February 4
Home, again. Or the parental chateau. Schloss Ogilvy. The Hampstead House of Horrors. Both parental figures are absent, as ever. Or as good as. Mum is politicking in her study. She barely raises an eyebrow at my arrival. Dad is printing money in New York City and probably romancing some Eiffel Tower blonde with impeccable lashes and a degree from Wharton.
Theo is my only company. The freelance TV presenter life involves lots of resting. This is a temporary rest after the last temporary rest. I pretend to believe him. He pretends to pretend that I am not pretending. I almost tell him about the takeover. But siblings can’t show weakness to one another.
It is an Ogilvy family rule.
Eventually, Mum emerges from her lair and pours a large glass of wine. Theo disappears with friends to some flea-bitten club in Mayfair. Dad FaceTimes from Manhattan.
I boot up the BBC Sounds app on my iPhone and look at the My Sounds section and see the show I have saved, daring myself to listen. BBC Radio 4. Mysteries of Sleep. The presenter is a neurologist and sleep expert called Dr Guy Leschziner. There are three episodes: ‘Sleepwalking’, ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Sleep Deprivation and Insomnia’. The last two don’t interest me. I long for insomnia. I have night terrors rather than dreams.
No, the thing I fear is sleep.
I order a Deliveroo and retreat to my old family bedroom and lie on the bedcover. I feel the pressure in my head, the slight tightness around my jaw, like a harbinger of another episode, a return of the sickness. The looming inevitability.
I will stay for tonight. It is safer here. The bedroom is pre-equipped, after all. Sturdier locks on the door. Firmer chairs to barricade me in. More furniture to trip over and bruise me back to life. Indy messages asking where I am. I think of telling her about their Proton email account, all the messages I’ve seen, the snooping I’ve done.
But I don’t. Lying is so much simpler.
I reread the blurb for the podcast, willing myself to confront my demons.
Finally, I press play.
February 11
I have listened to the first episode of Mysteries of Sleep six times. In the shower, on the bus, while writing.
I listen to the story of ‘Jackie’ who has been a sleepwalker all her life. She gets up, leaves the house and rides her motorbike with her eyes open. But her brain is still asleep.
‘James’ has night terrors which are so violent and shocking that his marriage has been driven to the point of collapse.
‘Alex’ is convinced that he must save people from floods and is found by his flatmates trying to stop invisible people drowning.
Then, most disturbingly of all, there is ‘Tom’: he was convicted of raping his ex-partner. Once out of prison, he was diagnosed with a condition called sexsomnia. His version of sleepwalking involves sex acts. His eyes are open. He appears fully conscious. But tests show his brain is stuck in a non-REM parasomnia.
It is a few days later. I can’t stop thinking about this. I am on the ‘Sleepwalking’ page on Wikipedia. I am transfixed by the bottom section:
As sleepwalking behaviours occur without volition, sleepwalking can be used as a legal defense. An individual can be accused of non-insane or insane automatism. The first is used as a defense for temporary insanity or involuntary conduct, resulting in acquittal. The latter results in a “special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.” This verdict of insanity can result in a court order to attend a mental institution.
There is a quote from Lord Morris, a former judge and Law Lord, from 1963 in the case of Bratty vs A-G for Northern Ireland. Lord M said that if a person committed a violent crime while unconscious ‘then such a person would not be criminally liable for that act’. Thus precedent was set.
Beneath is a list of homicide cases involving sleepwalking. I have memorised them. The names of those acquitted blur: ‘The Boston Tragedy’ (1846), Sergeant Willis Boshears (1961), Steven Steinberg of Scottsdale, Arizona (1981), R vs Burgess (1991), the defendant found not guilty by reason of ‘insane automatism’, R vs Parks (1992), heard at the Canadian Supreme Court.
Then the list of those not acquitted: Pennsylvania vs Ricksgers (1994), Arizona vs Falater (1999) and California vs Reitz (2001). In the last instance, the defendant’s parents testified about their son’s lifelong sleepwalking. He was still convicted of first-degree murder.
Finally, the hospitalisation cases. In 2001, Antonio Nieto killed his wife and mother-in-law and attempted to murder his son and daughter before waking. He was interned in a psychiatric hospital. In 2003 Jules Lowe killed his father but claimed he didn’t remember the murder and used the legal defence of automatism. He was acquitted by reason of insanity and detained in a secure hospital.
I have been too afraid before. I shut it off and hoped it wasn’t real. But there is so much to explore. From the comic (‘Sleepwalker mows lawn naked’) to the disturbing (‘Sleepwalking woman had sex with strangers’, New Scientist, 2004) to a case I distantly remember on the news. It is an article from the Independent.
MAN WHO KILLED HIS WIFE WHILE SLEEPING GOES FREE
A man who strangled his wife during a nightmare in the belief he was attacking an intruder walked free from court yesterday after the case against him was withdrawn. Brian Thomas, 59, of Neath, South Wales, killed his wife Christine, 57, while they were holidaying in West Wales in July 2008 . . . The prosecution told the jury that it was no longer seeking a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
I read the whole article. I do more research on the other cases.
There is one entry on the Wikipedia page, however, which lassoes my attention. I was too young to remember it. But every student of true crime knows the name. It was the original tabloid crime. A byword for evil.
I look at the final paragraph and the brief commentary. It is the most notable sleep-related British homicide of them all:
1999, R vs Turner: Sally Turner was accused of murdering her two stepchildren in Stockwell with a kitchen knife in January 1999. She claimed to have no memory of the attack and used the legal defence of insane automatism or sleepwalking. Despite a public outcry and rival expert psychological opinion regarding the diagnosis, Turner was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced indefinitely to Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. Turner was found dead in her room on August 30th, 1999. The coroner ruled it as suicide.
Sally Turner. Aka the Stockwell Monster.
I click on the dedicated Sally Turner Wikipedia page. I read the section about her suicide. A sharpened plastic knife was found in her room. No one knows how it got there. Eight years later, all female patients were moved out of Broadmoor. Some went to Rampton Secure Hospital; others were housed in The Orchard, a medium-secure unit in West London.
I see the true crime documentary already. And the germ of my long-form piece. Truman Capote had the New York Times. I have Wikipedia.
My inspiration. The spark.
A twentieth anniversary retrospective. Women, madness, murder, morals. With a newsy hook.
Did Sally Turner kill herself or was the Stockwell Monster murdered?
I finally have my story.