The Beginning

℘ Marcos Cortes (Childhood Friend)

I remember a time when Taylor wasn’t as depressed as most people remember. Back when we were really young, say around 7 years old or so, we would catch frogs and play on the swing set his mother built in his backyard. I remember we did this everyday, just kid stuff like digging holes randomly. Things changed when he hit the age of 10 though, although I never could figure out what that change was…

℘ Melissa Winters (Taylor’s Mother)

Daily you say? I only let Taylor out of the house twice a week, at most. The boy was too fragile, and you know mothers with only one child. I was so protective, never let him out of my sight. He was incredibly smart; you could see it just by looking at him. Sometimes I thought he was too smart for his own good, always questioning things. Sometimes he would question things that never should be questioned.

℘ John Parks (FBI Agent)

Yeah, the Winters case. I spent over a year following that boy, always one step behind. I still don’t even know half of the stuff that he’s done in his life, even though his rap sheet is over 12 pages long. He was meticulous, created the most pristine crime scenes, most of the local cops in each town he visited thought these were all freak accidents, you know, lady falls down the stairs, man forgets to put his car in park and rolls into an on-coming train, stuff like that. There was always a pattern though, no one else could see it but it was so obvious to me.

℘ Trevor Donahue (Cellmate)

I couldn’t wait until his time was up. Until it was his turn to take that needle. That boy sent chills down my back almost everyday. I would wake up to him just sitting there in his bed, just staring at the bars, never saying a word. He’d do this all day, from the moment I woke up ‘til the moment I closed my eyes at night. Downright creepy, that’s what it was. Nothing more, nothing less, just plain old creepy.

℘ Grace Whitman (Teacher)

Taylor was the model student, always had the answer and was so helpful. Something could be said about his motivation though, or lack thereof. He just seemed so sad in class, I can honestly say I’ve never seen him smile.

℘ Ted Grey (Forensic Pathologist)

I haven’t seen a specimen like Taylor Winters in my entire life. It was a joy working on that body, truly amazing. When he came in he had 38 bullet holes in him and the adrenaline was still pumping from his lifeless body. Oh, and you can’t rule out that initial nasty knife wound to his stomach. How he made it so long without bleeding out I’ll never know.

The Turn

℘ Melissa Winters

Once he started middle school I kind of lost touch with Taylor, which killed me. My only boy would come home crying from school some days and I’d have no idea why. He wouldn’t have any marks on him at all, so I knew it wasn’t bullying. His grades were perfect, always straight A’s except for those few rare times when he would get a low C, always a low C. Those times didn’t affect him either, he just brushed it off like nothing ever happened and went on with his life.

℘ Marcos Cortes

Why was Taylor so depressed? That was obvious to anyone who tried to get to know him during high school. There was only one reason why he tried to stay home in the mornings. Why I would have to go to his house 45 minutes before school started each day to force him out of bed and throw him in the shower. It was her.

℘ Heather Wright (Neurologist)

Brain tumors have always been a reason for why serial killers snap. Take Charles Whitman for example, killed 16 people Texas. Taylor Winters had a tumor the size of a golf ball in the frontal lobe area of his brain. May I remind you, the frontal lobe is the area responsible for human behavior. I believe that as a child he must have taken a hard fall or was possibly dropped at a very young age. This would have definitely resulted in brain damage possible of manifesting later in life.

℘ John Parks

Brain damage? You’re kidding, right? That boy had nothing physically wrong with him. He was the healthiest, most active young man this side of the Pacific. No, there was something wrong with his brain, but it was because of his mother. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a house like that. No father, an over protective mother who coddled her only child. Who knows what kind of garbage she filled that boys head with. No wonder he grew up to be a killer.

℘ Melissa Winters

Everyday I would tell Taylor how special he was, how much better he was than everyone else. He was a genius, so much farther in his studies than everyone in his class, in his school actually. He would come home from school with notes from his teachers urging me to send him to a private institution, where he could get the education he needed to reach his potential in life. Only problem was the money, who knew it would cost 25,000 a year for a “proper” education. This started both of our hatred for the rich.

℘ Marcos Cortes

He was obsessed with her, always talking about how great she was, how perfect she was. I started to grow sick of hearing about Kera. The only thing he wanted in life was to be with her, he didn’t care about grades or sports or anyone else, just her. I told him that if he was that desperate he should just go talk to her or something. Well, one day he did and she shut him down, hard. I’m talking about laughing, insulting, every embarrassing thing in the book that a guy spends his whole life afraid of. She did it all. He was crushed after that. That summer we started to grow apart, I heard from him less and less until he just stopped talking to me. That little scene in his life was why he became a killer. All because of some girl in high school….

℘ John Parks

Let me tell you a story. One cold night in December, and I mean cold, I get a page from the station that there was just a domestic abuse call from this house. My partner and I were just cruising out of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.  Yeah stereotypical, laugh it up. Well we were just returning from our break and were nearby so we thought we’d check it out. We’re both thinking it’s a typical husband hits wife, scares her and she calls the police thing. We thought we’d get there and she say it was her fault and nothing ever happened, she “fell down the stairs” or something like that. Well we arrive on scene to a wide open screen door and complete silence. We pull our pistols and walk in, now completely thrown off. The maroon kitchen is completely empty except for a young lady on her knees crying. Well, we do the only thing we can do. We call the paramedics and bring her in to the station. She tells us that she came home to the house like that. Her story was clearly faulty and it was obvious that she murdered her husband, obvious to me I guess. She went to court, I testified against her but who’s a jury going to believe? The crying, pregnant wife of a husband who was just butchered or a rookie detective? That was the kind of house Taylor grew up in. That was the reason I wasn’t surprised when I was put on his case. Like mother, like son.

The Ascent

℘ Mark Adler (Hit man)

This job isn’t for the weak, mentally or physically. If you’re not starting out insane, you definitely are leaving with a few mental problems. Some of the hits you feel completely guilty for, its human nature I guess. It does get easier after awhile a guess, you start to lose your conscious and your morals begin to deteriorate. We all felt like we could talk to each other about it though, we all knew we were going through the same thing. Kind of like a “Killers Anonymous” meeting. Taylor was always different though; he was a loner and never came to the bar on Tuesday nights with everyone. After awhile we all just left him alone. He wasn’t doing this for the money, like most of us were, that part was obvious.

℘ Mikael Iscariot (Mob Boss)

Taylor Winters? Best hit man we’ve had in a long time. He asked no questions, it didn’t matter to him if he was going on a suicide mission or just taking out some lady with her baby. He impressed almost everyone who saw his work. It was gruesome, stomach turning, but somehow beautiful. You couldn’t take your eyes off of the scene. That was how we knew he would never be caught.

℘ Trevor Donahue

He never talked to me about his hits. Most of our cellmates bragged about their crimes, how perfectly their early crimes were carried out and what they could have done differently to have not been caught. Taylor just sat there, almost emotionless, save for a small smirk that would cross his mouth whenever someone else would tell their best story. He had a slight god complex, which is why I thought he never talked. He believed he was better than us, so he isolated himself from us. One day, someone was going to have to show him reality.

℘ Mark Adler

You could tell you were going insane once you joined in the little game we used to have between the rest of the guys. Part of the game was to see how many hits you could get, another was the style you did them in. The whole thing was quite sick, sitting around a table at the local bar, each man taking his turn telling about how gruesome they made their last hit. Taylor, like always, kept to himself. He was never one to elaborate. There were a few times, when he had too much to drink, where he would tell you stories of his greatest hits. Those were times I wished I just stayed home, or decided to sleep in, or happened to miss the bus to the bar. I just wished I could be anywhere but near that man.

℘ Melissa Winters

He was the greatest son a mother could ask for. He was never in trouble with the law after he moved out. He was working for a major corporation in Chicago and was quickly promoted. He made so much money, enough to buy his dear mother a new car and help pay off the mortgage!

℘ Marcos Cortes

Taylor occasionally came home, and when he did we could see he was spinning further and further out of control. He always had a new toy to play with, or a new present for his mother. A few of us knew how he was getting the money, but we would never say a word. The worst was watching his mom’s reactions to the gifts. She had no idea what he was doing to get them for her and was still under an illusion that everyone else saw through after a few weeks. I had done some personal investigation by myself, looked up a few names and numbers in Chicago, you know because I was worried about him. No one in the corporation he claimed he worked for had ever heard of him.

℘ John Parks

I was called to numerous crime scenes during a ten year period. All had a familiar look to me, though I could never, ever put what I was feeling into words. They were like I’ve never seen before, blood was almost always everywhere, and it looked like a massacre. Dismembered bodies, fingers and toes cooking on the stove, just stuff you couldn’t even imagine someone doing to another human. I’d arrive on the scene to see crime scene investigators, people who see this kind of stuff daily, vomiting outside and warning me not to go inside. Worst stuff I’ve ever seen, stuff that sticks in your mind for a long time.

℘ Ted Grey

It’s a rare occurrence but it still happens. A soldier in the field gets shot near the heart or lungs and should die right on the spot. For some reason they keep going, complete their object, do whatever they needed to do and then die. Governments have been trying to capitalize on this for a long time, what do you think stem cell research is for? We’re always looking for a new way to get the advantage, no matter what the other side effects to our bodies are. Always trying to be stronger, smarter, doing whatever it takes to achieve this, sometimes without even knowing why or what we are actually doing to ourselves. No one is happy with what they were born with anymore.

The Break

℘ Dr. Irene Cogan (Psychiatrist)

I’ve never met the man, but from what I’ve gather the case is simple, well not as simple as most, he had half a dozen things wrong with him. The major problem was that he was a Schizophrenic narcissist. This was amplified by the new type of drug he was taking in high school to battle his depression. His problems most probably derived from some sort of social trauma when he was younger, and this wrecked his personality. He created a “shell” to keep his inner self from being emotionally hurt. This created a split in him, an inner and outer self, a “true” and “false” self. The self that others saw was the way he was described, cold, uninviting, isolated. His inner self would have only been seen by people who knew him before whatever trauma occurred. The attention he received from his mother was just the beginning. It was too much for him, constantly being the center of attention, it swallowed him up. After this trauma he ran from love whenever it came up, he couldn’t handle the anxiety that arose from it. It’s all quite sad actually. This schizophrenia eventually led to his other problems, his Sadism and Depersonalization explain his ability to kill. All of this, probably because of some small event, an event that most of us would brush off or laugh at, but to him was life changing.

℘ Melissa Winters

I believed Taylor was perfect, that he would grow old and take good care of his weak mother. Imagine my surprise when I receive a knock on my door and a message by a FBI agent and a local police officer that my precious boy was in prison! There was no way he was a killer, I knew from the moment they told me that they were lying. I kindly told them that sick jokes were not appreciated in the Winters’ house and quickly slammed the door closed.

℘ John Parks

After all these years I half expected the mother to change, but she was still as delusional as ever. She still only believed whatever she wanted to, and didn’t let anything else change her mind. Agent Wexley and I showed her all of the evidence we had, and it was quite good evidence if I say so myself. We even brought out the pictures of the victims that we suspected Taylor killed. Nothing swayed her one bit; she just said something about a joke and angrily slammed the door in our faces. Wexley wanted to keep trying, but I told him the story about Taylor’s father and we both decided to just give up on her.

℘ Marcos Cortes

To tell the truth, I wasn’t really all that surprised. I knew something like this was bound to happen. I gave up a long time ago, after doing all I could to try and stop it. There was definitely something wrong with him, rationally reasoning with him no longer worked. The last time I saw him he just kept muttering something about having revenge. I feel like I should have done more, but there really was nothing I could do. He couldn’t be helped by anyone.

The Fall

℘ Mark Adler

We all thought he was untouchable. All of the detectives ever assigned to his case all came up with nothing. Everything was too perfect, too clean. We didn’t know how he did it, he just never slipped up. Rumor has it he was set up by Mikael because he was getting too good. Everyone feared him, and he was obviously insane, which made him even more dangerous. Story goes that Mikael asked him to take out a detective by the name of John Parks, at a certain time to, in the middle of a conference at the local police station. This was no easy hit and every one of us would have flat-out said no thanks. But not Taylor, no, nothing was too big for his ego. He jumped at the chance.

℘ Mikael Iscariot

Yeah, I’m already in enough trouble, so I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell you how Taylor really was caught. He was an amazing hit man, but he was bonkers. He was completely gone in the head, and that scared a lot of us. It’s bad enough having sane killers around you on a daily basis, but even worse when they’re totally insane. Any day Taylor could have walked in for a hit, and if he didn’t like it or just snapped he could have just killed everyone there. He had the skill to do that sort of thing to, and the worse part is it wouldn’t have matter to him and he probably would have gotten away with it. I knew that we couldn’t just let him go, because even with the low morals I have I still would have felt guilty about freeing that monster in the world. At least here I had some control over him, and he wasn’t just killing random people. We had a meeting about what best to do with him, and we decided to give him an impossible assignment. We placed a hit on one of the leading detectives in town, and told Taylor that he had to be killed in the middle of a police conference, when we knew that every cop in town would be there. Well, that crazy bastard actually accepted. His enthusiasm left me with a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I hoped that this worked, because if it didn’t our back up plan definitely wouldn’t have.

℘ John Parks

Here’s a story for you. We’re, and be we I’m referring to every cop in town who wasn’t at the time a rookie, are all sitting in a dining hall for our annual police conference, just drinking and swapping stories awaiting the announcements for promotions and awards. Well guess who decided to show up? Yeah, Taylor Winters. And he had a gun; this was too good to be true! In my drunken state I managed to somehow work my gun out of the holster in my jacket on the back of my chair. By that time a small riot has started, imagine a bunch of drunken police officers receiving kind bullets while they tried to find their guns. It was a massacre; we lost a lot of men that year, about 15 to be exact. Well while Taylor was shooting people, looking around for something or someone I sneaked out into the hallway and around to the entrance where he came in. My plan was to use the fellow policemen as bait and try to sneak up behind him. Well fortunately this worked out much better than I could have ever imagined. I was right behind him when he turned and I slammed him in the head with my pistol, knocking him out.

℘ Trevor Donahue

This is about the time I met him. He was thrown into the cell half unconscious, after trying to escape from his trial. They found him guilty on all charges, 43 counts of murder, which added up to a lot of years I guess, because they decided it would be easier to put him on death row, with people like me. Eventually he fully woke up and I introduced myself to him, but he would have no part of that. He just sat there staring at the bars, which I found extremely odd but would get used to after while. I swear I would have had a better time by myself than with him as my cellmate. Finally the day came where he was to be executed, today he decided to talk. He told me every single one of his hits, and then a few people he killed before becoming a hit man. I was disgusted by very many of them. This brought his count up to 83, which is a lot of people to kill in 15 years. I told him I was probably going to tell this to the guards when they took him and he flipped out. I guess he didn’t realize that he was about to be killed anyway, and that they weren’t going to stop killing him if they somehow were told about 40 something more murders. Well this started a brawl and a series of very improbable events. During the fight I grabbed my knife I spent the last few weeks making and stabbed him in the stomach. He let out a shriek which alerted the guards and when they opened the bars to take him to the hospital or the chair or wherever he was going he bolted, ran straight through them and down the hall. The last thing I heard him ever say was “I can’t die yet; I haven’t finished what I’ve started.” Well, the two guards were starting to get to their feet, obviously with the wind knocked out of them. Unfortunately for them they weren’t paying attention to the inmate with a knife at the other side of the cell. As much as I hated Taylor I still was a killer. That probably was what let him go free, no guards to alert the rest of the prison that there was a convict on the loose. Too bad.

℘ John Parks

It was the most exhilarating day of my life, I finally was able to bring him down and rid myself of that horrible family. We received a call from a teller in the back of a bank saying there was a man there who had already killed 5 people, including another teller. He claimed that the man had not yet asked for any money but had a look of satisfaction on his face. He said the man was just sitting in a chair, no longer holding the gun, but everyone else was too afraid to move. When we arrived we realized it was Taylor, and that he was in fact just sitting in a chair. We called in SWAT and I guess he heard the sirens because at that point he picked up his pistol and hid behind a desk. Not trying to loose anymore men we let SWAT do all of the work, which led to a 3 hour holdout before it all ended in a cloud of teargas and gunshots. Taylor did quite decently for a bleeding man clearly outnumbered; he managed to hit three men in their Kevlar, but in turn took 38 bullets. Some people claimed police brutality over this piece of information, but they clearly have never met this man. Walking inside the bank my heart dropped when I saw that he had actually killed 5 people. The other hostages claimed that he walked in and went right up to the female teller and without saying anything shot her in the chest. Two men tried to sneak up behind him and wrestle the gun out of his hands but Taylor shot both of them in the head. The other two, they said, he shot because he said he was bored. I walked up to the body of the teller and checked for a driver’s license or something. I found it in the purse next to her booth and read the first name. Kera.

℘ Ted Grey

I was quite disappointed while viewing the Winters body. I was expecting a miracle, a specimen of the highest caliber, one to explain how he stayed alive. Instead, what I saw was a perfectly normal man, no brain tumor, nothing at all wrong with his brain actually. He had never broken any bones, torn any ligaments or tendons. He was remarkably in good shape, you know, besides all of the gunshot wounds. I was annoyed, what I had before me was so much potential for advancing medicine, and there was just nothing there. He was just another typical unexplainable case.