When 18 year-old Morné Harmse walked into his Krugersdorp high school, armed with a samurai sword on a Monday in 2008, he had one mission – to commit a massacre. Inspired by the Columbine high school killings, his fantasy to make people "take notice" had been brewing for more than a year. By the time his sword-slashing spree had ended, 16-year-old Jacques Pretorius was dead and three others were brutally injured.

In the aftermath of what was described as “the most barbaric act of schoolboy violence in South African history” the country was left reeling. How does an ordinary boy from a "normal" family become a brutal killer overnight? Was Morné under the influence of a satanic cult? A protégée of mastermind Devilsdorp killer, Cecilia Steyn? Did his obsession with heavy metal band Slipknot drive him over the edge? Now, 14 years later, Morné Harmse is out on controversial parole.Written in mesmerising detail, Samurai Sword Murder finally puts together the pieces of this brutal tragedy.

In 2003, ten gay men were brutally attacked at Sizzlers, a massage parlour in Sea Point. In a massacre of savage violence, nine of the men lost their lives. Quinton Taylor, the badly wounded sole survivor, managed to identify Adam Woest and Trevor Theys as the two men responsible for what was considered to be one of the worst mass murders in SA. Now Adam Woest is up for parole. For Taylor and those who lost their loved ones, this severe travesty of justice will not happen without a fight.

‘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 as told to Brin Hodgskiss in the bowels of one of our most secure prisons.

Hodgskiss got his doctorate in psychology for a study based on interviews with thirteen serial killers. The recordings sat gathering dust until recently, when top true-crime podcaster Nicole Engelbrecht found his paper online. The two connected and the concept for this book was born.

In Killer Stories, Hodgskiss uses each of the interviews, combined with the tenets of narrative psychology, to take the reader into the minds of the killers. He lays out how the stories these men told themselves about their lives contributed to where they ended up –
and how they aren’t that different from the stories we all tell ourselves.

The book intertwines the killers’ versions of the truth and the truecrime stories behind them, an interpretation of the tales using narrative psychology, and how Hodgskiss’s own journey as a psychologist and human being contributed to his deeper understanding of the minds of these killers.