deviant being
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The Devil made me do it. This has long been the plea of those who have been caught doing something wicked that is uncharacteristic of their usual behavior. Most of the time, we take it only as a figure of speech to brush off an aberrant deviation from the norm. However, sometimes the meaning can become all too literal. In 1981, a brutal murder occurred in a tranquil town on the East Coast of the United States; a vicious crime that the perpetrator claimed was not carried out by his own hand, but rather that of demons that had taken him over. It was a defense that would carry over into an actual court of law to become the nation's first case of a court defense seeking to blame a crime on demonic possession, and would trigger a media blitz of this spectacular tale of menacing supernatural evil on trial.

The whole strange tale begins in the quite, affluent, and peaceful neighborhood of Brookfield, Connecticut, where an unassuming family, the Glatzels, had arrived in order to clean and put in order a rental property they had recently acquired in this scenic town of 13,000. Shortly after they arrived, a series of bizarre events began to unfurl that would mark the beginning of the madness that was about to spiral out of control.

One day, about a month after they had arrived, Mrs. Judy Glatzel reported that her youngest son, 11 year-old David, had suddenly and inexplicably fallen down rather forcefully onto the bed as if he had been shoved. When questioned about the occurrence later, David told his mother that he had in fact been pushed by what he described as an old man with "burnt-looking skin," who had pointed a finger at him and growled the word "Beware" before throwing him onto the bed.

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