Killer Stories: Conversations with South African murderers

'If you made me angry, to me, for that anger to go away, I have to get hold of you ... I have to do something to you.'

'I didn't feel myself. I felt numb, like a zombie, like a switch had been flicked and a light had gone off.'

These are the words of some of South Africa's most terrifying serial killers, who spoke to psychologist Brin Hodgskiss in the bowels of the country's most secure prisons.

Hodgskiss interviewed several of the most notorious serial killers and his recordings sat gathering dust until recently, when top true-crime podcaster Nicole Engelbrecht found his research online. The two connected and now they bring their love of storytelling to this highly readable book.

In Killer Stories, Hodgskiss combines his interviews with the tenets of narrative psychology to take the reader into the minds of the killers and shares with us the ways in which his own journey as a psychologist and human being contributed to his deeper understanding of them. The book intertwines the killers' versions of the truth and the true-crime stories behind them, re-telling their killing sprees in gripping detail.

Journey with the authors as they lay out how the stories these men told themselves about their lives contributed to where they ended up – and how those stories aren't that different from those we all tell ourselves.

© 2024 Jonathan Ball Publishers (Audiobook): 9781776194346

Release date

Audiobook: 7 August 2024