Kate Chisholm

What’s it like to talk at length to a serial killer?

Plus: the lonely life of the Pitcairn Islanders and a sizzling new Arthur Miller adaptation on Radio 4

issue 24 October 2015

‘I’ve never met a human being who doesn’t appreciate being listened to, being taken seriously,’ said Asbjorn Rachlew, the Norwegian homicide detective who one afternoon in the summer of 2011 found himself listening to Anders Breivik, who had just killed 77 people in a shoot-out on an island near Oslo. His job, Rachlew explained, was to get Breivik to talk, but not ‘by faking it, through manipulation etc.’. You have to show real concern, he said, to get the information you need, because you have to remember that suspects, too, like Breivik, are also traumatised. ‘Banging the table and screaming etc. doesn’t help communication…’

Rachlew’s frankness, his plain speaking, as he attempted to explain what he went through with Breivik made for gripping radio, a trip inside someone else’s life, into an experience that very few people will ever have, talking at length to a serial killer to find out the facts, build up a case.

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