MS Forever!

As I've written ad infinitum, I wasn't planning on writing about my experiences on Merkos Shlichus until something interesting happened. Well, today something interesting happened. Last year Mordechai Lightstone was the roving Rabbi in Northwest Connecticut, here's his blog post which deals with what we experienced today.
After pulling into the parking lot of the Connecticut Valley Hospital we searched for ten minutes for the entrance to the wing we were supposed to be visiting. After finding it we had to fill out a brief form, deposit our phones in a locker, and go through a metal detector. We were then permitted to go through to visit our guy, who I will call X, just like Mordechai did.
X came up to us and we slowly ambled on into a conference room. It seems that last year he was in an intensive security wing, while now he's in minimum, which means that he has a lot more freedom. After introducing ourselves we began to discuss Judaism. He's a fan of Mussar, and we talked about how Mussar and Chassidus differ. I told him the famous line, that Mussar lifts a person off the ground while Chassidus brings him up to heaven. This distinction colored the rest of our discussion, which ranged from reward and punishment to heaven and hell, Gan Eden and the world of Moshiach, suffering in Jewish thought, and the purpose of our existence. I did most of the talking, and congratulate myself that I made at least a bit of sense. Once we were finished X put on Tefillin, and we parted amicably.
In the middle of our discussion on Teshuva, wherein I mentioned that Teshuva is properly not repentance but rather return, he mentioned something along the lines of, "Well, I did a big sin. I killed my parents." I didn't quite know what to say, and just responded with a "hmm". The conversation continued unabated, and I explained how no Jew is inherently evil, no matter how heinous a crime he or she have committed. If anything, their soul has merely become covered; all they really need to do is wipe off the grime.
Once we got back to the Chabad house I of course asked the Rabbi to explain what was going on here. In short: X was never all there mentally. At one point he wanted to go and study in Israel. His parents told him that he couldn't. He killed them both with furniture. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and later spent 16 years in a maximum security hospital.
When we visited X he seemed perfectly normal. When I look back at our conversation I think, "Wow, he knows something about good and evil, huh?"