A: I don’t know.
Q: Do you realize you’re smiling?
A: I guess I’m smiling.
Q: Tell me about Darcy Welles. Did you kill her, too?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: When?
A: Wednesday night.
Q: October nineteenth?
A: I guess that was the date.
Q: Well, here’s a calendar, and here’s Wednesday night. Was it October nineteenth?
A: Yes, October nineteenth.
Q: Can you tell me about that?
A: Look, I can go on all night here, but the important thing...
Q: Yes, what’s the important thing, Mr. Lytell?
A: I killed her the same as the others, okay? Exactly the same. The restaurant, the interview... well, not exactly. I didn’t take Darcy to my apartment. I was getting scared of doing that, afraid someone might see me and...
Q: But you told us earlier that you wanted to help the cops, you wanted the cops to...
A: Well, yes. But I didn’t want my neighbors thinking I was molesting young girls or anything. So I took her to this park further uptown, the Bridge Street Park.
Q: And killed her there?
A: Yes.
Q: Again applying a full nelson?
A: Yes.
Q: And where did you take her afterward, Mr. Lytell?
A: To Diamondback. I was really scared up there, I’ve got to tell you. Everybody’s black up there, you know. But it worked out okay. I got her up on the lamppost all right.
Q: What time was this, Mr. Lytell?
A: Oh, I don’t know. Twenty to eleven, a quarter to eleven?
Q: Mr. Lytell, did you attempt to kill a girl named Luella Scott last night?
A: Yes, sir, I did. I attempted to kill her.
Q: If you had succeeded in your attempt, would you later have hanged Miss Scott as well?
A: Yes, sir, that was my plan.
Q: Why?
A: I don’t understand your question.
Q: Why did you hang these young girls, Mr. Lytell? What was the purpose of that?
A: To make them visible.
Q: Visible?
A: To attract attention to them.
Q: Why did you want attention attracted to them?
A: Well, you know.
Q: I don’t know.
A: So everybody would realize.
Q: Realize what?
A: About them.
Q: What about them?
A: That they were murdered by the same person.
Q: You.
A: Yes.
Q: You wanted everyone to know that you had murdered them?
A: No, no.
Q: Then what did you want everyone to know?
A: I don’t know what I wanted them to know, damn it!
Q: Mr. Lytell, I’m trying to understand...
A: What the hell is it you don’t understand? I’ve already told you...
Q: Yes, but hanging these girls...
A: That was the idea.
Q: What was the idea?
A: Jesus, I don’t know how to make it any plainer.
Q: You say you hanged them to attract attention to them...
A: Yes.
Q: ...to make everyone realize they’d been murdered by the same person.
A: Yes.
Q: Why, Mr. Lytell?
A: Are we finished here? Because if we are...
Q: We told you earlier that you can end this whenever you want to. All you have to do is tell us you don’t want to answer any further questions.
A: I don’t mind answering questions. It’s just that you’re asking all the wrong questions.
Q: What questions would you like me to ask, Mr. Lytell?
A: How about the gold sitting there? Doesn’t that interest you at all?
Q: By the gold, are you referring to these medals Detectives Weeks and Carella found in your apartment?
A: I don’t know who found them there.
Q: But they’re yours, are they not?
A: Well, whose do you think they are?
Q: These are Olympic medals, are they not?
A: Olympic gold medals. You’re not looking at bronze there, mister.
Q: Did you win these medals, Mr. Lytell?
A: Come on, don’t be ridiculous. Were you living on Mars?
Q: Sir?
A: How old are you, anyway?
Q: I’m thirty-seven, sir.
A: So where were you fifteen years ago? You were twenty-two years old, am I right? Didn’t you watch television? Didn’t you know what the hell was going on in the world?
Q: You won these medals fifteen years ago, is that what you’re saying?
A: Listen to the guy, will you? Three gold medals, he’s acting as if it never happened!
Q: I’m not a sports fan, Mr. Lytell. Perhaps you can tell me a little more about it.
A: Sure, that’s the whole damn trouble. People forget, that’s the trouble. Three gold medals — I was on the Johnny Carson show, for Christ’s sake. Lightning Lytell, that’s how he introduced me, Lightning Lytell. That’s what they all called me. That’s what the reporters covering the games started calling me. I was on the cover of every important sports magazine in this country, I couldn’t go anyplace without people stopping me on the street, “Hey, Lightning!” “How ya doin’, Lightning?” I was famous!
We did a thing, Johnny and me, where we pretended to have a race, you know, just a short sprint across the stage, and he did that famous take of his, Johnny, his take, you know his take? ’Cause I was halfway across the stage before he even heard the starting gun. Reaction time is very important, you know. Jesse Owens used to favor a bunch start, used to set his front block eight inches from the line, the rear block twelve inches behind that. You have to set your blocks for what feels right for you, it’s a personal thing. Bobby Morrow — he was triple gold winner in the 1956 games — he used to set his front block twenty-one inches from the line, and his rear block back fourteen inches from that. It varies. The first guy who ran the metric short sprint in ten seconds flat — this was Armin Hary — he used to set his blocks at twenty-three and thirty-three. You have to explode out of the blocks — that’s a common expression you hear all the time in running, you explode out of the blocks. Just moving out of them fast isn’t the way you win races. You have to explode out of those blocks like a rocket coming out of a silo.