Kyle Hulbert
at 18
    Before I begin, I must say this � if you are reading this in hopes of hearing about blood drinking or my tastes for the darker walks of life, or my being a vampire, or some �blood-sucking occultist� as I have heard I have been described, stop reading this story now. You will not find those stories here. The do exist, to be sure, and they will undoubtedly be told sooner or later but right now my mind is on more important matters.
      By now, my name probably isn�t the unfamiliar. A lot of people have heard of the vampire who stabbed a man to death with a sword. It�s been on the news plenty of times and I even allowed them to interview me on two occasions, though after I saw how bad a job they did, I wish I hadn�t. They played what they thought was important and would get them ratings and nothing else.
      The only people who have done any justice whatsoever for me in the media are the Washington City Paper in Washington D.C in the story they ran awhile back entitled �The Others�, and the Elliot in the Morning Radio Show on DC 101. But as great a job these people have done on my behalf and my gratitude for that is eternal I have never had an adequate opportunity to tell my story in it�s entirety, in my own words. And now, because of multiple factors that have culminated together, it is more important than ever that I do.
      There was a lot in my case that got ignored. Things that if they had had the proper attention paid to them, it would have possibly resulted in an entirely different outcome than my life sentence. Things like a mental history that is around 70,000 pages long and spans most of my life. If certain things hadn�t been said or done by those working on the case I never would have plead guilty. Such as, a psychologist lied in a psychiatric evaluation that would have determined my sanity at the time of the offense.
The point is if things had been done properly, I wouldn�t be looking at the life sentence I am serving now. To quote a pen-pal friend of mine in North Carolina, �I got robbed.�
        I am writing this story because my pen pal and I are not the only ones who think so. Jason Cherkis who has been of invaluable help to me these past three years and who is the author of the story the City paper ran about my case, believes so as well and many other people he has met feel the same way. Dan and Judy, who were part of the Prison Ministry at the county jail I was held at, both have a great deal of knowledge concerning mental health, also believe my case was mishandled. It is because of these people I am writing this. We, Jason, my pen-pal, and I, feel that if I can get this story to the public where everyone can see it, perhaps I can find the help I need to get my case back in court before my deadline runs out. I only have until September 2005 to file my Habeas Corpus.
     So as my English teacher used to say, let�s start at the beginning.
     My name is Kyle Hulbert and I have a story to tell. Twenty-one years ago in the county of Orange, California I was born. I don�t know if I was a planned birth or not, being that my mother and father were not married at the time and I guess that makes me a bastard child.
     I come from a broken home. My parents were married and divorced by the time I was two and half. My mother had custody but she dropped my two younger siblings and me off with our grandparents and took off to live elsewhere. My father came back after a couple years and got custody of us. I think I was six at the time. I was already in therapy and had been on psychotropic medication since I was three. I still haven�t found an explanation about that.
      I will say that my father did try his best but I was having serious problems that he didn�t know how to handle, and when I was seven I began what your become a life long journey through the hellholes know collectively as �the System�, the psychiatric facilities that would dominate my life.
I am not going to bore you with a sob story about how I was abused in the System and how nobody loved me. I will say that a lot of bad things happen in some of these places, and a lot of it the public never hears about, mainly because the patients are rarely listened to until it is too late. The doctors usually don�t pay attention to you, they just use what�s called �Symptom Suppression,� which is a politically correct term that means they dope you up with medication and hope the problems go away. The only time they really pay attention is when someone flips out and hurts someone else and then all they do is hit you up with Thorazine or the like and stick you in an isolation room for a day or so. The point is, the doctors don�t care most of the time. They will tell you they understand your problems in one breath and then say something in the next that shows you they haven�t heard a word you�ve said.
      Sometimes you get lucky and find a therapist who genuinely cares. One who really does want to help you and takes an active role in your life, trying to help you overcome whatever difficulties you face, be they psychological, emotional, or both, or maybe eve more than that. I found one such therapist but by the time I did it was almost too late for me. I was already fifteen and had had enough of deal with the System. I didn�t want to have anything to do with anyone who worked in thee System and when I first met Rosey I didn�t trust her and wouldn�t let her come near me. But Rosey was just as stubborn as I, the only difference being that while I would shut the world out, retreating into the fantasy would that was my mind and became introverted, she was very much the extrovert. She had no qualms about telling me to get my head out of my butt and cut the bullshit. For that, I soon came to respect her because I knew she�d always be upfront and honest with me and wouldn�t attempt to play mind games with me.
Rosey did what she could to fix the damage that had been done to me, to my psyche. It was a hard process but it slowly seemed to be working. I had a lot of issues to deal with but as I said, Rosey was stubborn; she refused to give up on me. After a few months she felt I was ready to give foster care another try. This was a big issue for me because by this time I�d already been through three foster homes and none of them had a pleasant ending. I had spent most of my life in and out of the psychiatric facilities, they were pretty much all I knew. I was reluctant but I wanted to show Rosey that she was right about me, that I really could make it. I wanted her to be proud of me.
       So in October of 1999, I went to live with a foster family in Northern Virginia. I was nervous at first because I felt that the slightest error on my part would get me sent back to the psychiatric facilities. But the Robinson family took me in and treated me as one of their own. Everyday I went to the foster care agency to participate in group and individual therapy. I was enjoying myself, finally tasted what life could be like. And for a time, the longest time in my history it seemed that everything would be fine, that I was fine.
      But in March 2001 I had a relapse. I had not been taking my medication for the last month or so, the people at the Agency as well as the school I was attending had continued to express concern that I was experiencing on going psychotic episodes and finally the Agency called Mental Health and obtained a TDO (Temporary Detainment Order). It was back to the psyche wards again.
      I can�t express how much I hated it, being back in the System. I�d never really left the System in the first place as I was still a ward of the state, but at least when I was with my foster family I�d come to think of as my family, no �foster� about it, I could forget about that fact.
      Between March and September 2001 I went through four different facilities, one of which was the facility where I first met Rosey, and it was the one I spent most of these six months in, after my initial placement. It was determined that I was indeed suffering a psychotic outbreak. Rosey greeted me at the door and asked what the hell I was doing back. I told her the Agency felt I needed a tune up. We went back to work reestablishing me on my medications and we both through we were getting the problems down but in Late June I relapsed again due to my not taking my meds and was transferred to another facility and then to yet another.
     By the time I got to this, the final psychiatric facility my eighteenth birthday was only a month or so away and there was talk of my being emancipated, which I wanted very dearly. This facility was more like a day camp than anything else; I didn�t go through any real therapy at all. The only doctor I saw came just to ask me if I was taking my medication, which I was.
     In August, the head doctors at the facility decided to discharge me to an emergency shelter in Richmond where I could wait until my eighteenth birthday arrived and I�d be emancipated. While I wasn�t at the meeting where this was decided I�ve heard that one or two people voiced concerns over letting me be emancipated, as they were worried about my mental state of being. However, these people were overruled because, the head doctors said I wasn�t exhibiting any outward signs of psychotic behavior or abnormal ideations. They marked down my vampirism and other thought patterns as �lifestyle choices� and � peculiar belief systems.� I was discharged and sent to Richmond, where I waited the last few weeks for September to arrive.
    There were times through my life where it seemed I�d never be free of the System. But in September 2001, a long a waited day arrived; I turned 18 and was emancipated from the clutches of the Department of Social Services and the psychiatric facilities I�d spent most of my life in. I�d vanquished the System! I can�t describe the joy I felt at this exodus I had awaited for so long. I was free. FREE!! I didn�t care that I had no job and would live either on the couch of my various friends� houses or in my outdoors tent. I was free!
      I had been given, before I left Richmond to return to Woodbridge, three months worth of prescriptions for each of the four medications I took and my insurance didn�t expire until October. My social worker had taken me to the Social Security office before I was emancipated and helped me apply for mental disability benefits, which I was quickly approved to receive. I had an appointment with a therapist at the Prince William County Community Service Board but when I went to see her, I quickly found that she was like the other therapists I�d met in the System and I stopped seeing her. I filled out the prescriptions as quickly as I could because I wouldn�t have the money to pay for them once my insurance ran out.
      For the first two or three weeks of my freedom I lived at the house of a Vietnam Veteran friend of mine who�d agreed to take me in. After that I was living outdoors in my tent or bumming a few nights� rest at another friend�s house, returning to the Vet�s house every now and them to do my laundry or get something to eat. It wasn�t a luxurious life by any means but I was enjoying myself thoroughly nonetheless because of three simple words that kept ringing in my ears: I was free!
Ah, but that freedom was short lived. In October 2001, I met a young girl named Clara Schwartz. Around that same time I met my then girlfriend Brandy and began living with her and her mother in Maryland. For reasons I have yet to fathom, I grew close to Clara very quickly. I suppose we felt a kinship to each other; we were both outcasts in our own way and I�ve seen in the past how such outcasts tend to bond together. She told me of how her father, the last and respected Dr. Robert Schwartz, had been sexually, physically, and emotionally abusing her, and of how she feared that he was slowly poisoning her, trying to kill her. She�d call me everyday and no matter what topic we began on, she�d invariable lead us to the topic of these things.
      I believed Clara. I had no reason to doubt anything she said; I mean after all, I didn�t know Dr. Schwartz and why would a person lie about her own father like that? And after speaking to my vet friend, who had long since become a mentor to me, he told me that it was possible that a biophysicist like Dr. Schwartz could very well have access to poisons that would not only be undetectable but also could work over a long period of time. After hearing this I felt what Clara told me was even more plausible.
On the top of my belief in what she was saying, I have my own issues with child abuse, which Clara know about, and needless to say, what she was telling me affected me greatly. Her words insinuated themselves into my mind and became the only things I could think about. I mean that literally, even my medications were intruded up by visions of her father hurting her.
     This went on from October all the way to December. By the end of October I�d becomes lax in the taking of my medications and by the end of the first or second week of November I�d stopped taking them altogether, I didn�t want to sleep, which is one of the things my medication helps with, because while I usually don�t like to sleep anyways my dreams have become particularly bothersome. I was always thinking about Clara and at least when I was awake I could distract myself from these thoughts but when I slept there was no escaping the things I saw. I�m ashamed to say that I liked to Brandy and her mother, a woman who had taken me off the streets the first day we met and made me her very own. I told them whenever they asked that I was taking my medication, because if I told them I wasn�t then I�d have had to explain why and not only did I not want to talk about Clara or her father, I didn�t want them to worry about me.
      One night in December, Clara called me. She sounded strung out and nearly hysterical. This was alarming in itself because her tone and demeanor had always been so deadpan and at times almost emotionless. She told me she just had an argument with her father and that he told her that when they went to the Virgin Islands for Christmas vacation, he was going to �make sure she didn�t come back�, her exact words. She told me I had to protect her, that I couldn�t let him hurt her. I was her Protector � I couldn�t let her die.
     That weekend, I went to the house of Dr. Schwartz. I didn�t go there with the intentions to kill him; I can�t say exactly what was going through my head at the time. I only knew Clara had to be protected, I couldn�t think any father than that.
     It has been well documented what happened that night. I won�t go into it again. I�ll only restate what you already know. On December 8th, 2001 I killed Dr. Robert Schwartz.
That it was by my hand that Dr. Schwartz met his untimely demise I have never denied. But I did not murder him. Murder is an act of malice, of hate, and it is done with willful intent, all of which I had none of.
      I was arrested two days later at the home of my then girlfriend Brandy. From what I have been told, I was taken to a holding facility and interrogated by two detectives. I say, �From what I have been told� because I don�t remember that night nor the days between it and the weekend of the murder. For that matter, the only time I can clearly remember is when I woke up in a jail cell two weeks later, though at that time I had no idea that much had passed.
      What I do know of the night of my arrest and the night of Dr.Schwartz�s death are the things that I have repeated over and over and over again for the last three years. Inmates who do legal work told me that some of these things I have been repeating are important and so I�ll repeat them again.
       I hadn�t slept in some time, maybe three hours in the last four days. I hadn�t been taking my medications for at least a month. I told the investigators I wanted to call my Vietnam Vet friend because he was the only one I knew who could give me any sort of advice and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing at this point, but the investigators refused to let me call. The investigator told me that it was �in (my) best interest� to talk to him right now. He said that if I didn�t, he had enough evidence to take me to the magistrate and immediately have me placed in jail.
      I didn�t want to talk.
      He told me I had to.
      I told him what happened.
     This sums up all I know about the night of my arrest.
     Some time later I woke up in a cell, and for the life of me I couldn�t say where I was. I remembered parts of talking to a pair of detectives but not why I had been talking to them. I felt disoriented; my memory was like a smear of paint on the canvas of my mind. There was nothing distinguishable. I felt a small sense of relief to find that Tiamat was curled up at the foot of my bunk, sleeping, but the six-the sextet of voices I�ve heard since I was very young � were quiet, and that scared me.
I left my cell and asked the first person I saw where I was. He gave me a funny look and told me I was in Loudon County Jail and had been there a week.
       A week?! What had I been doing for a week in jail? That, I don�t know. I sat down in a chair and looked around. It was a small block with only four cells. There were two men to a cell except for the last cell at the back of the block, which was a single cell. There was a phone hanging from the bars and a TV resting on a long metal table. None of it looked familiar. The guy I�d been talking to handed me a carton of milk and a breakfast tray and told me I should eat. I did, and I sat in that chair for quite awhile, trying to piece together what had happened. I can�t admit to having much success.
      After awhile a deputy came to the block. �Hulbert,� he said, �you have a visitor.�
      Visitor? I wondered. Who would be here to see me? Then an even better question popped into my head, who even know I was here?
      I was handcuffed and shackled and led by two guards to a visitation booth down the hall. In the booth, on the other side of a thick pane of glass sat a man I�d never seen before in my life. He pointed to the phone on my side of the glass. I picked it up, still in handcuffs.
     � Hi, Kyle, how are you?� the man asked politely.
     I told the man that I�d be doing a lot better if I knew who he was. He told me he was Bill Fitzpatrick, my court appointed attorney and asked if I remembered him because we talked last week. Just as I was getting ready to ask him why it was that I would need a lawyer, Bill continued on and told me what I was accused of doing. He explained that I had been extradited from a Maryland jail earlier the week before after spending a week there. He explained why I was in jail. He explained that I was looking at a very serious amount of time. That was not good.
      He talked to me for an hour or so, I think, asking me questions about the murder, about my arrest and interrogation, about my background and my history. I answered whatever I could and when were done he asked me if I needed anything. I believe I answered to the effect of, �keys to the doors and a really fast car.�
      After that visit, I was returned to my block. It was my life of the next two years. Getting up, eating breakfast, reading or writing until lunch, reading or writing until dinner, staying up all night avoiding the dreams that plagued me. Thinking chattering to myself�avoiding silence. At one point I got into a minor physical altercation with another inmate and was placed in a single cell for administrative segregation. The cell was actually quite nice, being around fifteen feet long and five and a half feet wide, all to myself with a television sitting outside the bards that I could watch after my seg time was up and a phone that I could use when I wanted again after my seg time was up. Near the end of my administrative segregation time, I requested to remain in the cell to avoid further, pointless problems. People in the blocks would sometimes argue over the stupidest things, like who gets the extra carton of chocolate milk. I had enough to deal with without such petty squabbles. My request was granted and they left me in my cell all by myself and I found some semblance of peace.
      In July of 2002 I had an NGRI Evaluation, for the layman that stands for Not Guilty for Reasons of Insanity. It was a test to see if I was in my right state of mind at the time I committed the offense. Now, you would think that somebody with over seventy thousand pages of mental health history has a pretty warped mind, right? You would think that this person wouldn�t even need yet another evaluation to tell him he�s just a little unhinged, right?
     That�s what I though too.
     The moment I walked into the jails� library room and saw Dr. Michael Deem of Loudon County Mental Health, I was hit by the thought that was racing around his tiny little mind. The though was of the money he was getting paint to rubber stamp my evaluation. Now, I suppose I should pause for a second and explain this. No, I�m not a psychic, at least not a telepath- I am not able to read anybody�s mind nor am I usually able to communicate mentally with another person.
What I am is generally termed an Empath, though not a very powerful one as I�ve met a couple others who abilities make mine seem nonexistent. I am attuned to many of the vibrational spectrums that exist in this world. They are like a constant tide against my flesh, pushing and pulling against you. Everything on this planet, living or not, gives off vibrations. In living creatures, thoughts effect emotions which their vibrations.
      Usually, I just use this ability-if you want to call it that- to keep track of where people are around me and to avoid those individuals whose vibrations make me feel uneasy. But there are times when a person has strong intentions or is having a strong thought, and I am able to pick up on it without meaning to, especially if it�s direct toward me. I don�t know how to explain it beyond that; it is just something I�ve lived with all my life.
       The point is, when I walked into the library room for my first meeting with Dr. Deem, I didn�t just pick up on his thought, it hit me full in the face life a bad stench. I instantly despised the man. Even knowing then that he wasn�t there to help me, I still went through with the evaluation, mainly because I didn�t feel I had a choice-my lawyer wanted me to go through with the evaluation. However, it was badly affected by my knowledge of what he intended. I have a long and well-documented history of trust issues; Dr. Deem later mentioned in his report that I was �not forthcoming� with him.
Of course I wasn�t. I didn�t trust him.
       After my first meeting with him, I told my lawyer about it. He assured me that my evaluation was going to be handled in a professional manner and I had nothing to worry about. Since he was my lawyer, I felt I had to trust him, so I didn�t pursue the matter and assumed he would handle it.
       Jack Crawford told Clarice about assuming; maybe I should have taken heed.
       After the report was compiled and given to my lawyer and a copy given to me, I pointed out to Bill may of the discrepancies present within the document. Dr. Deem had written things in the report that were either A) false, B) things I never said, or C) did not make sense, such as his reasoning for why I killed Dr. Schwartz was because of my �unrequited love for Clara� and my �desire for recognition and approval from (my) friends.� �Unrequited Love?� I knew her a month! I wasn�t in love with her, I felt a kinship with her, yes, and I felt drawn to her, yes. Hell, I even flirted with her but I flirt with most of the women I know because it�s who I am. But love? I don�t think so. And I�m going to gain the approval of my friend or anybody for that matter � by killing a man? If he truly believes that, he is more delusional than most people think I am.
       Another thing that was really off-balance about the report was that when reported on my past history he made it clear that something was seriously wrong with me, even quoting reports from past doctors. But then where he goes to the present he makes it seem that all my psychotic disorders have been resolved and I�m a perfectly normal, healthy person with all my mental faculties in perfect working order and that I know exactly what I was doing when I killed Dr. Schwartz.
       Let�s see, Tiamet on my shoulder, the six in my head, blood drinking, the belief that this universe is my dream, staying up for days on end, depriving myself of sleep by means of lots and lots of caffeine pills and coffee just so I can avoid dreaming and a proclivity for having visions of the apocalyptic end of the world. Yep, all signs of a normal, healthy thought process.
      While that last paragraph may seem a little flip and like I�m joking, I am being serious. Sarcastic, but serious. While I don�t see anything wrong with my having these thoughts, seeing the things I see or hearing the things I hear, clinically such things signify some sort of aberrant or abnormal flaw in a person�s psyche or at least that�s what the doctor�s have told me, since I was seven as their explanation as to why they wanted me to remain in the System. And everything I just mentioned in the paragraph above are brought up in Dr. Deems report, but he didn�t seem to think anything was wrong with me.
I don�t have a degree in psychology or abnormal behavior, but that�s how his report read and it doesn�t sound right.
      The only thing in his report that I think was worth anything is that he said I exhibited a great many signs of post traumatic stress disorder, which would account for my not being able to remember the night of the murder. There wasn�t much we could do. Going to the judge wouldn�t work because we had no proof beyond my words and from what I new the courts were pretty leery about making Empathic abilities admissible in court. So, after some small discussion, the decision was make not to go with an insanity defense.
      Sometime thereafter, Bill talked to me about pleading guilty. He told me there was no plea bargain, the commonwealth attorney was offering nothing, but I should think about pleading guilty anyway. He said that if I went to trial, the jury would find me guilty would sentence me to life. However, Bill said, if I were to plead guild, �fall on (my) sword, so to speak,� it would show the judge that I am taking responsibility for my actions and the judge, who he told me had dealt with numerous mental health casts in the past, would be lenient. He told me that the judge would give me 35 years maximum but I was more likely to get between 20 and 25.
       Since the beginning, ever since I met Bill, I followed whatever advice he gave me without question, thinking that since he was my lawyer he would know what was best for me and that it was his job to get me the least amount of time possible. Since I had absolutely no knowledge of the law beyond the Second Amendment, I always went with whatever he thought was best.
        So I plead guilty.
        And on September 8, 2003 I walked into the Loudon County courtroom to be sentenced. In short order I got sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole.
        Lenient my ass.
       A life sentence. Do any of you reading this have any idea what that feels like? To be told in one word ��life� that you will never again roam the land in the depths of the Witching Hour, listening to that savage-sweet Symphony of the Night? To know that you will never again catch the eye of that pretty Goth chick at the club and wake up the next morning with her in your arms, the taste of her crimson wine still on your tongue? To be told that your home is now a cell, a cement box whose walls you�ll come to curse every morning upon rising from bed? Do you know what it fells like to lie awake at night, looking up at the lights that never go off, thinking to yourself, �I�m never going to be free again, I�m going to die in here?�
        Pray you never do.
       At my sentencing, I got to see my foster mother, Liz for the first time since before my arrest. I saw Anna, the mother of my ex-girlfriend Brandy whom I lived with for a short time before my arrest, a woman who in the very short time that I lived with her became more of a mother to me than any woman I�ve ever know with the exception of Liz. In the two months that I lived with Anna, she made up for an entire lifetime of being without a mother. I saw my father, Matthew, who has always been able to guide me in the all-too-rare instances when I turned to him. Though he and I had our many difficulties as I grew up, he has never forsaken me, never given up. I saw Rosey, the only therapist I�ve ever had that was able to see through the barriers I put up to keep people out, the only therapist who ever even tried. She was the first person to see the real Kyle, the Kyle without the masks and the armor and the defense mechanisms that I have stopped all other trespassers venturing into my mind. She saw the Kyle I keep safely hidden away from the world. She, like the others I named, went on the stand to testify on my behalf, and it was she that almost caused me to break. For when she went on the stand, I heard her voice crack as she spoke of me and when she got down I could she was getting ready to cry. It was that knowledge that, because of me, Rosey was feeling pain, she who had done everything to heal my own, it was that knowledge of her impending tears that more threatened my resolve, threatened to make me break down in the middle of that court room. If the truth were to be told, I�d do a life sentence with a smile on my face just to keep Rosey from feeling a single pinprick of pain.
        I may sound like I am musing and I suppose I am, but there is a point to all this, I swear. You see, when I entered the courtroom for my sentencing I saw these people and many others than I knew, and for that first time I realized that I truly wasn�t alone in this world, as I so often believed. Biological or not, these people were my family and no matter how dysfunctional a family it may be, it was mine and these people cared about me. It was a knowledge that I wished I�d possessed much earlier.
       It�s funny, when I thought about being sentenced I thought I might cry if they gave me life, or burst into a rage and have to be physically restrained and carried from the room. But it wasn�t like that at all. Instead, I felt a calmness come over me and the oddest thought occurred, �Damn, the Gods really pulled the rug out from me this time; Thalia and Loki must be having a blast!� I had to struggle not to burst out laughing.
      At this point, the story was over as far as most were concerned. The criminal had been sentenced, the monster locked away for all time. The Schwartz family could sleep peacefully knowing that no harm would ever befall their family ever again, and the Commonwealth attorney went hone and had himself a glass of Chardonnay, complimenting himself on another job well done even as he prepared to have another hapless bastard sentenced to life imprisonment.
That is where most stories end, but mine does not.
      Now it gets interesting.
      I remained in Loudon County until January 2004. In that time not much happened. I remained in my single cell watching my anime shows every night on Cartoon Network�s Adult Swim, Inuyasha and FLCL being my particular favorites. I pursued my dream of becoming a published, best-selling author of fantasy novels, working simultaneously on several different storylines (let me tell you, I gave a whole new meaning to the term �multitasking�). In the mornings I would sometimes call DC101 and talk to Elliot and the Class, which was always interesting, and at night, after my anime shows had ended, I would like in my bunk and contemplate my life sentence.
      To be honest, I didn�t feel like my life was over, as I sometimes thought I should feel. The fact is, I didn�t believe in it, I didn�t, couldn�t believe that I was going to spend the rest of my life in a penitentiary. It just wasn�t possible. I still don�t believe that it is my fate to live out my life in these dungeons. My belief in Solipsisim was/is so great that I knew then as I know now without a doubt that there would come a day in the future when I would be free again. I could manifest the necessary changes in my future reality if I willed it hard enough. I would be free, that was the one thought that stayed with me through everyday.
      Beyond that, I simply could not believe that the Gods would be so cruel as to let me taste the ambrosia of life and then rip it from my grasp before I�d ever had a chance to see what it was really like. My faith in their benevolence was and is too great to believe in such cruelty.
      And on it went, throughout the days I would write my stories or read my books, or I would respond to correspondences from various individuals who wrote to me. The TV, when I did turn it on, rarely left Cartoon Network or the Sci � Fi Channel. Throughout the night, I contemplated my life sentence and how I was going to deal with the long road a head. I knew I would be free, I just didn�t know when. In January 2004, I was transferred to Powhatan Receiving Unit in State Farm Virginia. I�d only just walked through the door of the intake office when a sergeant saw me and exclaimed, �Aren�t you that vampire? I saw you on Inside Edition!� It seemed, much to my dismay, that my reputation had preceded me. The sergeant�s reactions to my arrival were only a harbinger of things to come. It seemed that every second or third person I met � guard or inmate0 know exactly who I was from my television interview on Inside Edition, which I despise with all my being) or from the newspapers. One inmate even showed me his collection of newspaper clippings about my case. It seemed to me that the entire Receiving Unit knew who I was.
      A few days after my arrival I was in the library using an obsolete typewriter to type out a chapter to one of my stories for submission to a publisher in hopes of attracting their interest, when the librarian � a cadre who name I believe was Lyle � asked me about my case. I told him what he already knew, that I had been convicted and sentenced to life. He asked me why I didn�t go for the insanity defense and I told him about Dr. Deem. He asked why I didn�t appeal and I told him the reason for that too. Lyle turned to an old head sitting at a nearby table and asked him what he though. The old head, whose named turned out to be Michael Ray Harvey, asked few questions about the offense, about Clara and the things I�d learned about her after I had been locked up, asked about my mental health history and after asking all this showed me a few case laws that were strikingly similar to my own case. They both told me that I�d become a statistic known as the Screwed Inmates of America.
      I spent the next month and a half taking to them about my case, asking questions and pointing things out that I thought were significant, listening to them point out different case laws that could help and other points that I could bring up in court on a Habeas Corpus. Michael Ray got transferred in February, leaving Lyle and me to continue the discussions alone. The another lawyer type known only as Cat, wearing rose-colored glasses joined the discussion and helped us along.
For the first time I was seeing a path to follow, that maybe this was the manifestation of my will that Solipsism dictated would occur I if I willed it hard enough. I was starting to believe that maybe I could get back into court and get things done right, and get myself where I need to be.
I was transferred from Powhatan on March 15, 2004 to Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap Virginia, where I currently reside. It was a place that I would quickly come to despise as the biggest hellhole on the plane of existence. I�m pretty sure that somewhere in Dante�s Inferno there is a circle that contains an exact replica of this place.
But I digress.
      Once here, I talked to a couple other legal types who, while not as smart as Michael Ray, Lyle, or Cat, were all in agreement that I have a case to get back in court. I worked at learning what I could of case laws and found a newly � acquired respect for those who can actually read and makes sense of all that legal jargon. Me, I can�t read more than a few lines of that stuff without my head spinning.
I stayed in constant contact with Jason through all this. He told me of people who though my case was done wrongly and thought that I should defiantly try to get back in court. I believed my case, and know that it had a good chance of succeeding but for one major obstacle remaining in my path.
       I have no lawyer, no knowledge of the intricacies of law work, and no financial resources to procure the very much-needed legal aid. Jason told me on several occasions that what I needed was to get my story out for the public to see. We both felt that once the public heard my story, there would be those among the public who would be sympathetic to my plight and be willing to help, if only to see that true justice is done. So finally, I suggested that he left me write a story about my case and get it published in the Washington City Paper. He spoke to his editor who agreed to consider it. But after five weeks of waiting in vain for him to finish reading it, my pen-pal and I decided that launching an Internet Campaign would be the most effective way to draw the attention to this case that it needs.
So it has come to pass the campaign has been launched � you have been brought to the present and now almost all of the story, but I�m not done yet. Now I have to explain the technical bits of my case insofar as I understand them.
       1) On the night of Dr. Schwartz�s death, many people have told me that they don�t feel that I was in my right state of mind, that I didn�t know what I was doing. I believe these people are correct but, since I can�t remember that night or the days following it, I don�t feel I should comment though the very fact that I can�t remember points to some short circuit in my mental relays. This is not the first incident in which something has happened and I had no recollection of it, there are several reports in my psychiatric history of psychotic episodes in which it is reported that I committed some extreme act, usually violent, and has no recollection of it. Yet this has never been examined.
         2) Likewise, the night of my arrest being a blank spot in my memory, it could be said that I was not in my right mental capacity, especially combined with the lack of sleep and medication. Therefore anything said that night on my account should have been nullified in court, but my lawyer did not pursue the matter at my pretrial hearing as strongly as he probably should have
      Also, the fast that I told the investigators that I wanted to stop the interrogation to call my Vietnam Vet mentor to ask for advice but was refused is something that should have been taken into account. In reviewing what transcripts I have, I noticed a major discrepancy between what the investigator wrote in his notes and what he said at my pretrial hearing. It was something that should have been exploited by my lawyer but was not
          3) This may be the most important point. If at the meeting before my release in 2001 there were concerns voiced about my mental state of being and my ability to function on my own once released, why was nothing done about it?
          4) If Dr. Deem had not rubber-stamped my NGRI, I would have gone with an insanity defense, which, with my history, would have gotten me to a psychiatric facility where I could have received the treatment that I need. I think the man was incompetent, not only were his reasons for finding me sane at the times of the offense where substandard, the man couldn�t even get my birth date correct. I�ve got the evaluation sitting on my bunk next to me as I write this and I keep going over it, seeing the lies he filled it�s pages with. Because of Dr. Deem�s inappropriate diagnoses, my case got even more screwed than it already was.
          5) Since I have began talking about my case with legal types, one issue they have continued to bring up is competency. Was I competent enough to be making the statements I made to the investigators? Was I competent enough to assist my lawyer in making the decisions that were made? Was I competent enough to even stand trial? Michael Ray told me that when a lawyer has a client with such as excessive mental health history as mine, he is not only my attorney but my guardian and caretaker as well. With my history, one of the first things he should have done was file for a competency hearing, which was never done.
          6) After my sentencing, when I asked my lawyer about an appeal, he said that we could file one but it would be pointless because unless we�d uncovered new evidence that we hadn�t had access to prior to the trial, there was no way it was going to work. So the appeal was never filed.
It may seem that I am bashing my lawyer, but as a matter of fact, until I got to Powhatan and then Wallens Ridge, I�d thought he did a pretty good job, considering. I think the problem lies in the fact that my court appointed attorney probably didn�t have much experience with mental health cases, especially not one of my magnitude and he simply didn�t or couldn�t grasp the entirety of his responsibility. The enormity and complexity of my mental health, I believe, rendered his assistance ineffective.
       7) And then there is Clara. When I met her, and drew close to her, she spoke of many horrible things that her father did to her, was still doing to her. She quickly learned of my problems from the past and, I thought, a kingship was formed. I never had any reason to doubt anything she ever told me until after I was in jail, because I know all too well from first hand experience the cruelties that human beings are capable of, it wasn�t until after I was locked up that I learned that I was not the only person she�d tried to manipulate into killing her father. There was another person, her ex boyfriend, whom she�d tried to persuade. He, though, was smart enough to get away from her.
      It was also after my arrest that I learned of an inheritance she would supposedly receive after her father�s death, an inheritance that supposedly reached seven � digits proportions in liquid assets alone. I was not sure whether this allegation was true or not, but if it was, it told me the real reason why I was in jail. It wasn�t for protecting someone from harm and abuse; it was for another person�s greed.
      Sometimes after Clara�s arrest I found out that she told one of her cellmates that she was going to shift all the blame on to (me) because (I) am of feeble mind.� She was always talking about how intelligent she was, how high her IQ was. Perhaps she really could have done it, had she not boasted it to her cellmate. At her sentencing the judged told her that it was she that set into motion the events that led to her father�s death. Had it not been for her, Dr. Schwartz would still be alive.
Yet�Clara walked awake with 48 years. The puppet mistress who pulled all the right strings and tried not one but twice to have her father killed, received 48 years.
      I call her the puppet mistress because I have long come upon a realization that is difficult for me to admit. I was tricked. Played for a fool and because of her green I ruined the lives of a great many people. She knew of my issues with abuse when I was younger growing up in the System, and she took advantage of that. I no longer believe her father was abusing her they was she claimed, but it was an excellent ruse to get her fast into the door of my mind. I only wish I had been smart enough to keep her out.
     Unlike her, I refuse to shift all the blame from myself. Regardless of how badly she manipulated and screwed with my mind, no matter how much of the blame truly rests on her shoulders, I cannot and will not deny the fact that it was hand that wielded the sword that ended Dr. Schwartz�s life. I cannot change that, cannot take it back, no matter how much I may want to.
       8) As I said, I have seventy thousand pages of mental health history, spanning most of my life, all of which seems to have been completely ignored in these proceedings, replaced by publicity stunts by the news media portraying me as some extremely dangerous vampire. The important things have been ignored, while the meaningless has been displayed for all to see, in the name of ratings.
     And now, my plea:
     Justice has been denied to me. My case has been handled poorly. If I was the only one who thought so, I would not be writing thins story. If it were only one or two people who thought so, I would not be writing this story. But there are too many people who think as I do to ignore this. Some of these people are complete strangers to me. Now I am sending out a cry for help. I need a lawyer who specialized in Habeas Corpus and has a background in dealing with mental health cases. Help me get back in court and help me to see to it that this case is dealt with the proper manner. I cannot put it any plainer than that.
For those of you who believe me I write this in an attempt to escape my punishment and get away with murder, you misunderstand me completely and you fail to realize something very important: I could be released right now from this penitentiary and let back into the world and I would not be escaping punishment. There is not a prison in existence that compares with that of my own mind, nor is there a punishment on this Earth that can match watch I have to deal with every time I look at myself in the mirror. And there is nothing, NOTHING that can equal what I have to live with during the times when I allow myself to sleep.
     Escape my punishment? My friends, that simply isn�t possible.
     No, what I seek is the proper ruling. One that allows me to get the proper treatment I require not sure sends me to an oubliette and forgets about me. A ruling where after receiving such treatment, I may be given the chance to return to society and given the chance to live. A real chance this time. I�ve never had a real chance in all my life and even the most jaded of you should be able to see the injustice of that.
       So I�ve reached the end of my story, or at least, I�ve caught up with the present because the story never ends. There is very little I can tell you that hasn�t already been said either here by me or somewhere else by somebody else. Some of you are going to read this and laugh at me. Others will scoff and move on to other websites. That�s fine, I can�t please everyone and wouldn�t want to even if I could and besides, those types of people aren�t the ones I wrote this story for anyway.
But there will be those of you who will read this and see the validity of my story, which will rally for my cause. These people will see the injustice for what it is and do what they can to help me. Any of you who have spent time in the System can remember the things that go on there; how you�re always ignored until it�s almost too late. For those of you who read this and understand the things I am saying, the things I am asking, and who will answer my plea for help, these words are for you:
Help me make the noise that needs to be made in this world so that it won�t be too late and I can be given the chance I never had, so that when I do die it won�t be carved upon my stone that I lived my life as the Boy Nobody Knew.
          Even it if is too late for me, even if this whole gamble is for naught, please remember one thing for me, something far more important than my own cause. I am not the only one. There are so many like me out there, boys and girls nobody knows, that are ignored and passed off as refuse devoured by the System with nobody to care for them, nobody to listen to them until it is too late to save them from the path on which they have been left no choice but to walk. Even if nothing happens for my case, perhaps this story will open peoples� eyes to the truth of the true nature of the System. It is a beast and it needs to be slain. Don�t let these kids remain unknown, unheard, and ignored for that is the beast�s way and I am the result of what happens when that beast has had it�s way.
          Before I fall silent, I need to say something very important that my television interviews never aired though they promised me they would. I know what I�m going to say won�t change things and it won�t bring him back but it needs to be said all the same.
         To Dr. Robert Schwartz, and your entire family, I�m sorry. I won�t dare ask your forgiveness because I can�t forgive myself and even if I could I wouldn�t want to be forgiven because to be forgiven is to say it has been made better and it will never be better. I know that is story and especially my case if it gets re-opened is going to rip the scabs off painful wounds that are deep and far from healed. For this, I again apologize but this is something I feel is necessary. I wish I could express my sorrow at your loss and as you heard me say at my sentencing, there is not a day that goes by that I don�t regret his death, and regret the day I met Clara Schwartz. Though these words are far from adequate and probable mean next to nothing to you coming from me, I repeat them nonetheless:

                                                                   I am sorry.

                           My name is Kyle Hulbert, the Boy Nobody Knew, and this story is told.
                                                                                                                         - March 9, 2005
The Boy Nobody Knew
By Kyle Hulbert

Here he comes:
the Boy Nobody Knows
yet everybody knows him.
Here he comes:
the Boy with wonders in his mind
and a world in his eyes,
but you�ll miss the pain he hides
because you won�t look for it,
even when it�s standing
right in front of you.
Here he comes:
the Boy who comes in the night
and you�ll never know he was there.
He�s only looking for a place
to call his own.
Here he comes:
the Boy that doesn�t belong.
the world threw him away
before he ever had a chance,
and now he�s left on his own
with the cruelty of memory scarring his mind.
Here he comes:
the Boy who is invisible
but everyone sees him (or they think they do).
and the obvious they didn�t notice until it was too late.
Yes, here he comes:
the Boy Nobody Knows
yet everyone knows him.
Or do they?
Damn, there he goes�.
News Paper Articles in Relation to the Case:
Teen Pleads Guilty to Killing Friend's Father
Va. Scientist Was Killed With Sword
Swordsman pleads guilty in Schwartz murder
Arrests In Biophysicist's Death
Testimony Highlights Role Of Witchcraft, Occult In Murder
Haymarket Man Gets 18 Years For 2001 Murder of Loudoun Scientist
Killer Coven Arrested After Human Sacrifice
Send Donations and Letters to:
Kyle Hulbert #32548
WRSP
Big Stone Gap, VA 24219
(MONEY ORDERS ONLY!!!)
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