Ricky Ray Rector grew up in Conway, Arkansas, just an hour’s drive from Bill Clinton’s own hometown of Hot Springs. From the very earliest days of his life, Ricky was considered different and strange. He had few friends, and while other children were out running around, Ricky sat under a tree playing alone with sticks. Those who saw him said he was dreamy and detached, “as if he were locked into some private daze of withdrawal.”

He was slow and inept as a student, with what was later described as an undiagnosed serious learning disability. As time went on, he became even more lost, as well as paranoid, and by junior high he “floundered ever more hopelessly in his classwork, still able only to print in the laboring hand of a third-grader.” And though unable to understand much of what was going on around him, Ricky was beaten mercilessly by his father.

As he grew up, Ricky became trouble. He would act out, he couldn’t focus. Others became unsettled by his presence, and would leave a room whenever he arrived. Soon, as an adolescent, still not having received mental health treatment, Ricky lapsed into violence and delinquency. He was arrested frequently for petty crimes. He could not maintain a stable job. He was angry. He spiraled into “a kind of slowly accelerating berserkness.”