FLASH FICTION ‘Corrections’ by Michael Botur

Corrections

Michael Botur

An April 4 story regarding teen killer Robert Marshall laughing after he beat homeless father Christian Williams to death in the dawn streets of Melbourne’s CBD omitted a few details we would like to correct.

It was incorrectly reported killer Robert Marshall chose not to be remorseful.

Mr Marshall was actually incapable of showing remorse due to an upbringing in which his neuroplasticity was adversely altered due to domestic violence leading to toxic stress and telomere erosion in Mr Marshall’s hippocampus.

Mr Marshall’s tenth arrest, at age 15, resulted in him being institutionalised for 14 months at the Youth Justice Centre at Parkville.

Upon Mr Marshall’s release, he was granted $109 per week in unemployment benefit, but this payment was not conditional upon attending literacy or counselling appointments.

Mr Marshall slept among the decorative ferns where the suits tap their cigarette ash in the shadow of the Eureka Tower, headquarters of the Reserve Bank of Australia and recipient of the 2006 Emporis Award for Excellence in Architecture.

Mr Marshall for years lived on one meal a day and developed a post-traumatic stress disorder leading to extreme defensiveness around his transient lifestyle. His $109 a week Centrelink payment afforded him only fried chicken and white bread. Foods containing omega-3, essential for frontal cortex development, were not an option.

The area of Mr Marshall’s brain responsible for rational decision making is not scheduled to develop fully until approximately 23 years of age.

While transient, Mr Marshall was himself the victim of assaults by larger predators, thus normalising violence as a problem-solving methodology in his homeless tribe.

Mr Marshall, rather than feeling ill-will towards his victim, has no feelings whatsoever. His last trace of empathy evaporated when he was 11.

We apologise for this omission.