Review: Such Good Boys - Tina Dirmann

Such Good Boys: The True Story of a Mother, Two Sons and a Horrifying Murder - Tina Dirmann

Paperback - 256 Pages

Published by: St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2005

Borrowed from Karmin (My "MIL")

GoodReads Review:

AN ABUSIVE MOTHER

Raised in the suburb of Riverside, California, twenty-year-old college student Jason Bautista endured for years his emotionally disturbed mother's verbal and psychological abuse. She even locked him out of the house, tied him up with electrical cord, and on one occasion, gave him a beating that sent him to the emergency room. His fifteen-year-old half brother Matthew Montejo also was a victim to Jane Bautista's dark mood swings and erratic behavior, but for some reason, Jason received the brunt of the abuse-until he decided he'd had enough...

A SON'S REVENGE

On the night of January 14, 2003, Jason strangled his mother. To keep authorities from identifying her body, he chopped off her head and hands, an idea he claimed he got from watching an episode of the hit TV series "The Sopranos." Matthew would later testify in court that he sat in another room in the house with the TV volume turned up while Jason murdered their mother. He also testified that he drove around with Jason to find a place to dump Jane's torso.

A CRIME THAT WOULD BOND TWO BROTHERS

The morning following the murder, Matthew went to school, and Jason returned to his classes at Cal State San Bernardino. When authorities zeroed in on them, Jason lied and said that Jane had run off with a boyfriend she'd met on the Internet. But when police confronted the boys with overwhelming evidence, Jason confessed all. Now the nightmare was only just beginning for him...

My Review:

HOLY SCARE-FEST.  Okay, so I asked Karmin to borrow a book or two from her, because I know she loves to read non-fiction, true crime stories, and I have enjoyed one or two in the past.  This was by far one of the creepiest things I've read in a long time.

Jason and Matt grow up in an abusive household, and you hear their story from the beginning.  It is obvious that their mother, Jane is a paranoid schizophrenic, and puts them through hell.  Basically Jason has had enough and realizes that the only way he can hope to have a normal life is to make sure that his mother is no longer a part of it.  Unfortunately, instead of just getting up and moving out, he decides that killing her is the best option.  I started to really freak myself out because at one point I started thinking -- can you really blame the kid? I mean his mom is completely looney.  But then I started to read further and discovered that not only does he manually strangle his mother, he also cuts off her head, and both hands (because he saw an episode of The Soprano's in which one of the characters kills another character and discards the head and hands so that police will have a hard time identifying the body). So like I said, I started to kind of feel for the kid, until he is describing how easy it was for him to just saw off his mothers head/hands and only had to stop "a few times" to turn around and vomit.

WOW. Just wow.

This was definitely a quick, easy read, although quite disturbing.  I honestly couldn't put it down because I just wanted to know what was going through this kids mind.  UGH!

My Recommendation:  Honestly, I only recommend this to people that really, truly want to read about a psychotic mother, who raises two psychotic boys.  Otherwise, save yourself the trouble and read a quick article on Wikipedia about it -- the gory details are not for everyone.

3 out of 5 stars

Happy Reading!