(2/2) “One day I stole my neighbor’s benefit check out of the...

(2/2) “One day I stole my neighbor’s benefit check out of the mailbox, and she came looking for it. I was in my mid-twenties, and by that time the voices were very strong. They were screaming at me to do bad things. They were telling me to protect myself. That I was in danger. So I went downstairs to the woman’s apartment where she lived with her ten-year-old daughter. I can’t remember this or I won’t sleep tonight. I kept vomiting while it happened. I didn’t sleep for two weeks. The woman and her daughter kept coming back to life and I would see them everywhere. One time I opened the shower curtain and the woman was standing there and I screamed. The detectives questioned me but they let me go. They didn’t suspect me. I went to Jamaica and lived for two years and nobody looked for me. But the images were always in my head. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to the American embassy, and I told them: ‘I’ve committed a murder.’”

(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)