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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Brin Hodgskiss was born and raised in Johannesburg and has worked with the SA and UK police on investigations tackling everything from burglary and terrorism to murder and rape. He has published in international journals, as well as presented academically, and on TV and radio, on the topic of serial murder. He works in England’s National Health Service and is a freelance consultant in the psychology of storytelling.

Nicole Engelbrecht is the creator and host of one of SA’s biggest podcasts, True Crime South Africa, and is the author of Samurai Sword Murder: The Morne Harmse Story and Sizzlers: The Hate Crime That Tore Sea Point Apart.

'Killer Stories: Conversations With South African Serial Murderers' is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers