True Crime Campfire - Golden Boy: The Story of Brian Blackwell

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Lying is an essential human activity—everybody does it sometimes. And there are a few different reasons people do it. Sometimes it’s an innocent attempt to spare somebody’s feelings: Y’know, ���It’s not you, it’s me,” or “Oh no, Gramma, I loved that sweater you made me! It’s just um…it was stolen. Yeah, stolen!” Sometimes it’s to avoid accountability. “I didn’t kill that guy,” or “That vase was shattered when I got here.” Sometimes it’s to cause somebody else pain. “I never loved you.” And sometimes, it’s about creating a fantasy version of ourselves, because we don’t like who we see in the mirror. For a small percentage of these people, the big lie they build around themselves becomes their greatest treasure—something to guard with everything they have. And anyone who threatens it might not make it out alive. Join us for the story of "perfect son" Brian Blackwell, who built an elaborate web of lies to impress his girlfriend--that he was an up and coming professional tennis player, that he'd just closed on a 450,000 pound flat in the same complex as a famous footballer, that he could afford to give her anything and everything she wanted. When his parents threatened to put a stop to his fraud, he committed one of the most shocking crimes in British history. Sources:The Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1493035/Psychological-time-bomb-that-turned-teenage-son-into-frenzied-killer.htmlThe Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/30/ukcrime.helencarterBBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4634401.stmBBC's "Real Crime," episode "A Perfect Son"BBC's "Killing Mum and Dad," episode "Brian Blackwell"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Lying is an essential human activity. Everybody does it sometimes. And there are a few different reasons people do it. Sometimes it's an innocent attempt to spare somebody's feelings, you know, it's not you, it's me, or, oh no, grandma, I love that sweater you made me, it's just, um, it was stolen. Yeah, stolen. Sometimes it's to avoid accountability. I didn't kill that guy, or that vase was shattered when I got here.

Sometimes it's to cause somebody else pain, like, I never loved you. And sometimes, it's about creating a fantasy version of ourselves, because we don't like who we see in the mirror. For a small percentage of those people, the big lie they build around themselves becomes their greatest treasure, something to guard with everything they have, and anyone who threatens it might not make it out alive. This is Golden Boy, the story of Brian Blackwell. So, campers, for this one, we're in the pretty leafy village of Melling, England. September 5th, 2004. A guy named Pete Boyle was getting a little worried about his elderly neighbors, Sydney and Jacqueline Blackwell. He knew they were in Spain at their vacation house, but they'd apparently forgotten to stop their mail, and newspapers and envelopes were building up on the front porch.

That's a great way to let burglars know you're not home, so Pete felt like he ought to go over and collect them. So he took his daughter with him and headed over to the Blackwell's house. everything seemed quiet but as he approached the house he caught the scent of something sickly sweet rotten horrible and then out of the corner of his eye he saw something odd in the front window when he looked closer his stomach turned the entire window was black with flies living crawling buzzing flies horrified pete and his daughter stumbled back and as they looked up at the house they realized that every front window and the place was thick with flies. Something was horribly, horribly wrong here. Pete grabbed his daughter and they ran to call the police. As soon as the officers got within a few feet of the front door, they knew what they were about to find. Any first responder knows the smell of death. You can't mistake it for anything else. And as soon as they opened the door, they knew they were right. There were flies and blue bottles

everywhere. The kitchen floor was a virtual carpet of them. Even before, you walked in you could hear the low buzzing. And the smell was unbelievable. It didn't take them long to find the source. Sidney Blackwell, whom everybody called Big Brian after his middle name, lay dead in his easy chair. It was clear his body had lain there for quite some time. He was already pretty decomposed, and the blood all around the body had dried. Next, the officers followed bloody drag marks on the carpet to the body of Sidney's wife Jackie, sprawled face down on the floor in the bathroom, a dried pool of blood around her. Their injuries were horrendous. At first, the officers thought they'd both been murdered with a shotgun, but the bodies were too decomposed to be sure.

Later, the medical examiner would determine they'd actually been bludgeoned and stabbed. They thought, maybe this was a burglary gone wrong. There was some broken glass near the door, but they quickly realized that wasn't it. Nothing seemed to have been stolen or disturbed, and the level of violence was shocking. It was overkill, and what? does that usually mean? Rage. The kind of rage you get when there's a close personal relationship between the victims and their killer. As a group of shocked neighbors gathered to watch the police and CSIs come and go from the house, they talked about how awful it was to lose Big Brian and Jackie this way.

They were such a great couple. They'd lived in the neighborhood for almost 20 years and they kept a beautiful house and garden. Big Brian liked to talk gardening with the neighbors, and one of his favorite things to do was go putter around at the garden center, looking for new plants and shrubs to take home. Although they were both older and retired, Brian was 72 and Jackie 61, they had a teenage son, Brian Jr. A golden boy they doted on and sent to one of the best schools around.

They were so proud of him, always telling people about his plans to go to medical school after graduation. What would the poor kid do now? He'd be devastated. It didn't take investigators long to track down the son, Brian. He was staying at the house where his girlfriend lived with her mom and sister. He'd been there for six weeks, ever since he and a mall got back from a three-week trip to the States. Although investigators never liked to have to tell a person that their loved one has been murdered, these detectives were already feeling suspicious of young Brian Blackwell. He'd been back from his trip for six weeks now and he didn't realize something was wrong with his parents.

How do you not hear from your folks for a month and a half and not start to worry about them? That, plus the overkill, the lack of forced entry, and the fact that nothing about the scene suggested a robbery gone wrong, told the investigators they needed to sit Brian down in an interview room and give him the works. But let's put a pin in that for a few minutes to get a little backstory on our boy Brian and his folks. Brian was a rock star academically. So bright that his friends at school gave him the nickname Brains. He was one of those infuriated. He was one of those infuriated. people who didn't have to apply themselves to get all A's. He wanted to be a doctor someday.

And he was super outgoing. He loved being the center of attention. People thought pretty highly of the kid, classmates and teachers alike. He was one of the school's high flyers, as one of his former teachers told the BBC show, Real Crime. And his parents adored him. He was the only child they had together, and they had big dreams for him. Big Brian and Jackie made sure that Brian Jr. had the best of everything.

But according to people close to the family, there was a cost to that. Brian's parents could be a scoche controlling sometimes. For example, Brian was getting close to graduation, and he'd already started getting acceptance letters from the universities he'd applied to. He was over the moon when he got into Nottingham University, one of the most competitive schools in the UK with a top-tier pre-med program. Brian and his girlfriend, Amal, both wanted to go there. But Brian's parents wanted him to go to Edinburgh University in Scotland. They just liked the city better, thought it'd be a better fit for their boy. Now, plenty of parents have

capital O opinions about where their kids should go to school, but I suspect not many would do what Brian's Pops did, which was call up Nottingham University and cancel Brian's admission, saying, thanks for the offer, but Brian's going to go to Edinburgh instead. He did this, of course, without telling Brian. Holy shitballs, can we say boundary violation? Dang. Yep, that's intense. Not only that, but some of Brian's friends later told the BBC that Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell

didn't really like for Brian to hang out with kids his own age. They liked for him to socialize with people their age. Full-grown adults he met at the tennis club. Weird. And the older Brian got, the more he fought with him about all this. And about quite a bit of other stuff, too, which we'll get to in a minute. Despite his big brain and outgoing personality, Brian's friends at school noticed he was prone to telling tall tales. And they got taller and taller the older he got.

He was what the Brits referred to as a fantasist. Anything he told you about his test scores, for example, you'd be pretty safe to cut it down to about one one hundredth as impressive as he made it sound. Take his tennis skills, for example. I mean, he was a decent player. He was captain of the tennis team at school, and he had actually snagged a low-level sponsorship at one point. But it wasn't like Adidas or anything like that.

It was a local pro shop or something, and what he got out of it was a modest discount on tennis equipment. That was it. small potatoes. I mean, he wasn't getting ads for best fiends or pros, which you have all heard by now, and you should have the discount codes for. We're just saying. Brian wasn't pro-level talented, not even close. And everybody on his team seemed to realize that, except him. In his mind, Brian was good enough to squash Venus Williams, headed for a sparkling career as a famous international tennis player slash doctor, I guess.

A legend in his own mind, he inflated the piddly little sponsorship he had to the point where he was telling people Nike was sponsoring him to travel to tournaments all over the country. He even went so far as to tear out a chart from a tennis magazine, one that showed all the top youth players and their stats, and alter it, so it looked like he was on the list. His motive for that little caper seems to have been to impress his girlfriend, Amal Saba. Amal was, by all accounts, a sweetheart. She wanted to be a doctor, too. Her mom was one, and she and Brian liked daydreaming about going to Nottingham University together to study medicine. She was a smart, gorgeous girl, and Brian was big time warm for her form. So, of course, he did what any sensible, intelligent guy would do, right?

He decided to just be himself, treat her with respect, try and make her laugh, and let her get to know the real him. Just kidding. He started weaving a big old football field-sized web-a-lise the day you met her, and he did not let up. They initially bonded because they were both the big brains at the school, but Brian wasn't happy just being the Mr. Mensa of the class. He wanted Amal to see him as a great athlete, too. So he fed her a whole pack of lies about his blossoming pro tennis career. A deal with Nike for 70,000 pounds, a spot in the French Open, swimming pools, movie stars, money coming out his ears, and much more to come as he progressed in his fictional tennis career. Amal's besties weren't sure they bought any of it.

They challenged her about it sometimes. Are you sure all this is true? It doesn't seem very likely. And as much as Amal cared about Brian, her friend's doubts did get to her sometimes. She went online one afternoon and Googled his name, trying to find out where he was seated. Obviously, she couldn't find him anywhere,

but somehow Brian managed to explain it away. Now, Campers, let's keep in mind that Amal was very young at the time. She was 17. So while some of the lies he told her, are admittedly ridiculous beyond belief, I'm not going to judge her for fallen for him because when you're that age and your life experience so far

has taught you that the people in your life are basically honest and trustworthy, you're just not going to see a specimen like Brian Blackwell coming. I mean, a lot of full-grown adults wouldn't see it coming. How many times have we seen that on this show? So I'm going to try and give them all a break.

Brian wasn't content to be a normal everyday boyfriend. He wanted to capital D dazzle. Brian lavished Amal with gifts, including some truly impressive jewelry. Impressive looking, anyway. When he gave her a gorgeous diamond necklace, Amal's mother smelled a rat. How could this high school kid possibly afford that? So the next time Brian came over to see Amal, her mom said, Brian, we'd like to take that gorgeous necklace and get it insured.

Would you mind to bring us the receipt on it? Brian said, oh, sure, of course, I'll bring it over tomorrow. But somehow that receipt never materialized. He always seemed to forget to bring it. Much later, of course, Amal would find out the truth that all the jewelry he'd given her was fake. Cubic serconia, not diamonds. For an 18-year-old, though, Brian was a scarily talented liar

and really smooth about it, too. And the jewelry was just the beginning. Once Brian told her he was scheduled to play in a tennis match in Milan, would she like to come along? Amal was thrilled. A trip to Milan would be a tennis. a dream for anybody, especially a teenage girl, so she said yes, of course she wanted to go. Of course, Brian wasn't scheduled to do dittily squat in Milan.

It was all a lie. So the week before they were supposed to leave, Brian called him all up and told her he was so, so sorry, but she wasn't going to be able to come with him after ball. The organization he was playing for had decided not to let players bring their girlfriends along. Okay. Amal was crushed, but she said she understood, and Brian swore he'd make it up to her soon. He'd be playing in lots of fun places next year, and she could definitely come with him somewhere good.

Maybe Florida. She'd always wanted to go there. Okay. British people. Please explain. I know what you're going to say. Please explain to me the obsession with Florida. Florida is fine.

Florida's fine. It's great. I've been there. I like it. But like, y'all are obsessed with the dick of our country and I would like to know why. Again, I like Florida. It always makes my hair really poofy when I go. But like, it's always Florida though. Yeah, Brits, are you hunting? Every one of these British cases. Right. Brits are. It's always Florida. Are you hunting for Florida man? Like, he's Bigfoot? Like, are you being paid off by the capital M mouse? Answer me. It's Big Mickey It's a conspiracy We're going to hear the

In the background one day and just die Be clubbed over the head by Mickey House That's disturbing In the next week When the tennis match in Milan was supposed to be scheduled Ryan made sure not to show up to school for a few days Amal just took it for granted That he was in Italy at the tournament

At one point Brian Dexter just heading onto the court. Wish me luck. I just met Roger Federer. He was probably texting her like sitting on the can of his parents' house. Poor them all. Did he name it? Roger Federer?

Is that what he was doing? Sorry. It was my turn to make a poop joke. It's finally on the show. Gross. It gets so much worse. In the spring of 2004, Brian came to Amal with an offer that totally bold her over. Would she like to be his personal assistant?

She wouldn't have to do all that much, he told her. And he could get her a salary of about 80,000 pounds a year, plus a 20,000 pound bonus and 10% of his earnings. Holy balls, I'll do it. Right? Obviously, this knocked the girl's socks off. I mean, imagine. You're 17 years old, and someone offers you a job. for 80,000 pounds a year. In 2004 money. Amal couldn't say yes fast enough. And as he so often did, Brian made sure to come back within a day or two with proof to back up what he was saying. He had her sign a very official-looking contract, and he handed her a check for 40,000 pounds.

When the check bounced, because of fucking course it did, Brian managed to smooth it over. I'm not sure exactly what he told her, probably that a bank transfer was late or something like that. But whatever it was, it was a smooth enough lie to convince her the job was still in the works. And all she had to do was be patient. He also told her he was planning on buying a luxury flat for 450,000 pounds. The kind of place David Beckham would call home. In fact, he said footballer Stephen Gerard.

would be one of his neighbors. The paperwork was already in the works. He was going to buy a brand-new Mercedes, too, for 60,000 pounds. Yeah, that one really cracks me up because dude didn't even have a driver's license. Like, what are you going to do with it? Use it as a lawn ornament or something? The fact that he couldn't, you know, drive was just an unimportant detail to Brian. He and a mall visited one luxury car dealership after another,

shopping around for his Mercedes-Benz. He told one salesman, Money is no object. As they were looking at all the shiny new cars, Amal just happened to mention that she'd love to have her own car too. The next thing she knew, Brian was showing up at her doorstep with a brand new set of wheels.

It was a Ford, not a Mercedes, but it still cost 9,000 pounds. And Amal's eyes lit up when he told her it was all heard. Why wouldn't she lie that he was an up-and-coming tennis pro when he was showing up with diamonds and cars? Of course, Brian didn't have a dime to his name because the flippin' kid was 18 years old and in high school, for God's sake. He got the car by cashing in a savings bond his parents had set up to help put him through med school. And when Jackie and Brian Sr. found out about that, yikes. According to the Crown Prosecutor, this was the first time his parents caught wind of his insubes.

insane spending habits. And they were, understandably, pissed. Especially when they looked more closely at the savings account and realized that the car was just the most recent thing he bought. He'd been siphoning off money for a while now. But parents always want to believe the best about their little darling children, especially when they're as invested in his golden boy status as Jackie and Brian Sr. were. So somehow, Brian managed to convince them that the car thing was just a dumb mistake and he was sorry and he'd never, ever, ever do it again, Pinky Swear. And that was it, for the moment. Among the evidence investigators would later gather from the Blackwell's house was a notebook

where Brian had been keeping track of all the lies he told him all. He had to keep it all straight, and that ain't a small task. It's so easy to forget who you've told what lie. Must be exhausting, like trying to keep five different plates spinning in the air at once. But Brian, 18-year-old Brian, had managed to pull it off. It was the focus of his life. It was his life. He was nothing without the lies, or so he must have thought.

Okay. I know we always make fun of these losers because they can never keep their lies straight. But like second to that, and this really shows that there is no reason we can't roast a fucking idiot. Writing them down, Brian? Really? You wrote all of your lies down in one convenient place. Like, that's just asking for a shining-esque revereign. with a mall as Shelly Duvall. Come on.

Yeah, and then leave it for the cops to find later after you've committed a double murder. Great job. One afternoon, Brian showed up at a Liverpool bank, dressed up all snazzy, and asked to speak to the branch manager. He told the guy that he was a professional tennis player with a sponsorship from Nike for about 45K a year. He needed a loan, he said, because he was getting ready to play in the French Open, and his dad had just died. Now, this would have been news Brian Sr., of course, who was still very much alive at the time. But our boy is, if nothing else, a damn smooth talker. And the bank manager bought it hook, line, and sinker, and Brian walked away

grinning with pound signs in his eyes. He also dabbled quite a bit in identity theft, forging the paperwork to open credit cards in both his mother and father's names, and I think at the end of the day it was 13 of them, all told. Which, I think that tells you a lot about him right there, doesn't it? It's one thing to take money out of a fixed-rate bond that you're parents actually set up for you, like for your education, and use it to spoil your girlfriend instead. It's shady. It's gross. It's really stupid. But at least the money was originally intended for you. But it is a whole different ballgame to steal your parents' identities, which is something that could easily ruin their credit and cause them the kind of trouble. It can take years and years

and a shit ton of attorney's fees to dig out of. Obviously, Brian couldn't give a shit. He seems to have decided that he was entitled, at 18, to live the kind of lifestyle his parents' hard-earned wealth had bought them. Over decades, but, you know, without having to earn any of it himself. I think that's partly what comes of overindulging your kids to the point where they don't know how to hear the word no, but of course it can also be a pretty common ailment among clinical narcissists, and we'll get into that more later. Amal was dazzled by all the glitz and glamour Brian Thruiter. I mean, what teenage girl wouldn't be. She later told journalist Deney Brooke that he had her spellbound, and I think that's

the perfect word for it. I don't think it was about the money, because to me, Amal seems like a much sweeter and more genuine person than that. I think it was about the fantasy he was weaving for her, one where this intelligent, caring man, a man with a future so bright he had to wear shades, was madly in love with her and wanted to take care of her forever. That's seductive stuff. Add in five-star dining, diamond jewelry, and the occasional show. shopping trip at Prada, and you've got one tough dream to let go of. We're always pretty good at believing what we want to be true, and I think Amal desperately wanted Brian to be true. What Amal didn't realize, of course, was that to pay for all of this,

Brian was basically robbing his parents blind, and his parents were catching on. At one point, Jackie Blackwell called up the family's bank to warn them against letting Brian open any new accounts. It had always bugged Brian that Amal seemed so disappointed when she couldn't go on that fiction. trip to Milan. Anything that might lower his stock with Amal was totally unacceptable. He had to do something to make it up to her. And in July, he sprung it on her, the latest phase of Operation Boyfriend Supreme. They were going to America. He was scheduled to play in a tournament in Miami, he said, and this time, she could definitely come along. And since they'd be in the States already, why not make a real trip out of it? Go to New York and San Francisco, too.

It blew Amal's mind, of course. She was so excited. And that admiration and excitement was like a shot of pure heroin to Brian's ego. It was what he thrived on, more than anything else in the world. On Sunday, July 25th, using his dad's bank card without his knowledge or permission, Brian bought two business class airline tickets to New York. 5,000 pounds. Jackie and Brian Sr. went out for dinner that evening. Brian stayed home to hang up

some pictures in his room. While the older Blackwells were out, Brian Sr. discovered the missing five grand. Now, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened here, and he and Jackie knew immediately that Brian had stolen from them again. This reminds me so much of the Christopher Porco case we covered a couple years ago in our cradle to grave episode. Remember that one? Yep.

Definitely. Chris was a lot like Brian. He'd built up an elaborate fantasy life at college, telling his friends that he came from big money, stealing his parents' credit cards to play Mr. Big with his girlfriend. His dad found out about the latest theft and told a work friend, I'm afraid my son might be a sociopath. Chris killed him with an axe later that same day. Back at home, Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell confronted Brian about the money.

They were furious, hurt, and disappointed, as any parents would be. This was not only a betrayal. It was a crime. There was no way in hell he was going to make that trip to the States, they told him. He was to call up the airline and cancel the tickets immediately. It was time to grow the hell up and stop pretending to be something he wasn't. Now, here's the thing about narcissistic personality campers. Narcissists come across as grandiose and arrogant, but underneath, there's a deep, deep, deep well of insecurity. Their entire identity is manufactured to stomp that insecurity down and hide it in the deepest, darkest corner of their psyche, so it never has a chance to come out.

To someone like Brian Blackwell, anything that threatens the sparkly five-star shell they've constructed for themselves feels like more than just a, an embarrassment or an inconvenience. It feels like an attack on the very core of who they are. It feels like death. Once Jackie and Brian Sr. had their say, they went back out into the living room, and Brian stood in his bedroom and seethed. He'd been hanging pictures,

and there was a hammer there. And as the thought of calling them all and telling her they had to cancel their big trip rose up in his mind, he made a decision. He picked up the hammer, strode out into the living room where his father was sitting in his favorite chair, and attacked. At some point, he ran to the kitchen for a knife and leapt on his father again. When his mom came running out to see what the hell was going on, she saw her husband lying bloody in his chair. She screamed, and Brian grabbed the kitchen knife and went after her.

Within minutes, both his parents lay dead or dying in pools of their own blood. All told, he hid his father in the head with a claw hammer and stabbing. him 30 times. He used the same two weapons on his mom, bludgeoning her and stabbing her 20 times. Later, investigators would find defensive wounds on both of them, and evidence that Mr. Blackwell had tried to climb out a window before Brian overpowered him again. Afterward, Brian burned his bloodstained clothes in the back garden. And then, he called a taxi to take him to a mall's house. The driver remembered him later, said he seemed completely normal, made friendly conversation about how he was planning to take his girlfriend to the U.S. on holiday the next day.

And the next day, Brian whisked them all away for the trip to the States, and holy Moses, what a trip it was. New York, San Francisco, Miami, Florida, five-star, everything. Brian took them all shopping at high-end designer shops, buying her whatever she wanted. They had champagne, ate at the best restaurants. Ostensibly, they were there for Brian to compete in a tennis tournament in Miami. How Brian was planning to get around that, I'm not sure, but as it turned out, he had a stroke of luck. It rained the day the tournament was supposed to happen, and Brian just told Amal it was canceled because of the weather. They flew to Barbados instead. And I'm sure Amal was having too good

of a time to question it much, if at all. There's a video they took of their trip, and you can watch part of it online. At one point, a mall's got the camera, and she's showing off the room they're staying in New York. Well, I say room. Actually, it was the presidential suite at the plaza, which is like the kind of digs normally booked by celebrities and world leaders. And here were these two teenage kids just living it up in spectacular style. A mall is adorable in this video. It's like showing off their big TV and their jacuzzi tub and this amazing view of Central Park and like waving at herself in the mirror. You can see her holding the camera. For her, this was the trip of a lifetime, a romantic fairy tale, all courtesy

of her own personal prince charming. She had no. no idea of the nightmare that was waiting for them back in England. But of course, Brian did. And watching him on that home movie footage, you would never know it in a million years. He's just grinning ear to ear. Later, Amal said there was nothing whatsoever the whole trip that made her think anything was bothering him. He was his normal self. If anything, bountier than ever. All told, the three-week trip to the States cost 30,000 pounds, all of which Brian charged to his parents' credit card. Just digest that for a second. 30,000 pounds, which is about 40 grand in U.S. money with the exchange rate at the time. I mean, you could put a down payment on like a nice

house with that, or buy yourself a luxury car, have a fabulous wedding and honeymoon, so many things. And Brian blew it all on one vacation with his lady. And remember, these are 17 and 18 year old kids. So, okay, I was looking at this with like a, like a adult brain, like a fully formed amygdala and all that stuff. So to put it in context for our adult listeners, that means it was 30,000 pounds without alcohol for most of the trip, at least until they got to Barbados where the drinking age is 16. But you're talking about teenagers dropping high five figures or mid five figures. or mid-five figures, on a vacation sober. Anyone that's gone on vacation knows that vacation drinking isn't cheap. Jesus.

Well, that's what happens when you're going to Prada and Burberry and staying in the presidential suite at the plaza, I guess. My God, when I was 17 years old, I'd have been thrilled to stay at a flipping Motel 6 if I got to go to Barbados. It would not have mattered to me. I would have crushed cockroaches with a boot on each hand. I wouldn't have cared as long as I got to go. But to Brian Blackwell, the idea of anything other than five-star accommodations was just unthinkable.

That wouldn't dazzle a mall. And if Brian couldn't dazzle, he might as well lay down and die. The neighbors back in Melling didn't think anything of the fact that the house was empty at first. They knew the Blackwells had been planning a trip to their vacation house in Spain. When they got back from the trip, Brian asked Amal if he could stay at her in her mom's house until his mom and dad got back from Spain. He couldn't find the key to get into the house, he said. Amal's mom said, sure, he can stay. When she asked how his parents were enjoying Spain,

she was surprised to hear that he hadn't heard from him since they left. You'd think parents would stay in touch with their teenage son, but Brian said he hadn't talked to them at all. The days came and went with Brian staying at Amal's. Sometimes he went over to his parents' place to move the lawn. Amal went with him once and noticed an awful smell. She said, oh my God, Brian, what is that stench? Oh, it's just the bins, he said.

don't worry, the city will come pick them up in a day or two. And eventually, the time came for Brian and Amal to go pick up their A-level results. Now, if you're not a Brit, A-level stands for advanced level. It's a two-year qualification for students who want to go on to university or some kind of trade school. Their subject-specific, kind of like advanced placement classes here in the States, so, like, you could get an A-level in English lit or chemistry. When Brian and Amal went to get theirs, Brian had gotten. A-levels in all the subjects he'd taken, but for some reason, he seemed to bond out.

When Amal asked him why, he said it was because his parents hadn't bothered to call and ask him how it went. Very out of character, of course, for parents who'd always been so invested in his academic life, who'd gone to parent-teacher nights with a notebook to write down everything the teacher said, who'd brag proudly to friends about how Brian was planning to be, quote, not just a doctor, a brain surgeon. No, I'm curious here. Like, do you think he made himself sad?

Like, was he really... I mean, when he... No. You don't think so? He wasn't like, oh, I'm not getting the praise for my parents because they're dead. Nope. No, he was just, it was just an act. I don't think so.

I think he wanted them dead so he could spend their money. Yeah, that's fair. I just think, like, maybe this was not him, like, realizing the consequences of his actions. He's like, oh, I can't hit that pleasure button of like, oh, look, mom and dad, I got my A levels. Yeah, that's definitely a thought. I'm sure that they did give him a lot of praise and admiration, which he ate up with a spoon. But I think he would much rather have it from Amal than from them.

That's a good point. Now, what Amal didn't know, of course, was that Brian had been in and out of the Blackwell House off and on ever since they came back from the States. He'd gone back to retrieve the murder weapons, for one thing, making sure to avoid looking at the bodies as he gathered them up in a sports bag because he's very British. and he'd used his parents' names to apply for new credit cards to keep the spending spree going.

One evening, he took a little jaunt down to Kirby, to one of the tougher parts of town. He wandered around until he found a group of likely-looking teenagers. Kids who looked like they'd shake down their own grandmas for cigarette money and walked up to them. Brian didn't mince words, just launched right into his tail. he needed a house burn down he said a drug dealer who owed him money and refused to pay up he'd pay 500 pounds he said just get in and out quick and clean trouble was though preppy tennis club brian stuck out in this neighborhood like a got chick at a mormon bible study group none of the guys he approached bought one single syllable of the story he was trying to sell. They figured he must be a plain-clothes cop. A very young one. Trying to badly entrap them and haul them off to jail.

They told him to fuck all the way off and went home laughing. Yeah, I think this is my favorite detail of this case. If you can call it favorite, I mean, it's a god-awful story. But the idea of this little Niles Crane of a dude, like waltzing into this rough-ass neighborhood and looking around for people who might burn down his parents' house for him. Like, I can just see him scoping out the local youths. Like, oh, yes, Capitol.

This looks a rough and tumble bunch of chapses. Hello. Hello, fellow lads. Can I interest you in a spot? It's awesome. And then, like, trying to sell them this hairbrain bullshit. It's just hilarious to me. It's like, Brie, buddy.

I'm sure by now you've probably figured this out, but here's a little tip. Don't involve other people in your crimes, okay? especially in a way that makes you this conspicuous. Do not walk into the roughest neighborhood in town in your little tennis sweater tied around your shoulders like some richy-rich little pastel snob in an 80s movie and expect anybody to buy you as some kind of teenage drug kingpin. Okay?

It's just not going to work, you silly biscuit. He's trying to be the Tony Man Montana baby genius. He's trying to be. And the fact that he's not. thought it would work. Like that right there, that's narcissism right there, that he thought that would actually work when you and I are both dying, laughing at the very idea of it, because we know how absurd it is, but they can't read the room. They just don't get it. They always assume they're going to be believed. It's fascinating. It's really fascinating. It took six weeks before Pete Boyle and his

daughter wandered over to the Blackwell's house to pick up the newspapers and discover the flies on the window. It took investigators seven interviews to finally get Brian to admit what he'd done. When the investigators first picked him up at Amal's mom's house and brought him in for questioning, he was calm, even cocky. He denied having anything to do with his parents' murders. He said, it's not physically possible. I was on holiday.

One of the investigators later told the British true crime show, killing mum and dad, that he started to feel like Brian was almost enjoying the interviews, trying to control the conversation, feeling like the smartest guy in the room. Yeah, it's hard for a narcissist, like I was saying, to imagine anybody not buying his story. And to me, it's telling that he agreed to talk to them at all. I mean, you don't have to. In the UK, just like here in the States, you can just say, nope, I want an attorney. But I think Brian felt confident that he could convince these detectives he was innocent,

just stroll out of there and get on with spending his parents' money. But slowly, interview by interview, the detectives noticed Brian's demeanor changing. At one point, he asked, is prison cold? They knew they had him on the ropes with that one. And when they confronted him about finding the rubber grip of a claw hammer and the handle of a kitchen knife hidden in his room at a mall's place, Brian finally broke.

You can listen to his confession in the episode of real crime about the case. He's very weepy, and he claims he killed his parents in self-defense. When his dad came at him during their argument, I'm sure this will shock you because our boy's been so scrupulously honest up to this point, but every scrap of evidence from the scene shows this to be a big steaming pile of horseshit. Brian had attacked his dad from behind. And while both his parents had defensive wounds all over him, Amal didn't remember seeing any on Brian the day after the murders.

Brian made a pretty good show at seeming remorseful. At one point, he said he tried to wake his mother up as if she had just fallen asleep on the bathroom floor, as if he hadn't just butchered her to death to avoid looking bad in front of his girlfriend. As they waited for trial, Brian's attorneys had him examined by a psychiatrist, and the results are probably not going to surprise you. The doctor diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder. He met every diagnostic criterion. I suspect most of you all already know what that is, but just in case you don't, I'll give you a thumbnail sketch. A narcissist tends to have a grandiose view of himself and his place in the world. They have a deep need to

be admired and praised, and they get very preoccupied with the idea of limitless success and power, fascinated by their own brilliance and convinced that they're entitled to special treatment. They can't take criticism, even minor criticism, without a lot of anger, and like psychopaths and sociopaths, they lack empathy, so they're prone to seeing other people as tools for their use, not people in their own right. As forensic psychologist Carrie Daines pointed out to the guardian, narcissists tend to be pretty callous in their treatment of other people. An NPD often goes along with psychopathy in that a lot of psychopaths have narcissistic traits.

Just as not all psychopaths are violent, most are not, in fact. Not all narcissists are either, but when they are, watch the fuck out. According to Carrie Daines, Brian's parents had probably made his NPD much worse. by treating him like the golden child his whole life. They didn't have bad intentions. They adored the kid. But for somebody already predisposed to this specific disorder, it was a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, and for all his reputation as the brainy, perfect son, some of the Blackwell's neighbors actually suspected Brian from the moment they heard about the murders. The younger ones especially, the other kids he'd grown up with. One girl told the BBC that she'd always thought he was strange. She'd say hi to him and he'd just stare at her. So, anywho, Brian ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished capacity, citing his diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. In court, he read a letter he'd written.

Through tears, he read, Every moment of every day, I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I eternally longed to be a little boy again at a time when everyone really loved each other, when we could have a happy time and be a family once more. He said he missed his mom and dad more than anything in the world. He said, the guilt will punish and haunt me for 24 hours a day for the rest of my life. Yeah, I hope so, bro. It's nice that you say you feel guilty, but your parents aren't any less dead.

The judge sentenced Brian to life in prison with a minimum of 12 years and the stipulation that he might never be paroled since NPD is not a curable condition, which I guess is debatable. I mean, I would love to hear what mental health professionals listening had to say about that. Because we know that, you know, sociopaths and psychopaths, there's no cure per se, which is a weird word anyway, but there certainly are treatments. I mean, most of these folks aren't violent to start with. We want to make that very clear. But there are ways to make them, you know, the empathy training and stuff to make them function better in society and get along better with people and be more successful as humans and be happier as well.

But anyway, that's what the judge said. And he said, quote, this is an extraordinary case. It's also one of terrible family tragedy. The circumstances in which you bludgeoned and stabbed to death first your father and then your mother are chilling. You then, with breast-taking callousness, left their bodies to rot while you enjoyed a luxurious holiday in America with your girlfriend. And he described Brian as an arch deceiver, an accomplished and resourceful liar and a highly manipulative young man. Manipulative enough, I suspect, to turn on the waterworks and make a nice show of remorse at a sentencing. forgive me if that sounds harsh, but I'm not going to buy it just because he tells me to.

Lack of empathy often translates to a lack of remorse, although I'm sure he's sorry he got caught. There's a lot of talk in some of the sources on this case about how his parents are to blame for his NPD. They put too much pressure on him academically and never let him develop his own identity. And it makes me queasy to talk like that about the victims in the case, but there may be some truth to that. I mean, that is the kind of environment that can help create a number. narcissist, but we absolutely cannot and should not blame his parents for what Brian Blackwell did. He made a choice to do that. And I don't buy for a second that Brian just snapped one day because he couldn't take the pressure anymore, which is what some people

have suggested. This kid could walk into a Barclays bank and lie to that bank manager's face smooth as silk. Didn't feel any pressure there, did he? Didn't feel any pressure squiring them all around New York City as his parents' bodies were there rotting back in England. I mean, I think Brian killed his parents because he wanted to go on spending their money, plain and simple. Brian's in his mid-30s now, and he was actually released from prison in 2016, so he's out and about again. Oh, good. I wonder what he's up to now.

He's a camper. God, that'd be a trip. So, that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Bridget, Rosie, JJ, Unseen Artist, Awesome Name, Marla, Sharon, Brooke, and Patrice.

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