What do you think?
The Asylum Confession Files #9
Killer Teens
They arrive alive. They always leave dead.
But first, they give me their confessions and this time they're all about 'teenage killers'.
My name is Jack Steen, and for those who arrive on my 'death' ward at the Asylum, I'm the last face many will see before they die. I am the night nurse at an Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and most of my patients know me as their Angel of Death. I know them as mass murderers, rapists, and serial killers — among other things.
Here's what happens: they come on my floor, they give me their deathbed confession, and I help to make their death less painful. There's a catch, I want the real story, the one they haven't told anyone else.
The majority of these killers are expert manipulators.
They could be playing their final game with me by messing with my head.
Now, maybe they're messing with yours too.
Inside this book are 4 DeathBed Confessions that relate to KILLER
Patient Adrianna is a lost girl with mommy issues.
Patient Michael had an issue with his brother.
Patient Badger lived in a house full of dead people.
Patient Cindy knows how to throw a killer tea party.
There is swearing in this book. But, these are the confessions of serial killers, mass murderers and such, so do you expect anything different?
But first, they give me their confessions and this time they're all about 'teenage killers'.
My name is Jack Steen, and for those who arrive on my 'death' ward at the Asylum, I'm the last face many will see before they die. I am the night nurse at an Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and most of my patients know me as their Angel of Death. I know them as mass murderers, rapists, and serial killers — among other things.
Here's what happens: they come on my floor, they give me their deathbed confession, and I help to make their death less painful. There's a catch, I want the real story, the one they haven't told anyone else.
The majority of these killers are expert manipulators.
They could be playing their final game with me by messing with my head.
Now, maybe they're messing with yours too.
Inside this book are 4 DeathBed Confessions that relate to KILLER
Patient Adrianna is a lost girl with mommy issues.
Patient Michael had an issue with his brother.
Patient Badger lived in a house full of dead people.
Patient Cindy knows how to throw a killer tea party.
There is swearing in this book. But, these are the confessions of serial killers, mass murderers and such, so do you expect anything different?
Audible Audio
First published September 8, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
April 7, 2026
This book series will never fail to keep me on my toes.
July 25, 2026
This time there's confessions from:
Adrianna
Michael
Badger
Cindy
Wow! These were some angry and unhinged teens. Badger and Cindy definitely has the wildest stories out of the 4 of them. I wouldn't have been able to sit there and listen to them like Jack did. It was crazy how all of them heard voices, which is what made them do what they did.
Another great read that I flew through.
Adrianna
Michael
Badger
Cindy
Wow! These were some angry and unhinged teens. Badger and Cindy definitely has the wildest stories out of the 4 of them. I wouldn't have been able to sit there and listen to them like Jack did. It was crazy how all of them heard voices, which is what made them do what they did.
Another great read that I flew through.
October 19, 2025
Needs New Editor
I really love this series, and this latest edition to it is no different. The stories are 5 star. I love them. My only complaint, and the only reason I'm taking off a star is the editing. There's an entire name and description change in story 3 "Badger", and there are quite a few typos. Outside of that issue, I hope Jack Steen continues this series, and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a quick, interesting read that takes you into the minds of some of the most depraved.
I really love this series, and this latest edition to it is no different. The stories are 5 star. I love them. My only complaint, and the only reason I'm taking off a star is the editing. There's an entire name and description change in story 3 "Badger", and there are quite a few typos. Outside of that issue, I hope Jack Steen continues this series, and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a quick, interesting read that takes you into the minds of some of the most depraved.
December 7, 2025
Another good one! The only thing I noticed is that Badgers’s sisters named changed from Emma Lou to Mary Jo
October 12, 2025
I love this series obviously. It’s so good. I did find each of these stories lacked some originality and all followed too much of the same premise HOWEVER, I still loved it. I still had a good, spooky, dark time. That’s all that matters. His writing is so good.
September 24, 2025
4.5 stars
January 21, 2026
I’m fully aware these books are probably completely fake but I love reading them so much!! They never disappoint….
October 2, 2026
Read my full review available here: https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/...
Young Enough to Be Underestimated: A Review of Killer Teens by Jack Steen
The Asylum Confession Files #9 | Horror and Thriller | 242 pages | First published September 8, 2025
Rating: ★★★★☆
Jack Steen returns to the asylum’s death ward in Killer Teens, the ninth installment in The Asylum Confession Files. This volume focuses on crimes committed during adolescence, presenting four deathbed confessions involving teenage killers.
The familiar arrangement remains unchanged. Patients arrive on Steen’s ward alive, but none leave that way. Before they die, however, Steen asks them for the stories they never told investigators, courts, families, or the public. In exchange for a complete confession, he helps make their final moments less painful.
Steen is the ward’s night nurse and the last face many of these patients will see. They call him their Angel of Death. He knows them as serial killers, mass murderers, sexual predators, and other violent offenders. His task is to care for them, but his interest goes beyond medicine. He wants the hidden version of every crime.
The difficulty is that Steen’s patients are experienced manipulators. Their confessions might reveal the truth, but they could just as easily be final attempts to control someone else. Even on their deathbeds, these killers can exaggerate, conceal, misdirect, and lie.
That uncertainty becomes especially disturbing in Killer Teens. The patients are confessing as adults, but their stories concern violence committed when they were young. Steen must listen not only to what happened but to how decades of memory, guilt, resentment, and self-justification have reshaped each account.
Childhood Ends at the Crime Scene
Teenage killers occupy a troubling position in crime fiction. They are old enough to understand violence, yet young enough for questions of responsibility, influence, maturity, and rehabilitation to become complicated.
A violent adult is usually judged according to established ideas of intent and accountability. When the offender is a teenager, every explanation becomes more difficult. Was the crime the result of abuse, neglect, manipulation, mental instability, peer pressure, or deliberate cruelty? Did the teenager understand the consequences? Was the violence an isolated act, or the beginning of a lifelong pattern?
Killer Teens places those questions inside a deathbed-confession framework. The patients are no longer adolescents when Steen encounters them. They have had years to reinterpret what they did and decide how they want to be remembered.
That distance creates tension between the teenager who committed the crime and the dying adult who describes it. A patient may blame an unhappy childhood, a damaged family, or another person’s influence. Such factors may explain how the violence developed, but they do not necessarily excuse it.
The confessions therefore become struggles over identity. Each patient must decide whether to speak as the frightened child they once were, the killer they became, or the manipulator still trying to shape the final narrative.
Four Confessions of Adolescent Violence
The book contains four deathbed confessions centered on Adrianna, Michael, Badger, and Cindy. Each patient represents a different kind of childhood or teenage nightmare.
Adrianna is a lost girl with serious issues involving her mother. Michael’s violence is tied to his brother. Badger grew up in a house filled with dead people. Cindy knows how to organize a tea party with deadly consequences.
These descriptions suggest four distinct environments: a damaged mother-daughter relationship, sibling conflict, a home overtaken by death, and a childhood ritual transformed into murder. Together, they connect teenage violence to family, domestic space, isolation, and corrupted innocence.
Patient Adrianna: The Lost Girl
Adrianna is introduced as a lost girl with “mommy issues,” a description that immediately places her confession within a troubled mother-daughter relationship.
Being lost can mean many things. Adrianna may have been physically abandoned, emotionally neglected, psychologically unmoored, or unable to form a stable identity. Her relationship with her mother may have shaped how she understood affection, punishment, loyalty, and control.
Parents frequently become central figures in the stories offenders tell about themselves. Some describe abusive or neglectful childhoods to explain their later violence. Others use their upbringing to shift responsibility, suggesting they had no meaningful choice in what they became.
Adrianna’s confession is therefore likely to require careful interpretation. Her suffering may be genuine, but victimhood and guilt can coexist. A person harmed during childhood can later inflict serious harm on others. Recognizing the first fact does not erase the second.
Her description as a “girl” also raises questions about emotional development. Even as a dying adult, Adrianna may still present herself as the abandoned child at the center of her story. That identity could reveal unresolved trauma, or it could be a calculated method of gaining Steen’s sympathy.
The patient may want Steen to see her as someone who was lost rather than someone who made deliberate choices. Steen must determine whether her confession explains a crime or attempts to excuse it.
Mother-daughter conflict also introduces complicated ideas about inheritance. Adrianna may fear becoming like her mother, deliberately imitate her, or define herself entirely through opposition to her. If violence grew from that relationship, the confession may reveal a cycle in which abuse, resentment, and identity became inseparable.
The central question is not simply what Adrianna’s mother did to her. It is what Adrianna chose to do afterward.
Patient Michael: A Brother’s Grievance
Michael’s confession centers on an issue involving his brother. The intentionally vague description could encompass jealousy, rivalry, betrayal, resentment, abuse, competition, or a family secret shared between siblings.
Sibling relationships are uniquely suited to psychological horror. Brothers can grow up in the same home yet experience it very differently. They may compete for affection, status, attention, or survival. Childhood grievances that appear minor to adults can become overwhelming within the closed emotional world of adolescence.
Michael’s “issue” with his brother may have begun as ordinary conflict before escalating into violence. Alternatively, the conflict could conceal something more serious that the family failed to recognize.
A sibling also serves as both witness and rival. Michael’s brother may know details about him that no outsider could discover. He may understand Michael’s fears, weaknesses, and secrets. If the relationship becomes hostile, that intimacy can make the danger more personal.
The confession may force Steen to decide how much responsibility belongs to Michael and how much he attributes to his brother. A manipulative patient can portray rivalry as persecution, revenge as self-defense, or premeditated violence as the unavoidable outcome of family conflict.
Michael may also use his brother as a permanent explanation for everything that followed. If so, his deathbed confession becomes less an admission of guilt than a final accusation.
Questions of comparison are likely to matter as well. Was one brother favored over the other? Was one viewed as successful, obedient, or innocent while the other became the family problem? Adolescents often construct identity through comparison, and repeated humiliation can harden into resentment.
Yet resentment alone does not account for murder. Michael’s story must eventually confront the difference between feeling wronged and choosing to kill.
Patient Badger: The House of the Dead
Badger lived in a house full of dead people, giving this confession the most openly macabre premise of the four.
A house should represent shelter, privacy, and family. Filling it with bodies transforms it into a place of concealment and decay. The domestic environment becomes a tomb, and the ordinary boundaries between home and crime scene disappear.
Badger’s unusual name adds to the sense that he has adopted—or been assigned—a separate identity. It may be a nickname reflecting personality, survival instincts, aggression, or the way others perceived him. It could also indicate emotional distance from the child he once was.
The phrase “lived in a house full of dead people” leaves several unsettling possibilities. Badger may have caused the deaths, helped conceal them, discovered them, or been trapped in a home controlled by someone else. He may have been both participant and victim.
This ambiguity makes his confession particularly well suited to the series. Steen must determine whether Badger was a teenage murderer, an accomplice, a witness, or some combination of all three. Living alongside bodies would create an atmosphere in which death became part of everyday life. The longer the situation continued, the more normal the abnormal might have seemed.
The house also raises practical questions. How were the bodies hidden? Did neighbors or relatives notice anything? Who controlled the household? Could Badger have escaped or alerted someone? If he claims he had no choice, is that true, or is helplessness part of the story he has rehearsed?
A home full of dead people suggests more than a single impulsive crime. It implies repetition, concealment, and adaptation. Someone had to continue eating, sleeping, and moving through rooms where evidence of violence remained nearby.
For a teenager, such an environment could destroy conventional ideas of safety and morality. It might also offer a disturbing education in how easily the dead can be ignored when the living decide not to look.
Badger’s final confession may reveal who created the house of death. It may also expose what he eventually became inside it.
Patient Cindy: A Deadly Tea Party
Cindy knows how to throw a killer tea party, turning one of childhood’s most innocent games into an image of calculated violence.
Tea parties are usually associated with imagination, manners, dolls, friendship, and imitation of adult rituals. They involve invitations, preparation, assigned places, and carefully arranged objects. In a horror context, each of those elements can become threatening.
A deadly tea party suggests planning rather than spontaneous rage. Cindy must choose the guests, prepare the setting, and determine what will be served. The performance of politeness can conceal hostile intent.
This contrast between innocence and murder makes Cindy’s confession especially unsettling. A familiar childhood activity becomes a stage on which trust is exploited. Victims may lower their guard because the setting appears harmless, playful, or domestic.
Poison naturally comes to mind, although the description does not establish a particular method. More important is the ceremonial quality of the scenario. Cindy may not merely want someone dead; she may want the death arranged according to her own rules.
A tea party also depends on social roles. There is a host, there are guests, and everyone is expected to behave in a certain way. Cindy’s violence may involve control, exclusion, humiliation, or revenge against those who failed to play the roles she assigned them.
Like Adrianna, Cindy may encourage Steen to view her through the image of a young girl. Yet childhood imagery can be deceptive. Dolls, tea sets, and games do not make an offender harmless. They may instead become tools through which aggression is disguised.
Her confession could be a final performance. Steen is the invited guest, Cindy controls the story being served, and the true danger lies in accepting everything placed before him.
The Family as a Crime Scene
The four patient descriptions share an important feature: their violence appears connected to domestic or family life.
Adrianna’s story revolves around her mother. Michael’s involves his brother. Badger lived among the dead inside a house. Cindy transforms a domestic childhood ritual into something lethal.
This emphasis makes Killer Teens different from a collection focused on adult predators hunting strangers. Teenagers have limited independence. Their world is often defined by relatives, school, neighborhood, and home. When violence emerges, it may occur within those same spaces.
The family can provide love and stability, but it can also become a closed system where abuse, secrecy, resentment, and fear remain hidden. Adults outside the home may miss warning signs, while children learn that revealing the truth could make their situation worse.
At the same time, a dysfunctional family cannot automatically explain every crime. Many people survive terrible childhoods without becoming killers. The patients may describe their homes accurately while still using those environments to reduce their own responsibility.
Steen’s challenge is to listen without becoming either dismissive or gullible. Childhood trauma matters, but so does choice. The truth may require holding both ideas at once.
The Adult Remembering the Teenager
Deathbed confessions are retrospective. Steen is not speaking directly with the adolescent who committed the crime; he is speaking with the adult that adolescent became.
Memory changes over time. Details disappear, motivations are rewritten, and repeated stories can begin to feel more real than the original events. A patient may have spent decades constructing a version of the crime that allows continued psychological survival.
This is particularly important when the offender was young. The dying patient may insist that the teenager acted without understanding, while still describing evidence of planning and concealment. Another may portray youthful confusion as deliberate evil because notoriety has become part of adult identity.
The confessions may therefore contain several competing versions of the same person:
The child the patient remembers being
The teenager who committed the violence
The offender described by police and courts
The adult shaped by punishment or institutionalization
The dying patient speaking to Steen
The character the patient wants the world to remember
Steen wants the “real story,” but there may no longer be one clean version. The truth could be fragmented across memory, evidence, shame, and manipulation.
Youth, Guilt, and Responsibility
The subject of teenage killers inevitably raises moral and legal questions. Adolescents are still developing judgment, impulse control, emotional regulation, and awareness of long-term consequences. Those facts complicate responsibility, but they do not erase the damage inflicted on victims.
The severity of the crime may also influence how people perceive the offender’s age. A teenager accused of extreme violence is often described either as a dangerous monster or as a damaged child. Both labels can oversimplify the person and the offense.
Calling someone a monster can prevent meaningful examination of how the violence developed. Calling the same person only a child can minimize planning, cruelty, and agency.
Killer Teens occupies the uncomfortable territory between those positions. Its patients may have been vulnerable, manipulated, neglected, or abused. They may also have knowingly harmed others.
Steen’s ward removes the legal question of what should happen next. These patients have reached the end of their lives. No sentence can rehabilitate them, and no confession can restore their victims. What remains is the question of whether honest acknowledgment still has value.
A truthful confession might provide answers to surviving families or correct a false official narrative. A dishonest one could reopen wounds, create new victims, or allow a killer to escape moral accountability one final time.
Manipulation Through Vulnerability
Adult killers often manipulate through confidence, intimidation, or charm. Patients discussing crimes from adolescence can use another powerful tool: vulnerability.
A patient may describe loneliness, abuse, bullying, rejection, or fear in ways that draw Steen’s attention away from the victim. The suffering may be real, but the narrative can still be strategically constructed.
Adrianna may invite sympathy as a lost daughter. Michael may present himself as the wronged brother. Badger may depict himself as a trapped child in a house of death. Cindy may hide behind the appearance of innocence.
Each identity contains a possible truth. Each can also become a shield.
Steen must separate understanding from absolution. He can recognize why a teenager became violent without accepting that violence as inevitable. He can feel compassion for the child a patient once was while condemning what that child did.
That distinction is one of the book’s strongest thematic possibilities. Empathy does not require innocence, and guilt does not mean that every earlier experience is irrelevant.
Confession as a Final Act of Control
The patients have little physical control left when they reach Steen’s ward. They are dying, dependent on care, and unable to escape the institution. Their stories are among the last things they still possess.
By controlling what they reveal, they can influence Steen’s emotions and possibly reshape how their crimes are understood. They can withhold names, introduce new victims, accuse relatives, or claim that the official account was wrong.
The teenage-killer theme gives this control an additional dimension. Each patient can decide how young and helpless to appear within the confession. They can emphasize immaturity when discussing responsibility and sophistication when describing how they evaded discovery.
They may also force Steen to confront his own assumptions. Does he judge a teenage murderer differently from an adult one? Is he more willing to offer mercy to someone who suffered as a child? Can a dying adult still claim protection from the age at which the crime occurred?
The patients may not need Steen to believe every detail. Creating doubt could be enough. If they can leave him uncertain, disturbed, or obsessed, then they retain power even after death.
Corrupted Childhood Imagery
The patient descriptions repeatedly transform familiar parts of childhood into sources of horror.
A girl wants her mother’s love, but the relationship becomes dangerous. Brothers grow up together, but rivalry turns violent. A house should protect its occupants, yet it contains the dead. A tea party should be harmless, but it becomes a ritual of murder.
This corruption of ordinary childhood experiences gives the volume its distinct atmosphere. The horror does not come from distant supernatural forces. It comes from familiar relationships and spaces becoming unsafe.
The effect is especially strong because childhood objects and rituals carry emotional associations. A family home, sibling bond, or tea set seems too ordinary to inspire fear. When violence enters those spaces, it suggests that danger can exist behind the most reassuring appearances.
The book’s implied horror is therefore domestic and psychological as much as physical. The teenagers may not possess adult authority, but they understand routines, vulnerabilities, and trust. Their apparent harmlessness may give them access that an obvious adult threat would never receive.
Tone and Structure
At 242 pages, Killer Teens uses four confessions to create an episodic but connected narrative. Each patient offers a separate story, while Steen’s presence and the death-ward premise provide continuity.
The structure allows the book to explore different forms of teenage violence without committing the entire volume to one case. Readers move from parental conflict to sibling resentment, domestic horror, and a dead
Young Enough to Be Underestimated: A Review of Killer Teens by Jack Steen
The Asylum Confession Files #9 | Horror and Thriller | 242 pages | First published September 8, 2025
Rating: ★★★★☆
Jack Steen returns to the asylum’s death ward in Killer Teens, the ninth installment in The Asylum Confession Files. This volume focuses on crimes committed during adolescence, presenting four deathbed confessions involving teenage killers.
The familiar arrangement remains unchanged. Patients arrive on Steen’s ward alive, but none leave that way. Before they die, however, Steen asks them for the stories they never told investigators, courts, families, or the public. In exchange for a complete confession, he helps make their final moments less painful.
Steen is the ward’s night nurse and the last face many of these patients will see. They call him their Angel of Death. He knows them as serial killers, mass murderers, sexual predators, and other violent offenders. His task is to care for them, but his interest goes beyond medicine. He wants the hidden version of every crime.
The difficulty is that Steen’s patients are experienced manipulators. Their confessions might reveal the truth, but they could just as easily be final attempts to control someone else. Even on their deathbeds, these killers can exaggerate, conceal, misdirect, and lie.
That uncertainty becomes especially disturbing in Killer Teens. The patients are confessing as adults, but their stories concern violence committed when they were young. Steen must listen not only to what happened but to how decades of memory, guilt, resentment, and self-justification have reshaped each account.
Childhood Ends at the Crime Scene
Teenage killers occupy a troubling position in crime fiction. They are old enough to understand violence, yet young enough for questions of responsibility, influence, maturity, and rehabilitation to become complicated.
A violent adult is usually judged according to established ideas of intent and accountability. When the offender is a teenager, every explanation becomes more difficult. Was the crime the result of abuse, neglect, manipulation, mental instability, peer pressure, or deliberate cruelty? Did the teenager understand the consequences? Was the violence an isolated act, or the beginning of a lifelong pattern?
Killer Teens places those questions inside a deathbed-confession framework. The patients are no longer adolescents when Steen encounters them. They have had years to reinterpret what they did and decide how they want to be remembered.
That distance creates tension between the teenager who committed the crime and the dying adult who describes it. A patient may blame an unhappy childhood, a damaged family, or another person’s influence. Such factors may explain how the violence developed, but they do not necessarily excuse it.
The confessions therefore become struggles over identity. Each patient must decide whether to speak as the frightened child they once were, the killer they became, or the manipulator still trying to shape the final narrative.
Four Confessions of Adolescent Violence
The book contains four deathbed confessions centered on Adrianna, Michael, Badger, and Cindy. Each patient represents a different kind of childhood or teenage nightmare.
Adrianna is a lost girl with serious issues involving her mother. Michael’s violence is tied to his brother. Badger grew up in a house filled with dead people. Cindy knows how to organize a tea party with deadly consequences.
These descriptions suggest four distinct environments: a damaged mother-daughter relationship, sibling conflict, a home overtaken by death, and a childhood ritual transformed into murder. Together, they connect teenage violence to family, domestic space, isolation, and corrupted innocence.
Patient Adrianna: The Lost Girl
Adrianna is introduced as a lost girl with “mommy issues,” a description that immediately places her confession within a troubled mother-daughter relationship.
Being lost can mean many things. Adrianna may have been physically abandoned, emotionally neglected, psychologically unmoored, or unable to form a stable identity. Her relationship with her mother may have shaped how she understood affection, punishment, loyalty, and control.
Parents frequently become central figures in the stories offenders tell about themselves. Some describe abusive or neglectful childhoods to explain their later violence. Others use their upbringing to shift responsibility, suggesting they had no meaningful choice in what they became.
Adrianna’s confession is therefore likely to require careful interpretation. Her suffering may be genuine, but victimhood and guilt can coexist. A person harmed during childhood can later inflict serious harm on others. Recognizing the first fact does not erase the second.
Her description as a “girl” also raises questions about emotional development. Even as a dying adult, Adrianna may still present herself as the abandoned child at the center of her story. That identity could reveal unresolved trauma, or it could be a calculated method of gaining Steen’s sympathy.
The patient may want Steen to see her as someone who was lost rather than someone who made deliberate choices. Steen must determine whether her confession explains a crime or attempts to excuse it.
Mother-daughter conflict also introduces complicated ideas about inheritance. Adrianna may fear becoming like her mother, deliberately imitate her, or define herself entirely through opposition to her. If violence grew from that relationship, the confession may reveal a cycle in which abuse, resentment, and identity became inseparable.
The central question is not simply what Adrianna’s mother did to her. It is what Adrianna chose to do afterward.
Patient Michael: A Brother’s Grievance
Michael’s confession centers on an issue involving his brother. The intentionally vague description could encompass jealousy, rivalry, betrayal, resentment, abuse, competition, or a family secret shared between siblings.
Sibling relationships are uniquely suited to psychological horror. Brothers can grow up in the same home yet experience it very differently. They may compete for affection, status, attention, or survival. Childhood grievances that appear minor to adults can become overwhelming within the closed emotional world of adolescence.
Michael’s “issue” with his brother may have begun as ordinary conflict before escalating into violence. Alternatively, the conflict could conceal something more serious that the family failed to recognize.
A sibling also serves as both witness and rival. Michael’s brother may know details about him that no outsider could discover. He may understand Michael’s fears, weaknesses, and secrets. If the relationship becomes hostile, that intimacy can make the danger more personal.
The confession may force Steen to decide how much responsibility belongs to Michael and how much he attributes to his brother. A manipulative patient can portray rivalry as persecution, revenge as self-defense, or premeditated violence as the unavoidable outcome of family conflict.
Michael may also use his brother as a permanent explanation for everything that followed. If so, his deathbed confession becomes less an admission of guilt than a final accusation.
Questions of comparison are likely to matter as well. Was one brother favored over the other? Was one viewed as successful, obedient, or innocent while the other became the family problem? Adolescents often construct identity through comparison, and repeated humiliation can harden into resentment.
Yet resentment alone does not account for murder. Michael’s story must eventually confront the difference between feeling wronged and choosing to kill.
Patient Badger: The House of the Dead
Badger lived in a house full of dead people, giving this confession the most openly macabre premise of the four.
A house should represent shelter, privacy, and family. Filling it with bodies transforms it into a place of concealment and decay. The domestic environment becomes a tomb, and the ordinary boundaries between home and crime scene disappear.
Badger’s unusual name adds to the sense that he has adopted—or been assigned—a separate identity. It may be a nickname reflecting personality, survival instincts, aggression, or the way others perceived him. It could also indicate emotional distance from the child he once was.
The phrase “lived in a house full of dead people” leaves several unsettling possibilities. Badger may have caused the deaths, helped conceal them, discovered them, or been trapped in a home controlled by someone else. He may have been both participant and victim.
This ambiguity makes his confession particularly well suited to the series. Steen must determine whether Badger was a teenage murderer, an accomplice, a witness, or some combination of all three. Living alongside bodies would create an atmosphere in which death became part of everyday life. The longer the situation continued, the more normal the abnormal might have seemed.
The house also raises practical questions. How were the bodies hidden? Did neighbors or relatives notice anything? Who controlled the household? Could Badger have escaped or alerted someone? If he claims he had no choice, is that true, or is helplessness part of the story he has rehearsed?
A home full of dead people suggests more than a single impulsive crime. It implies repetition, concealment, and adaptation. Someone had to continue eating, sleeping, and moving through rooms where evidence of violence remained nearby.
For a teenager, such an environment could destroy conventional ideas of safety and morality. It might also offer a disturbing education in how easily the dead can be ignored when the living decide not to look.
Badger’s final confession may reveal who created the house of death. It may also expose what he eventually became inside it.
Patient Cindy: A Deadly Tea Party
Cindy knows how to throw a killer tea party, turning one of childhood’s most innocent games into an image of calculated violence.
Tea parties are usually associated with imagination, manners, dolls, friendship, and imitation of adult rituals. They involve invitations, preparation, assigned places, and carefully arranged objects. In a horror context, each of those elements can become threatening.
A deadly tea party suggests planning rather than spontaneous rage. Cindy must choose the guests, prepare the setting, and determine what will be served. The performance of politeness can conceal hostile intent.
This contrast between innocence and murder makes Cindy’s confession especially unsettling. A familiar childhood activity becomes a stage on which trust is exploited. Victims may lower their guard because the setting appears harmless, playful, or domestic.
Poison naturally comes to mind, although the description does not establish a particular method. More important is the ceremonial quality of the scenario. Cindy may not merely want someone dead; she may want the death arranged according to her own rules.
A tea party also depends on social roles. There is a host, there are guests, and everyone is expected to behave in a certain way. Cindy’s violence may involve control, exclusion, humiliation, or revenge against those who failed to play the roles she assigned them.
Like Adrianna, Cindy may encourage Steen to view her through the image of a young girl. Yet childhood imagery can be deceptive. Dolls, tea sets, and games do not make an offender harmless. They may instead become tools through which aggression is disguised.
Her confession could be a final performance. Steen is the invited guest, Cindy controls the story being served, and the true danger lies in accepting everything placed before him.
The Family as a Crime Scene
The four patient descriptions share an important feature: their violence appears connected to domestic or family life.
Adrianna’s story revolves around her mother. Michael’s involves his brother. Badger lived among the dead inside a house. Cindy transforms a domestic childhood ritual into something lethal.
This emphasis makes Killer Teens different from a collection focused on adult predators hunting strangers. Teenagers have limited independence. Their world is often defined by relatives, school, neighborhood, and home. When violence emerges, it may occur within those same spaces.
The family can provide love and stability, but it can also become a closed system where abuse, secrecy, resentment, and fear remain hidden. Adults outside the home may miss warning signs, while children learn that revealing the truth could make their situation worse.
At the same time, a dysfunctional family cannot automatically explain every crime. Many people survive terrible childhoods without becoming killers. The patients may describe their homes accurately while still using those environments to reduce their own responsibility.
Steen’s challenge is to listen without becoming either dismissive or gullible. Childhood trauma matters, but so does choice. The truth may require holding both ideas at once.
The Adult Remembering the Teenager
Deathbed confessions are retrospective. Steen is not speaking directly with the adolescent who committed the crime; he is speaking with the adult that adolescent became.
Memory changes over time. Details disappear, motivations are rewritten, and repeated stories can begin to feel more real than the original events. A patient may have spent decades constructing a version of the crime that allows continued psychological survival.
This is particularly important when the offender was young. The dying patient may insist that the teenager acted without understanding, while still describing evidence of planning and concealment. Another may portray youthful confusion as deliberate evil because notoriety has become part of adult identity.
The confessions may therefore contain several competing versions of the same person:
The child the patient remembers being
The teenager who committed the violence
The offender described by police and courts
The adult shaped by punishment or institutionalization
The dying patient speaking to Steen
The character the patient wants the world to remember
Steen wants the “real story,” but there may no longer be one clean version. The truth could be fragmented across memory, evidence, shame, and manipulation.
Youth, Guilt, and Responsibility
The subject of teenage killers inevitably raises moral and legal questions. Adolescents are still developing judgment, impulse control, emotional regulation, and awareness of long-term consequences. Those facts complicate responsibility, but they do not erase the damage inflicted on victims.
The severity of the crime may also influence how people perceive the offender’s age. A teenager accused of extreme violence is often described either as a dangerous monster or as a damaged child. Both labels can oversimplify the person and the offense.
Calling someone a monster can prevent meaningful examination of how the violence developed. Calling the same person only a child can minimize planning, cruelty, and agency.
Killer Teens occupies the uncomfortable territory between those positions. Its patients may have been vulnerable, manipulated, neglected, or abused. They may also have knowingly harmed others.
Steen’s ward removes the legal question of what should happen next. These patients have reached the end of their lives. No sentence can rehabilitate them, and no confession can restore their victims. What remains is the question of whether honest acknowledgment still has value.
A truthful confession might provide answers to surviving families or correct a false official narrative. A dishonest one could reopen wounds, create new victims, or allow a killer to escape moral accountability one final time.
Manipulation Through Vulnerability
Adult killers often manipulate through confidence, intimidation, or charm. Patients discussing crimes from adolescence can use another powerful tool: vulnerability.
A patient may describe loneliness, abuse, bullying, rejection, or fear in ways that draw Steen’s attention away from the victim. The suffering may be real, but the narrative can still be strategically constructed.
Adrianna may invite sympathy as a lost daughter. Michael may present himself as the wronged brother. Badger may depict himself as a trapped child in a house of death. Cindy may hide behind the appearance of innocence.
Each identity contains a possible truth. Each can also become a shield.
Steen must separate understanding from absolution. He can recognize why a teenager became violent without accepting that violence as inevitable. He can feel compassion for the child a patient once was while condemning what that child did.
That distinction is one of the book’s strongest thematic possibilities. Empathy does not require innocence, and guilt does not mean that every earlier experience is irrelevant.
Confession as a Final Act of Control
The patients have little physical control left when they reach Steen’s ward. They are dying, dependent on care, and unable to escape the institution. Their stories are among the last things they still possess.
By controlling what they reveal, they can influence Steen’s emotions and possibly reshape how their crimes are understood. They can withhold names, introduce new victims, accuse relatives, or claim that the official account was wrong.
The teenage-killer theme gives this control an additional dimension. Each patient can decide how young and helpless to appear within the confession. They can emphasize immaturity when discussing responsibility and sophistication when describing how they evaded discovery.
They may also force Steen to confront his own assumptions. Does he judge a teenage murderer differently from an adult one? Is he more willing to offer mercy to someone who suffered as a child? Can a dying adult still claim protection from the age at which the crime occurred?
The patients may not need Steen to believe every detail. Creating doubt could be enough. If they can leave him uncertain, disturbed, or obsessed, then they retain power even after death.
Corrupted Childhood Imagery
The patient descriptions repeatedly transform familiar parts of childhood into sources of horror.
A girl wants her mother’s love, but the relationship becomes dangerous. Brothers grow up together, but rivalry turns violent. A house should protect its occupants, yet it contains the dead. A tea party should be harmless, but it becomes a ritual of murder.
This corruption of ordinary childhood experiences gives the volume its distinct atmosphere. The horror does not come from distant supernatural forces. It comes from familiar relationships and spaces becoming unsafe.
The effect is especially strong because childhood objects and rituals carry emotional associations. A family home, sibling bond, or tea set seems too ordinary to inspire fear. When violence enters those spaces, it suggests that danger can exist behind the most reassuring appearances.
The book’s implied horror is therefore domestic and psychological as much as physical. The teenagers may not possess adult authority, but they understand routines, vulnerabilities, and trust. Their apparent harmlessness may give them access that an obvious adult threat would never receive.
Tone and Structure
At 242 pages, Killer Teens uses four confessions to create an episodic but connected narrative. Each patient offers a separate story, while Steen’s presence and the death-ward premise provide continuity.
The structure allows the book to explore different forms of teenage violence without committing the entire volume to one case. Readers move from parental conflict to sibling resentment, domestic horror, and a dead
August 15, 2026
3.5
Short and interesting and easy to understand. A good companion to an evening spent being lazy.
Short and interesting and easy to understand. A good companion to an evening spent being lazy.
December 8, 2025
Continuing the asylum confessions series and I loved this book. It was a short read but I was gripped in every story.
Adrianna:
I liked her story, I get why she turned out the way she did, it’s obviously not justified but you can sort of get why. The reason she ends up in the asylum in the first place is a little petty, her reasoning for murder was a little… dramatic. I also predicted who a certain character was, I can’t pinpoint when it was obvious to me but I just got a feeling.
Michael:
This was a weird one, he sort of took accountability for his actions but also not really? He’s justifications were strange and didn’t show any remorse. His struggle with the voice was interesting, especially when it seemed to turn against him.
Badger:
I sort of get why he did the first kill, his reason doesn’t justify it but I can understand why he snapped. The rest I didn’t get and the things he did to the bodies was fucking strange.
Cindy:
A Cinderella retelling - kinda? Not exactly like it but there are some similarities, especially the evil step mother so it’s no wonder why Cindy snapped. She didn’t show remorse and was very calm about the whole thing when police arrived.
Overall, this book was really good, the stories were interesting and I was hooked reading every one.
Adrianna:
I liked her story, I get why she turned out the way she did, it’s obviously not justified but you can sort of get why. The reason she ends up in the asylum in the first place is a little petty, her reasoning for murder was a little… dramatic. I also predicted who a certain character was, I can’t pinpoint when it was obvious to me but I just got a feeling.
Michael:
This was a weird one, he sort of took accountability for his actions but also not really? He’s justifications were strange and didn’t show any remorse. His struggle with the voice was interesting, especially when it seemed to turn against him.
Badger:
I sort of get why he did the first kill, his reason doesn’t justify it but I can understand why he snapped. The rest I didn’t get and the things he did to the bodies was fucking strange.
Cindy:
A Cinderella retelling - kinda? Not exactly like it but there are some similarities, especially the evil step mother so it’s no wonder why Cindy snapped. She didn’t show remorse and was very calm about the whole thing when police arrived.
Overall, this book was really good, the stories were interesting and I was hooked reading every one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 24, 2025
I thought I was done with this series with the last volume, but then this one came out…and I’m glad I wasn’t done with it.
This newest entry really perked up after the last couple of volumes, which weren’t by any means disappointing but I felt they lacked in the general intensity I really enjoy about this series. “Killer Teens” makes up for that by being one of the most enjoyable books in the series. Four different confessions yet with seemingly the same common denominator: crazed killer kids. Each confession gets more disturbing as the book progresses.
This is also a volume where my growing suspicions about Jack’s character start to pique. Every volume seems to be a gradual descent for his demeanor and attitude toward the patients, certain aspects of his job as an orderly, or perhaps even his role in being the patients’ ‘death angel’. He seems to be losing interest in how he makes his famous death deals with them. I definitely think there’s something more to Jack than meets the eye and I look forward to more in this series.
I’m giving this volume 4.5 stars. It was certainly a memorable one and I highly recommend not only this book but the series as a whole.
This newest entry really perked up after the last couple of volumes, which weren’t by any means disappointing but I felt they lacked in the general intensity I really enjoy about this series. “Killer Teens” makes up for that by being one of the most enjoyable books in the series. Four different confessions yet with seemingly the same common denominator: crazed killer kids. Each confession gets more disturbing as the book progresses.
This is also a volume where my growing suspicions about Jack’s character start to pique. Every volume seems to be a gradual descent for his demeanor and attitude toward the patients, certain aspects of his job as an orderly, or perhaps even his role in being the patients’ ‘death angel’. He seems to be losing interest in how he makes his famous death deals with them. I definitely think there’s something more to Jack than meets the eye and I look forward to more in this series.
I’m giving this volume 4.5 stars. It was certainly a memorable one and I highly recommend not only this book but the series as a whole.
September 17, 2025
Ah I've waited for this for what feels like forever, but alas the ninth installment of the confessions series is here! This time we have people who were killer teens.
This time around we have confessions from: Adrianna, Michael, Badger and lastly we have Cindy.
Wow these confessions were brilliant, especially Badgers. His was absolutely wild. I guess I have to wait another year or so for the next book now 😭. Nevermind I'll just have to re read the others. I am more and more intrigued by Jack each book we read, I need to know more about him as we get a little snippet here and there in each book. This book was absolutely fantastic and so messed up at the same time. I had such a an eerie feeling reading these ones especially Cindy's story. I felt like I needed a shower after it.
If you haven't started this series I highly suggest you do as it's phenomenal.
This time around we have confessions from: Adrianna, Michael, Badger and lastly we have Cindy.
Wow these confessions were brilliant, especially Badgers. His was absolutely wild. I guess I have to wait another year or so for the next book now 😭. Nevermind I'll just have to re read the others. I am more and more intrigued by Jack each book we read, I need to know more about him as we get a little snippet here and there in each book. This book was absolutely fantastic and so messed up at the same time. I had such a an eerie feeling reading these ones especially Cindy's story. I felt like I needed a shower after it.
If you haven't started this series I highly suggest you do as it's phenomenal.
January 12, 2026
I've fallen in love with this series, but this might be the most chilling installment yet. Partly because they're all teenagers, but there have been young killers in previous books. I think the biggest thing is the abuse/neglect that eventually led to them snapping, or full on developing mental illness. If I had to pick a favorite, it'd be Cindy. The cross between fairy-tale and insanity was absolutely brilliant. (No spoilers, even though I'd love to go into why she's my favorite!) I was impressed with how well Badger's accent was conveyed without sounding like a caricature (so good job, Jack). All that said, while you don't have to read the books in order, or even all of them, if you like true crime, you'll likely enjoy this fictional crime series!
November 5, 2025
Not my favorite
I liked it but not one of my favorites of the series and I don't think it was because it was about "killer teens". I can't put my finger on it but it lacks something the others had. I hope this is just a fluke and the next one is back to its usual awesomeness. 3.5 stars.
I liked it but not one of my favorites of the series and I don't think it was because it was about "killer teens". I can't put my finger on it but it lacks something the others had. I hope this is just a fluke and the next one is back to its usual awesomeness. 3.5 stars.
September 3, 2026
This book threw me a little bit. Its not the style that I am use to reading from Jack. There are usually more asides from him with his personal thoughts and feelings that he does not express to the patient, and there really was not a lot of that. I also felt like given the age group this theme was based off of, I was expecting something more, more gruesome, more detailed, more in depth. I enjoyed the book but it just left me wanting something more.
September 21, 2025
golden work as always!
Another fantastic series of confessions in the vault! I’m torn on how to feel about Badger and Cindy on account of the way they were treated as kids almost justifying the acts they committed.
Another fantastic series of confessions in the vault! I’m torn on how to feel about Badger and Cindy on account of the way they were treated as kids almost justifying the acts they committed.
September 27, 2025
As usual, I always look forward to when Jack releases a new book from this particular series. The stories were terrifying but in a way sometimes humanizing towards the murderers(and how they ended up in their situation. That is if they are telling the truth 😂😂😂😂😂).
October 24, 2025
Love the Asylum Confession series
Another amazing book from Jack Steen. I really can’t get enough of these confessions books. Can’t put them down and I love the writing style. Can’t wait for another.
Another amazing book from Jack Steen. I really can’t get enough of these confessions books. Can’t put them down and I love the writing style. Can’t wait for another.
November 2, 2025
The Asylum Confessions: Killer Teens was a dark, fast-paced read that kept me hooked. Each story was twisted and disturbing in its own way, with plenty of shocking moments and good gore. A few parts felt a bit predictable, and the books seem to be getting a bit more tame lately, but overall it was a solid, entertaining horror read and a great addition to the series.
February 23, 2026
Steen has me hooked on these books. If I wasn't in Alaska, I would go find him at the bar and buy him a beer so he can keep writing more of these books. These are really written well and they pull at your heartstrings, the things people "admit" or don't admit is crazy.
September 11, 2025
4 1/2 stars!
These confessions keep getting better and better. I look forward to each and every one!
These confessions keep getting better and better. I look forward to each and every one!
September 12, 2025
5 stars always!!! I couldn’t do anything but read this book!! Please don’t make us wait another year for another!! I NEED your books.
Highly recommend!!
All of Jack Steen books are AMAZING!
Highly recommend!!
All of Jack Steen books are AMAZING!
September 17, 2025
Always great
I've read them all and will continue if he keeps writing them. So explicit writing that you can't put the books down.
I've read them all and will continue if he keeps writing them. So explicit writing that you can't put the books down.
September 18, 2025
He never disappoints! Impatiently waiting for the next one!
September 20, 2025
Easy read
Short and easy, interesting for sure. This author is a favorite of mine and I always look forward to his books!
Short and easy, interesting for sure. This author is a favorite of mine and I always look forward to his books!
September 20, 2025
I do love jacks books
October 7, 2025
We are not going to talk about how long it took me to finish this book. Still 4 stars though.
October 16, 2025
LOVED seeing this series back again it was a great book to come back too
October 27, 2025
As always another great book followed with even more twisted stories.
October 29, 2025
Meh
So this book was meh to me. None of the stories were real interesting. The book overall lack luster. I hope he does better next book
So this book was meh to me. None of the stories were real interesting. The book overall lack luster. I hope he does better next book
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