you could travel the world and never leave home." Then he added: "My English teacher started us collecting stamps. I gave them to a little girl I know."

As I listened, in spite of the prejudices with which I had come to this interview, I found myself almost liking Bob Smith.

"Do you have a temper?" I asked.

"Not a temper. I don't bother anybody 'less they bother me. I'm hard to get riled, but when I do ... Things happen in life you have no control over."

"What can get you mad?"

"People can say something to upset you. If a person wants to get you mad he can." He continued: "Anytime you meet this individual, they gonna keep on, keep on, keep on."

"Did you ever go further than you meant to?" That's a favourite question of mine. It's not just good with violent inmates. It's good with abusive parents. It helps them let you know what they've done to their kids without making them feel too guilty.

"I never deliberately hurt anyone."

"Ever knock anyone out?"

"Sure, I hit sometimes and they didn't get up. Men get to drinking. You get a few drinks in you and you think you're 10 feet tall and bullet-proof. You're not."

"What's the worst that's ever happened to you?"

"Had my nose punched, busted. Had it broke once or twice. Had my ribs kicked in, my hand smashed. I busted it."

"How'd that happen?"

"People's heads are harder than you think." So much for his never deliberately hurting anyone. Again, I ignored the inconsistencies.

"Ever punched a wall?"

"Yes. I've done that."

"Ever been in trouble with the law?" I ventured. "Ever been in jail?" I tried to sound casual.

"I sure have!" The words were boastful, not apologetic.

"What for?"

"Assault and battery. Getting in fights."

"Any scars?" That's another question I really like. The people Jonathan and I evaluate behind bars have their histories of fights and beatings written all over their faces, heads, bodies, arms, and legs. In response to my question, Bob Smith extended his right hand.

"What's that?" I asked, looking at a small round scar.

"A scar from a .22 magnum."

"How'd that happen?"

"I happened to be in the right place at the wrong time."

Sometimes Bob Smith got things backwards. I chose not to point out his confusion and to go with the flow. "Tell me about it."

"Just the wrong place at the wrong time. I told them at the hospital I was cleaning my gun. I checked myself out after four days. Things happen in life you have no control over."

"What's that?" - I pointed to a tattoo I could not quite make out.

"That's the Grim Reaper. My brother did it for me when I was a kid."

I must have seen one version or another of that tattoo on at least 10 different death-row inmates. "Are there any scars I can't see?"

That's another good question for violent people. If someone were to ask me that question, I would talk about the pain of lost friendships or the death of my mother or something like that. But people on death row - murderers - answer it quite literally, which is exactly how I meant it. You can learn a lot from those hidden scars.

"I was stabbed in the back in a bar," he declared, as though this were an everyday occurrence. "You know, I never found out who did it. I figure I was dancing with some dude's wife. I drove myself to the hospital." He pulled up his shirt and displayed the scar.

"How about accidents? Like bike accidents, or car accidents?"

"I don't remember any." Then, oblivious to what he had just said, he continued: "I've had a lot of car accidents, head-on collisions. I never was hurt. Got my nose busted. Once rolled over on the Interstate. I've been knocked goofy. You get into arguments. Sucker punches."

By this time I felt as though I had wandered into a hall of mirrors or the middle of Chapter Seven of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, the chapter that describes the way in dreams opposites can exist simultaneously. For Bob Smith, yes was no and no was yes. Yes, he had to beg for food; no, he was never hungry. No, he never deliberately hurt someone; yes, he nearly broke his fist punching it into other people's heads. No, he was never in a car accident; yes, he had lots of head-on collisions. Psychotic people think that way. I kept my peace. Confrontation, I knew, would shut him up, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

Bob Smith paused and looked me in the eye. "I know what you're getting at. No, I ain't had no brain damage." I was not completely convinced, but kept these reservations to myself. If not brain damage, what did account for Bob Smith's peculiar way of thinking? He did not always make sense.

"I want to ask you some more medical-type questions. How are your eyes? Do you wear glasses?"

"Just for reading."

"Have your eyes ever played tricks on you?"

"You know about peripheral vision. You're always going to see what you didn't see," came the response. I nodded. I hadn't the foggiest idea what he meant.

"How about your ears? Ever had an ear infection?"

"I got scars in my ears."

"Did your ears ever play tricks on you?"

"Oh sure. I'm not gonna tell you I haven't heard something."

"Have you ever had the experience of thinking someone called you or your mother a bad name and you turned around and you were mistaken?"

"I don't have to worry. People do call me bad names. I got into fights 'cause of people picking on me." Bob Smith was as paranoid as the other killers Jonathan and I had evaluated.

"Who hassled you?"

"Other kids. Seniors always hassle juniors. Didn't you?"

I was startled again at his directness. He had not been trained in patient etiquette. Patients aren't supposed to ask psychiatrists questions like that. I had to remind myself that he was not my patient and I was not his doctor.

"Didn't you?" he repeated.

"No. I was perfect." My god, I was actually bantering with an executioner!

"You were telling me before about your mom and dad. Did either of them have a temper? How were you disciplined?"

"I had damn good beatings."

"Tel me about them."

"My dad, he'd come in and Mama would tell him we did something."

"Like what?"

"Talking back to Mom. Skipping school."

"What would he do?"

"He'd tell us Monday we were gonna get a whipping Friday. He said the waiting was worse than the whipping. He was right. If one of us screwed up, we all three got a whipping. We were supposed to watch each other."

"What did he hit you with?"

"Most of the time his hand. Now when he wanted to ... " his voice trailed off. Then he resumed, "I'd rather he whipped us than my mom."

"How come?"

"She was sneaky. She'd tell you everything was all right. She'd say, 'Go inside and take a bath.' " He paused and looked directly into my eyes. "You ever been beat with a pussy-willow club?" he asked.

"A what?"

"With a switch from a willow tree?"

I confessed I had not. My parents did not cross Central Park West to cut switches from the shrubbery. Nor did they send me to do it.

"You ever been whipped when you was wet?"

Again, I had to admit I had not. I recall once being spanked by my father. I must have been about six or seven years old. A friend and I had hidden together under the skirt of a dressing table when it was time for her to go home, and my parents couldn't find us. In New York City, that's a pretty scary situation for parents. Even then I wasn't hurt, just humiliated. But delinquents I had worked with in the past had taught me that being beaten when you are wet is especially painful. A little boy I'd seen who burnt down the administration building of his treatment centre had been wetted down and beaten by his psychotic aunt.

Bob Smith continued to reminisce. "If you cut one too small, she'd send you out again." Jonathan and I have heard that many times; on death row, we have heard it again and again.

I TOOK a break while George changed the roll of film. I needed some time to collect my thoughts. We had been talking for a couple of hours, during which Bob Smith had consumed five beers of a six-pack. I, in contrast, was still nursing my first. By then I could have used another, but I deliberately limited myself to one. Making sense of Bob Smith's words while struggling to keep things moving was challenging enough without alcohol. I needed a clear head. In all likelihood, this would be my only chance to talk face-to-face with an executioner. I did not want to miss anything. It probably sounds odd, but I regarded talking with Bob Smith as a privilege, one

few psychiatrists ever have. I was determined to use the time well.

George signalled that the film was rolling. I took a swig of my remaining beer and began. (When my English husband saw the tape of me guzzling beer with an executioner, he was appalled.) "How did you get into this line of work?"

"My brother told me about it. He saw an ad in the paper. It said the state executioner had died. My brother knew I was a strong believer in the death penalty. So I made some phone calls. I got a civil service application and applied for it. The person who interviewed me told me later on I was the most aggressive one who applied." Then he added, "I was the only one turned in an application." As usual, I let this contradiction pass. By now I was used to them. For Bob Smith, realities shifted from minute to minute. In time I simply learnt to shift with them. It was like getting my sea legs on a rocky boat. After a while, nothing makes you woozy and the nausea subsides.

"And then what happened?"

"I got a call from a warden. Six months later I executed my first one."

First one. Not first person. Not first man. Not even first murderer. First one. It sounded like shooting one's first deer or scoring with a woman for the first time. But when teenagers talk about those kinds of firsts, they describe them with some feeling, with pride or sheepishness. Bob Smith spoke of his "first" without a trace of affect.

"Who was it?"

"He was a black dude. He killed a black security guard for no reason."

"What was he like, the first man you executed?"

At this point Bob Smith's voice changed as he tried to imitate a whiny child. "He said he had a bad childhood. He was mistreated."

Then, with contempt, he snarled, "That's how he got all those stays."

"So you think he was no different from you, I mean his upbringing?"

"It's a crock of shit. I told you I was drug up. I got in every trouble you could get." And you didn't kill anybody, did you? That's what I wanted to say, but I didn't. Clearly it was on my mind as I asked my next question.

"The first time you did it, an execution, what was it like?"

"I was nervous. I didn't know what would happen. I didn't know what to expect. Like you go to a party with someone. You don't know if they're gonna pull their pants down and urinate in a flower bowl."

"Huh?"

Now there was an analogy! Execution: it was just one big party. When he talked about urinating, was Bob Smith talking about himself? The condemned? I had heard that condemned men often lose control of their bowels and bladders. Maybe executioners do, too. Bob Smith continued: "Once I did that one, it was over with. There was nothing to it."

"What is it like? I've never seen an execution. I've seen the electric chair in Florida." I was not sure I was ready to hear the answer, but some long-hidden curiosity pushed me to probe more. I don't think Dick Burr, the public defender, ever recovered from witnessing an execution. He never seemed the same afterwards. It took Jim Coleman, Ted Bundy's chief lawyer, a long time to get over watching his execution. Afterwards he locked himself in his hotel room. Twice I had witnessed what witnessing an execution did to defence attorneys. Now I was asking what execution did to the executioner.

Bob Smith began. "I'm at a location. I'm not gonna say where for security. They tell me a certain time. I'm not gonna tell you what time. We go to the death house."

"How long in advance do you know?"

"Thirty minutes. I'm a matter of minutes away." Then came a typical Bob Smith contradiction. "I know the date. If it's Friday, I have to be there Thursday night."

"What happens if you have the flu?"

"Never happened. I've never been sick."

"You don't have an understudy?"

"I have no knowledge of it."

"You mean you could be dying and you'd be there?"

"I could be dying." A civil servant devoted to his job, I thought, a good soldier. He continued, "You'd be amazed what the state wants to charge ... " He hesitated and this time he caught himself: "I mean pay somebody to take someone's life. A hundred and fifty dollars! And they want you to pay your own expenses." Bob Smith was not, as he implied, a hop, skip, and a jump from the prison. Although he lived in a trailer camp in Tennessee, he was the executioner for a neighbouring state. He needed more than a half-hour's notice.

Bob Smith continued to grumble about the conditions of his job. "They want you to lose money, to lose work. If they contact me, I expect them to at least cover my expenses. They won't even do that. I've paid over $800 to get $400. The money means nothing." A hundred and fifty. Four hundred. Whatever Bob Smith was paid for the executions he performed, he obviously felt undervalued.

"Why do it?"

"I agreed on a certain price. I made a commitment. I've asked them to pay my expenses. If it's cancelled I get my plane trip and expenses and $150. If the execution goes down, I get $400. That's all." He looked at me for some sign of compassion. The most I could manage was, "Why do it?"

"'Cause of my convictions."

The time seemed right to ask what was really on my mind. "Do you ever empathise?"

He looked blank. I tried again. "Do you ever put yourself in the person's place?"

He paused, somewhat taken aback. "I've never been asked exactly that before."

I explained, "When I was a kid, I remember the Rosenbergs. I remember the way they were executed. I remember putting myself in their place." As a child, I was fascinated by the Rosenbergs. Sometimes I imagined myself Ethel, strapped to the chair; other times I felt like one of their children, suddenly motherless and fatherless. I couldn't decide which felt worse - being killed or being orphaned.

"Do you ever put yourself in their place?" I tried again.

"Never," came the response.

"You think people are born evil?"

"Yes. You're evil. You're gonna die evil. You could take them off death row. They'd do it again. Evil's gonna float back."

"You feel it's genetic?"

"No, it's not genetic. People are bad. People are mean. You have animal instincts. Most of us control our rage." Then, to my amazement, he added, "I have never found no reason to take a human life." I must have looked puzzled because he immediately said, "You find that weird 'cause I'm an executioner." I did.

Now it was his turn to explain. "There's no reason for me to go to a convenience store and shoot someone. Now, taking that low-life sonofabitch and zapping him, that I can understand." I still didn't get it. Fortunately it didn't matter. Bob Smith had warmed to his topic.

"I'm not saying I couldn't hit someone and kill them. Not 'cause I'm out of control ... I got to be in control. Not gonna lose your cool. If I hit you and you die, I go to jail for manslaughter. That's different from holding up someone." The nuances of his argument escaped me. What I did understand was that the man sitting next to me was filled with such rage that it clouded his reasoning. This rage fuelled his bar-room brawls, the shootings, knifings, the arrests for assault and battery. Any line I may have drawn in my mind between Bob Smith and Lucky Larson [who stabbed a convenience store clerk and a car dealer to death for $100 and a carton of cigarettes] had blurred completely. They were indistinguishable.

Our very expensive film was rolling and rolling, and still Bob Smith had not really told me what it was like to execute a man. I looked down at my notes, then up again.

"I was asking you about what it was like to execute someone." Bob Smith looked puzzled. He had been interviewed many times, or so he said. Something about this interview intrigued him.

"You know, you're the only one who's come to interview me who brought notes. Or maybe you're the only one who shows them. You're bringing out a lot. The others beat around the bush."

"I try to ask what I want to know. Do you think you got the job 'cause you're an electrician?"

"I'm sure that's why they picked me."

"Do you have to check things out beforehand?"

"No." His response suggested that he had not been hired for his electrical expertise.

"So what's it like?"

He started to cough. I waited for the coughing to subside.

"I know what you're getting at. I'll answer anything you ask," he assured me.

I decided to pose my question concretely. "Do you see the person in the chair?"

"No, I don't see the person ... I see the person. I don't even see the person when they're making their final statement. I hear it so many times it means nothing to me." For a meaningless event, it sure confused him. He paused. I waited.

"They bring him in. The prison guards strap him in. Then they got to step aside so the witnesses can see. They lower a flap over the face. Before that, the witnesses can see who they're executing. Then they lower the flap." As he spoke he seemed to visualise the entire ceremony, to see what he swore he did not see.

"The warden nods. I press the button. I have a timer who stands behind me. Timer says, 'Now.' I press. For 10 seconds it hits 2,000 volts. He says, 'Stop.' I lower the voltage. The timer says, 'Now.' I press the button for 20 seconds."

"It's not the warden who times it?"

"No. It's an employee of the prison. It's a volunteer. Nobody's asked to do it. It's been the same employee for 19 executions." Then, just to make sure I got it down right, he reviewed the lesson. "First 10 seconds at 2,000 volts. Then I switch to 500 volts. That's for 20 seconds. Then I go up to 2,000 volts."

"How come they messed up in Florida last time?" I asked. There had been an execution in which the head of the condemned man had caught fire, but the man had not died immediately. Another series of shocks were required.

"It wasn't in Florida," he corrected me. "It was Alabama. I know why. I'm not gonna say. Total stupidity. Using people who was incompetent."

"Was it the first time they did it?"

"I don't know. I'm like Schultz. You know, from Hogan's Heroes. I know nahthink," he joked, imitating the German accent of the Nazi prison camp guard from the TV series.

WHEN I watch the videotape of this interview I am taken aback as much by my own demeanour as by Bob Smith's. From time to time I see us laugh together. I watch the camaraderie build up between us. Every so often I admire the way I phrase a question. I am subtle, disarming. (As my Uncle Arnold would have said, "You'll break your arm patting yourself on the back.") More often, I see on that tape the cagey inquiring reporter of the tabloids. How much of what I am doing is really research? How much is just morbid curiosity? Whatever my motivation was that evening, I just kept on asking questions.

"YOU told me you were considered for the position of executioner in a state up north. You said you were on their 'A' list. Would you really consider learning a new procedure like lethal injection?" George, the film-maker, had wanted me to ask that.

"I already know how."

"How come?"

"I seen it done." He paused for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to share his knowledge. Then he bragged, "I could perform any execution required."

"Do you have any feeling about it? I mean what kind you perform?"

"I'd rather lethal injection."

"Why?"

"It's easier on me."

"I guess it's also more humane," I suggested.

"Why worry what's humane? No one worries what's humane for the victim."

"WHAT do you know about the people you execute?" This question was not asked out of idle curiosity. Bob Smith did not know it, but I had worked briefly on the case of his last client. The condemned was a minor when he killed a state trooper and was sentenced to death. The boy was not executed for several years, by which time he was well into adulthood. Nevertheless, when I spoke to the young man several weeks before his execution, he sounded to me like a kid. I have no idea what he was like when he murdered his victim. He may have been hard as nails. But death row for certain juveniles can have a paradoxical effect. It softens them. Juveniles condemned to death are usually secluded from the regular prison population. What is more, for the first time in their lives, if they are lucky, they receive some attention from intelligent, caring adults - public defenders, paralegals, investigators. In response, these youngsters often mellow. They let the chip drop from their shoulders and learn to trust a little. I am not saying that they necessarily become safe to walk the streets. But they do change, and the person executed five or 10 years after a murder is not the same person who committed the crime. One person committed a murder, another dies for it. That's how it is.

That phenomenon should not surprise anyone. We all change. When I think of the ways I have matured over the past decade, just in terms of my knowledge and skills, not to mention my temperament, I am astounded. I have fantasies of calling up certain patients I saw, say, 15 years ago and saying, "Hey, I think I may have made a mistake. I think I understand now what you were trying to tell me. I think I know what was wrong. Today I would treat your symptoms differently. Come see me. I won't charge." I am a much better psychiatrist now than I was then. And, of course, I am forever apologising to my children, Gillian and Eric, for losing my cool when they were small; for yelling at them over things that 15 years ago infuriated me but that today I realise didn't matter much. Whenever I do this, Gillian says, "Don't worry about it, Mom. You weren't so bad," and Eric reassures me that he was not permanently traumatised. But both of my children see that I have changed. The justice system is less wise and charitable than my children. It has trouble with concepts like maturation and change. The system acts as though a 27-year-old inmate who has not committed an aggressive act in 10 years were just as violent and unthinking as he was at 17 when he killed someone.

"WHAT do you know about the people you electrocute?" I asked again.

"I don't know nothing about them. Not what race, not what crime. Nothing." Then he added, "I don't even read newspapers."

Bob Smith just did his job. He adjusted the voltage and pushed the buttons. Whoever happened to be seated in the chair, as he put it, "got zapped". It was as impersonal as that. I figured it had to be. Otherwise he would not be able to do it. Nobody would.

"I paint a picture after each execution," he volunteered.

"What do you paint?"

"Nothing. I just paint on canvas. Some people say it's gross. Some say it's hideous."

"I've told other interviewers that I captured their souls on canvas, the ones I electrocuted. But that's not true. To me it's just paint on canvas."

"What are you feeling when you paint those pictures?"

"Nothing."

"When you were a kid, did you paint or draw?"

"Just military planes and tanks. I used to do a lot of abstract things."

He then picked up a ballpoint and made a scribble.

"A free picture from Bob Smith," he crowed, and handed me the scrap of paper, as though he were Picasso, doodling on and signing a restaurant bill that never would be cashed.

"Draw any other stuff as a kid?" I asked.

"My childhood is all gone," he replied, thus ending definitively any discussion of childhood.

"May I see your paintings?"

Bob Smith had anticipated my request. "You can see number one and number 19 and one more."

Number one, an explosion of blacks and reds and yellows, had no discernible form. Streaks of paint shot outward from a central void. After a while he set it aside and placed another picture before me. A dark haunted face of grays and blues stared at me from the second canvas, forcing me to stare back. I looked at it for a minute or two and nodded. He reached for the third canvas. "This one's number 19. It's my last one." He then placed before me the picture he had painted just after electrocuting my patient. A one-dimensional white face, shaped like an upside-down pear, spun towards me out of a vortex of dark, frantic brush strokes. Blobs of black paint designated eyes, nose, and mouth. "Everybody wants this painting," he exclaimed. It was hard for me to take my eyes from it. No one spoke - we all just stared at the canvas. Finally I broke the silence. "How do you feel after an execution?"

"I block it out of my mind. It don't exist. It's there but it's not there, it's stored away." The face on the canvas told a different story. Something did happen to Bob Smith each time he pressed that button.

"And after you paint the pictures? How do you feel then?"

"Nothing. I block it out. Anything I don't want to remember I block it out." Did Bob Smith dissociate after an execution? Could he make himself believe he hadn't done it? Was that why he could say, "I never killed no one"?

"What about pain?" Did he block that out?

"I can do that, too."

LITTLE time and little film remained.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to a rather bulky book.

"That's my scrapbook. Want to see it?" I nodded yes.

Together we sat, side by side, and turned the pages.

"Is that your first execution?" I pointed to a newspaper clipping on the first page.

"That's my little chair," he tapped the clipping. "I've slept in that chair." Cathi told me later that I looked appalled. "It was the only chair available," he explained. Prior to one execution there had been some sort of delay, perhaps a brief stay of execution. Whatever the reason may have been, Bob Smith came early to the event. Tired from his day job and finding nowhere else to get comfortable, he relaxed and caught forty winks in the chair. What else was an exhausted executioner to do? I stared at the newspaper clipping of Bob Smith's "little chair".

"Did you wire it?" Perhaps that accounted for the fondness in his voice when he spoke of it.

"No." He turned the page of the scrapbook.

"That's the warden. He killed a prisoner." I did not ask why. Bob Smith turned the page.

"Now this guy," he said, pointing to a newspaper clipping, "this guy was humongous! We had to use double straps. He beat a man to death with his fists, then stuck him in his car." He turned the page.

"This one sat outside a trailer and shot the guy who was fooling around with his girlfriend." He turned to the next page.

"This one beat a kid to death." Then, with contempt, "This is what they want to turn back to civilisation." He flipped to the next page.

"This sonofabitch killed two kids, this piece of shit right here." He pointed to a picture on the opposite page. "This is the two fathers of the kids ... This piece of shit and his brother tied the boy to a tree and molested the girl. Then they laid them down next to each other and shot them in the head." For someone who claimed to know nothing of the people he executed or their crimes, he had a rather extensive dossier on each. What is more, he never needed to look at the text of the clippings. He had committed the facts to memory.

"And this," he said, pointing to the picture of a young black boy, "is the piece of shit they wanted to save. Somebody should have been skinned alive." Somebody? Did he mean the boy? Did he mean the boy's lawyer? I said nothing. He continued.

"You know what pissed me off? They had one of these Catholic bitches in there. One of these sisters. She kept saying, 'I love you. I love you.' If she'd 'a been there they'd 'a laid her down and shot her." Bob Smith could not stop; he was flooded with memories of events he claimed never to have seen. "She was squealing, 'I love you.' She kept falling out. She went into the witness booth." Then he mumbled, almost to himself, "The bitch should have been killed with them."

"Who?" Had I heard him correctly?

"That old Catholic sister." I had.

For the first time I confronted Bob Smith with one of his inconsistencies. "You told me you don't see them. You don't see the man being executed."

His response was instantaneous. "Yes. He's right there!" Then, to make sure I understood, he drew me a diagram of the death chamber. He saw. On to the next page.

"This is a little girl. They raped her and murdered her and threw her in a field and run her over with a tractor. They're just sexual goddamn perverts." Flip. Another page.

"I executed that one. You know he had a goddamn root canal that morning. That's something the newspapers don't know."

Bob Smith's knowledge of the condemned was not limited to newspaper accounts. He had inside information. He knew a thing or two about his clients before they sat down in his little chair. Now he picked up steam.

"I executed these two, but I don't remember them." Flip.

"I executed him."

"Who's that?" I asked, pointing to a picture that looked familiar.

"That's the last one I did." Then I knew why the face looked familiar. I had worked on the case.

"How do you feel about executing kids?" I tried to sound casual, offhand, indifferent.

"I don't feel a damn thing. How many people do you think he killed?"

"Two or three."

"Two." Then Bob Smith surprised me. "Some people has got to be institutionalised," he declared. "They can't function outside."

"There are people who need to be in an institution," I agreed.

"You're one of them in your profession who helps get them out. Some people have got to be in an institution. Never let loose."

"Right. What about retarded people?" I asked.

"I never executed no retarded people." I wondered if he knew his last client's IQ. I did. As I recall, it hovered in the seventies.

"Would you? Kill a retarded person, that is?"

"Yes. It would never happen." Another Bob Smith paradox. I must have shown my discomfort.

"What do you call retarded?" he challenged. "Somebody picks his nose? Someone who goes to special class? To remedial? Well I had to go to remedial classes. Do you consider me retarded?"

"No." Bob Smith was not retarded.

"How about killing women?" I asked.

"I don't have no qualms about it. Sex, race, religion got nothing to do with it ... I don't have no pity for nobody." The phrase rang in my ears. "I don't have no pity for nobody."

I CAME to Tennessee to interview a sociopath, someone without a trace of psychopathology other than an inability to empathise with his fellow man. Now I had met someone who told me he had "no qualms about killing anyone - man, woman, or child". But had I found what I was looking for? Had I finally found a sociopath? Was Bob Smith the character I had been seeking for years - the cool premeditated killer without a trace of psychosis or brain damage? Obviously not.

Bob Smith was as confused and muddleheaded, as battered and beaten, as the violent men Jonathan and I had interviewed on death row. And by his own admission, he had a violent past. His serial executions were but the latest manifestations of his paranoid rage. Bob Smith insisted, "You gotta have control"; but in the next breath he declared, in his own inimitable way, "Sometimes you got no control over what happens."

Bob Smith insisted that he had no pity for anyone. I think that he probably once did. Execution is not a benign procedure, not for any of the participants. The explosion of pain and confusion let loose in Bob Smith's brain each time he did his job was splattered and scrawled in paint on the canvases he produced immediately after each execution. Then all was forgotten. "I block it out," he said.

I doubt that Bob Smith was always that good at blocking out pain. When he responded to the ad, he must had had some capacity to do that or he would not have applied for the job of executioner in the first place. But by the 57th time he pressed the button and activated his "little chair" - three times for each of his 19 executions - he had had a lot of experience. I suspect that each press of the button further inured him, making it easier and easier over time to do his job.

Could anybody do it? Could just about any of us press that button? If the state's attorney who prosecuted a capital murder case or the judge who handed down the death sentence knew it would fall to him to carry it out, would he do it? Could he do it? I doubt it. If that task came with the territory, most of those prosecutors and judges would not even apply for their jobs. Normal people can't do things like that. Most of us are much too squeamish to kill another human being except in self-defence. It seems to take intense, repeated, intolerable pain early in life, and some sort of organic impairment or psychotic thinking to overcome that taboo.

"I DON'T have no pity for nobody." The words hung in the air. There wasn't a whole lot more to say. George turned off the movie camera and started to pack away the equipment. Cathi finished up the roll of videotape with some clips of Bob Smith's scrapbook and some shots of his canvases. The videotape was still rolling when she asked, off-handedly, "How does your family feel about what you do?" We already knew that Bob Smith's brother had found him the job. Bob Smith said that he wasn't certain just how his sister felt. She did let him stay over at her house those nights he was on call and needed to be near the prison.

Bob Smith had been married a couple of times. The first time, he ran off with a 13-year-old. He had a son from that marriage. In fact, he was already a grandfather.

The videotape continued to roll.

"How would you feel about your son or your grandson going into the same line of work?" Cathi asked.

"It's fine with me," Bob Smith responded. Then he added, "I know how my grandson feels."

"How's that?" I asked.

"He says, 'Zap 'em, Granddaddy'."

The above is extracted from 'Guilty By Reason of Insanity', by Dorothy Otnow Lewis (Fawcett Columbine, $25).