Matty took a deep breath, paired his silverware neatly on the plate and dabbed his mouth with a napkin.
‘I promise you’ve nothing to be afraid of. Your mam’s safe. He’s not coming after her.’
At the time, I found his words soothing. Trusted him in the unquestioning way only children can.
I have plenty of questions now though. In particular, how was he able to guarantee our safety with such confidence?
The obvious answer haunts me.
And why it didn’t occur to me then.
New Documentary Shows Change in Monster Melgren’s Voice When Asked About His Victims
A new docuseries– Sessions with a Psycho – will feature televised conversations with serial murderer Matty Melgren from inside Battlemouth Prison where he is serving a life sentence with no parole.
The programme marks the fifteen-year anniversary of his conviction for the murders of nine women in North London and an eight-year-old girl in Brownstone, Ireland in the early 1980s.
In a trailer for the programme, Melgren says:
‘It’s important people hear my side of the story. I’ve been painted as this monster, an evil being with terrible urges I can’t control. But that’s not who I am.
‘I’m a regular guy, locked up for crimes I didn’t commit. Imagine how that feels, spending your life behind bars even though you didn’t do anything wrong.’
In another trailer, the interviewer tells the camera:
‘When I asked him about the murders, Matty’s tone changed. It became deeper, noticeably lower-pitched. He began speaking more slowly too, more deliberately. The way you do when speaking to a person you find attractive. When you’re turned on.’
The series is directed by Emmy winner Henry Salinger, who also directed My Name is Matty, a feature film starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who had to dye his hair blonde for the role of Melgren.
Extract from the Tribune
‘When I asked him about the murders, Matty’s tone changed. It became deeper. . . He began speaking more slowly too. . . The way you do when speaking to a person you find attractive. When you’re turned on,’ says Tom Richardson, the interviewer in a new docuseries about serial killer, Matty Melgren.
Did it though? Really? Or is this just yet another example of someone attributing more to Melgren than is really there? Of casting him in the role of an archetypal villain. And is doing so, perpetuating another form of villainy?
As so often happens in programmes of this sort concerning Melgren, the interviewer paints him as the ‘impossible-to-understand killer’ owing to the simple fact of his good looks and intelligence. The only reasonable answer to– How could someone so apparently normal be guilty of such heinous crimes?– being to rip off the mask and reveal the monster beneath. And this is where the problem lies.
In the same way juries so often fail to convict handsome, well-educated young men of rape because they don’t want to ‘ruin their lives’, there is something profoundly perverse about feeling the need to portray Melgren as some kind of anti-hero.
Claiming his voice changed when talking about the women he brutally murdered plays directly into this unfortunate trope and effectively lionises a man who is frankly little more than mediocre.