A Story for the Gallows

In 2016, I took on a bizarre case for a second-instance defense.

My client was a teenage killer. He had assaulted three people, murdered four, and burned the bodies before fleeing. He had already escaped the police radar.

But suddenly, he turned himself in, pled guilty in court, and calmly accepted the death sentence.

I was at my wits’ end, assuming the case was lost.

Then he said, “I want to overturn the verdict.”

1

In the spring of 2016, I took on a sensational case.

The client was a mother with a weathered face, dressed plainly, yet the retainer she offered was substantial.

The defendant was her son, Liam Cole.

She had no other demands; she just wanted him alive.

I reviewed the case files, and the outlook was grim.

It was a murder and arson case that took place in a suburban villa.

There were four victims: a local well-known entrepreneur named Marcus Reed, his wife, his son, and a drifter named Travis Black.

The autopsy revealed that three of them showed signs of sexual assault, with Marcus being the only exception.

The police investigation had been difficult; the fire destroyed all traces, and being in the suburbs, there was little surveillance footage.

But two months later, Liam turned himself in, and the case was closed just like that.

The first trial ended with a death sentence. The legal aid lawyer could do nothing.

In court, Liam smiled as he admitted to all charges. In his final statement, he said he killed for pleasure and only regretted not torturing the victims longer that night.

A pure antisocial personality. It attracted media attention, and public opinion spiraled.

While awaiting the death penalty review, Liam’s mother finally scraped together enough money to find our law firm, hoping for a turnaround.

In the detention center, I met Liam, and he surprised me.

A delicate-looking boy, polite in speech, nineteen years old but looking no more than fifteen or sixteen.

He didn’t look like a murderous demon who despised the court at all.

His first sentence after sitting down stunned me:

“Miss Lawyer, I want to overturn the verdict.”

His tone was as casual as if he were saying he wanted breakfast.

“Overturn the verdict? Are you denying your previous crimes?”

“No. Murder, arson, I admit to all of it. But I want to overturn the verdict.”

I started to feel something was off.

“How do you plan to do that?”

Liam blinked.

“I’m going to tell you a story. You have to write down every single word.”

Later, I would learn just how crucial that request was.

2

I said in court that I killed for fun, but actually, I didn’t.

I did it to restore my sexual function.

Miss Lawyer, as a woman, you might not understand my state of mind. Let me start from the beginning.

In the beginning, it was all about money.

I was born in a remote village, a poor place.

My father built our house years ago. It leaked rain and wind, and we had no money to fix it.

We had a few acres of land where we grew feed corn for pigs.

It tasted terrible, but the yield was high. It could feed pigs and fill human stomachs.

We didn’t have a TV, only a radio my father picked up while working in the city.

It was my only channel to understand the world.

My favorite station broadcasted legal cases.

I liked lawyers very much.

Moving their lips, they could send bad guys to prison and make big money. It was amazing.

I dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

Reality, of course, isn’t as easy as dreaming.

When I got older, like most people in the village, I went to the city to work.

But manual labor was hard, and I couldn’t handle hardship.

By chance, I met a middle-aged man in an urban village.

He took me to a rental room and gave me a hundred dollars.

It was painful, but that was a whole hundred dollars. I didn’t know how much rice that could buy.

It only took ten minutes to earn that money.

I was desperate for money.

Like that, I drifted through the alleys on the edge of the city.

Later, a regular customer took me in directly, bringing me to his home to keep me.

Nominally, I was his adopted son; at night, what had to happen, happened.

But I didn’t care. He could provide me with a stable income and a place to live, and that was enough.

Years later, one night, he died of cardiac arrest after taking medicine. I even attended his funeral.

I hated him, but he did help me.

That’s a story for later. Let’s talk about back then.

Not long after being taken in, my life stabilized a bit. Young and ignorant, I met a girl.

She was a city girl, clean, with skin white as porcelain.

We moved fast. Not many days later, we found a hotel.

Although I did dirty work, I didn’t like men.

I was still a blank sheet of paper when it came to matters between men and women.

So it wasn’t until that night that I discovered I couldn’t perform as a man.

I fled in panic.

After that, I tried many methods, but none succeeded.

I went to the hospital for a checkup. The doctor said there was no physical problem, and I didn’t have any diseases.

But for some reason, it just didn’t work.

At this time, Travis told me he had a way.

He read in a book that most male dysfunctions are psychological, not physiological.

In other words, my body was fine; my brain was the problem.

Intense sensory stimulation could help the brain overcome this barrier.

That’s why some people seek pleasure on the edge of suffocation.

I was afraid of death and didn’t dare try suffocation.

Travis said he had a way, leave it to him.

Under his lead, we entered the Reed family’s suburban villa.

There, under intense stimulation, I really recovered my ability.

3

“Travis? One of the deceased, the drifter? You knew him?”

“Friends from the streets. We’re all lowlives; knowing each other is normal, isn’t it?”

I thought for a moment.

“Are you saying Travis was your accomplice? You broke into the Reed villa together, and he was the mastermind?”

“Yes.”

I sighed.

“This won’t work. You say you were accomplices, so why did he die? To shift the blame to Travis, you need evidence, but I guess you don’t have any, otherwise you would have presented it at the first trial. Also, the case file mentions Travis had a terrible reputation and was selfish. Why would he commit a crime just to help you?”

Liam thought for a moment and nodded.

“So that’s how it is… But I didn’t intend to shift the blame to him. Miss Lawyer, please hear me out.”

4

Travis didn’t want to help me; he wanted me to help him.

Marcus Reed’s son, Julian Reed, was from the same hometown as Travis. They grew up together, and Travis used to be the big brother.

As adults, one went uphill, the other downhill.

The Reed family got rich doing business and lived in a villa. Julian started working in the family company before graduating college. His life was smooth sailing.

Travis’s parents died early. He spent his family fortune on drinking, gambling, and whoring, owing a lot of debt.

Travis often borrowed money from Julian. Remembering their old friendship, Julian always gave it and never asked for it back.

But over time, he stopped giving, saying he’d help in emergencies but not poverty.

Travis held a grudge because of this.

On the night of the crime, Travis went to the Reed house again and came back to find me for a drink.

Muttering about how they became rich and looked down on him.

After staring at me for a long time, he suddenly mentioned the plan to treat me with intense stimulation and asked me to go to the Reed house with him.

I thought I might as well try, so I went along.

When we snuck into the villa, it was late at night, and the three members of the Reed family were asleep.

The first to suffer was Julian’s mother.

Travis told me he would go first, and I would be next, so I could watch and learn.

Julian and his father were tied up, gagged, thrown aside, watching along with me.

Watching Travis’s atrocities, I had no reaction.

Instead, when I glimpsed Julian’s face out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly reacted.

At the time, I didn’t understand why, but I was delighted.

I don’t want to describe what happened next in detail.

When it all ended, Julian’s mother wasn’t moving anymore.

She seemed to have had a chronic illness. Under such misfortune happening to herself and her son, she got too agitated and died.

Since a life was lost, Travis and I decided to go all the way.

I killed Julian, and Travis killed Marcus.

One life each, ensuring we had leverage over each other.

Travis usually acted tough, but killing for the first time, after pulling out the knife, he was so scared he couldn’t stand and collapsed on the ground.

It’s embarrassing to say.

Seeing him like that, I reacted again.

Travis probably didn’t expect to become my prey.

Caught off guard, he was easily tied up by me.

In the last moments of his life, he kept cursing me.

But I was too excited. The pleasure outweighed everything.

After it was all over, looking at the mess, I just set it on fire.

That’s it.

Miss Lawyer, are you okay?