One of my raters described an interview she did with a prisoner: “I sat down and took out my clipboard, and the first thing this guy told me was what beautiful eyes I had. He managed to work quite a few compliments on my appearance into the interview—couldn’t get over my hair. So by the time I wrapped things up I was feeling unusually. well, pretty. I’m a wary person, especially on the job, and can usually spot a phony. When I got back outside, I couldn’t believe I’d fallen for a line like that.”
Psychopaths may ramble and tell stories that seem unlikely in light of what is known about them. Typically, they attempt to appear familiar with sociology, psychiatry, medicine, psychology, philosophy, poetry, literature, art, or law. A signpost to this trait is often a smooth lack of concern at being found out. One of our prison files describes a psychopathic inmate claiming to have advanced degrees in sociology and psychology, when in fact he did not even complete high school. He maintained the fiction during an interview with one of my students, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology; she commented that the inmate was so confident in his use of technical jargon and concepts that those not familiar with the field of psychology might well have been impressed. Variations on this sort of “expert” theme are common among psychopaths.
DICK! SMOOTH. SMART. Yes, you had to hand it to him. Christ, it was incredible how he could “con a guy.” Like the clerk in the Kansas City, Missouri, clothing store, the first of the places Dick had decided to “hit.” ... Dick told him, “All I want you to do is stand there. Don’t laugh, and don’t be surprised at anything I say. You’ve got to play these things by ear.” For the task proposed, it seemed, Dick had the perfect pitch. He breezed in, breezily introduced Perry to the clerk as “a friend of mine about to get married,” and went on, “I’m his best man. Helping kind of shop around for the clothes he’ll want....” The salesman ate it up, and soon Perry, stripped of his denim trousers, was trying on a gloomy suit the clerk considered ‘ideal for an informal ceremony.” ... They then selected a gaudy array of jackets and slacks regarded as appropriate for what was to be, according to Dick, a Florida honeymoon.... “How about that? An ugly runt like him, he’s making it with a honey she’s not only built but loaded. While guys like you and me, good-looking guys ...” The clerk presented the bill. Dick reached in his hip pocket, frowned, snapped his fingers, and said, “Hot damn! I forgot my wallet.” Which to his partner seemed a ploy so feeble that it couldn’t possibly fool [anybody]. The clerk, apparently, was not of that opinion, for he produced a blank check, and when Dick had made it out for eighty dollars more than the bill totaled, instantly paid over the difference in cash.
—Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
In his book Echoes in the Darkness,2 Joseph Wambaugh skillfully describes a psychopathic teacher, William Bradfield, who was able to bamboozle everyone around him with his apparent erudition. Almost everyone, that is. Those familiar with the disciplines in which Bradfield claimed expertise were quickly able to spot his superficial knowledge of the topics. One noted that he had “a good two-line opening on any subject, but nothing more.”
Of course it’s not always easy to tell whether an individual is being glib or sincere, particularly when we know little about the speaker. For example, suppose a woman meets an attractive man in a bar and, while sipping a glass of wine, he says the following:
I’ve wasted a lot of my life. You can’t get back the time. I’ve tried that before, to make up the time by doing more things. But things just went faster, not better. I intend to live a much more slowed-down life, and give a lot to people that I never had myself. Put some enjoyment in their lives. I don’t mean thrills, I mean some substance into somebody else’s life. It will probably be a woman, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a woman. Maybe a woman’s kids, or maybe someone in an old folks’ home. I think. no, I don’t think. I know, it would give me a great deal of pleasure, make me feel a whole lot better about my life.
Is this individual sincere? Were the words spoken with conviction? They came from a forty-five-year-old inmate with a horrendous criminal record, a man with the highest possible score on the Psychopathy Checklist and who had brutalized his wife and abandoned his children.
In his book Fatal Vision,3 Joe McGinniss described his relationship with Jeffrey MacDonald, a psychopathic physician convicted of killing his wife and children:
For six months following his conviction, maybe seven or eight, finding myself confronted by the most awful set of circumstances I’d ever known as a writer, and all the while being beseeched by this charming and persuasive man to believe in him, I wrestled with not only the question of his guilt but with another that was in some ways more disturbing: if he could have done this, how could I have liked him? [p. 668]
Jeffrey MacDonald sued McGinniss for several things, including “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Author Joseph Wambaugh testified at the trial, and said the following about MacDonald, whom he considered a psychopath:
I found him to be extremely glib ... I had never met any one quite as glib I don’t think, and I was astonished by the manner in which [his] story was delivered. He was describing events of consummate horror, but he could describe the murders in quite graphic detail in a very detached and glib and easy manner I have interviewed dozens of people who were survivors of horrible crimes, some immediately after the events and some many years after, including the parents of murdered children, and I have never in all of my experience encountered someone who could describe an event like that in the almost cavalier manner that Dr. MacDonald described it. [p. 678]
EGOCENTRIC AND GRANDIOSE
“I. I. I.... The world continued to revolve around her as she shone—not the brightest star but the only star,” said Ann Rule of Diane Downs, who in 1984 was convicted of shooting her three small children, killing one and permanently injuring the two others.4
Psychopaths have a narcissistic and grossly inflated view of their self-worth and importance, a truly astounding egocentricity and sense of entitlement, and see themselves as the center of the universe, as superior beings who are justified in living according to their own rules. “It’s not that I don’t follow the law,” said one of our subjects. “I follow my own laws. I never violate my own rules.” She then described these rules in terms of “looking out for number one.”
When another psychopath, in prison for a variety of crimes including robbery, rape, and fraud, was asked if he had any weaknesses, he replied, “I don’t have any weaknesses, except maybe I’m too caring.” On a 10-point scale he rated himself “an all-round 10. I would have said 12, but that would be bragging. If I had a better education I’d be brilliant.”
The grandiosity and pomposity of some psychopaths often emerges in dramatic fashion in the courtroom. For example, it is not unusual for them to criticize or fire their lawyers and to take over their own defense, usually with disastrous results. “My partner got a year. I got two because of a shithead lawyer,” said one of our subjects. He later handled his own appeal and saw his sentence increased to three years.
Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs. They appear charismatic or “electrifying” to some people.
Psychopaths are seldom embarrassed about their legal, financial, or personal problems. Rather, they see them as temporary setbacks, the results of bad luck, unfaithful friends, or an unfair and incompetent system.
Although psychopaths often claim to have specific goals, they show little understanding of the qualifications required—they have no idea how to achieve their goals and little or no chance of attaining them, given their track record and lack of sustained interest in education. The psychopathic inmate thinking about parole might outline vague plans to become a property tycoon or a lawyer for the poor. One inmate, not particularly literate, managed to copyright the title of a boo
k he was planning to write about himself and was already counting the fortune his bestseller would bring.
Psychopaths feel that their abilities will enable them to become anything they want to be. Given the right circumstances—opportunity, luck, willing victims—their grandiosity can pay off spectacularly. For example, the psychopathic entrepreneur “thinks big,” but it’s usually with someone else’s money.
Incarcerated for breaking and entering, one in a string of crimes dating back to early adolescence, Jack received the highest possible score on the Psychopathy Checklist. Typically, he began the interview with an inordinate interest in the video camera. “When do we get to see the tape? I want to see how I look, how I did.” Jack then launched into a detailed lengthy account—four hours long—of his criminal history, punctuating it with constant reminders to himself that, “Oh, yeah, I’ve given all that up.” The story that unfolded was one of constant petty thefts and con jobs—“the more people you meet the more money you can make off ‘em, and they’re not really victims. Hell, they always get back more than they lost in insurance anyway.”
Along with the petty theft, which eventually led to burglary and armed robbery, was a history of fighting. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been fag-bashing since I was fourteen—but I don’t do anything bad, like beating women or children. In fact, I love women. I think they should all stay home. I’d like all the men in the world to just die, and I’d be the only man left.
“When I get out this time, I want to have a son,” Jack told our interviewer. “When he’s five, I’d get the woman to completely pull out so I could raise the kid my way.”
Asked how he had begun his career in crime, he said, “It had to do with my mother, the most beautiful person in the world. She was strong, worked hard to take care of four kids. A beautiful person. I started stealing her jewelry when I was in the fifth grade. You know, I never really knew the bitch—we went our separate ways.”
Jack made a token effort to justify his life of crime—“I had to steal sometimes to get out of town, yeah, but I’m not a fucking criminal.” Later in the interview, however, he recalled, “I did sixteen B & Es [break and enters] in ten days. It was good, it really felt good. Felt like I was addicted and getting my fix.”
“Ever tell lies?” asked the interviewer.
“Are you kidding? I lie like I breathe, one as much as the other.”
Jack’s interviewer, a psychologist experienced in administering the Psychopathy Checklist, described the interview as not only the lengthiest but most entertaining she had ever conducted. Jack was, she said, one of the most theatrical inmates she’d encountered. Although he expressed zero empathy for his victims, he clearly loved his crimes and seemed to be trying to impress the interviewer with his amazing feats of irresponsibility. Jack was a mile-a-minute talker, with the psychopath’s characteristic ability to contradict himself from one sentence to the next. His long conviction record reflected not only his criminal versatility but his clear inability to learn from past experience.
Equally dazzling was Jack’s distinct lack of realistic planning. Although he was considerably out of shape and overweight from years of prison food and cheap fast food on the outside, he told our interviewer with the confidence of a young athlete in training that he planned to become a professional swimmer when he left prison this time. He would go straight, live off his winnings, and travel on them when he retired at an early age.
Jack was thirty-eight years old at the time of the interview. Whether he had ever been a swimmer in his life was not known.
A LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT
Psychopaths show a stunning lack of concern for the devastating effects their actions have on others. Often they are completely forthright about the matter, calmly stating that they have no sense of guilt, are not sorry for the pain and destruction they have caused, and that there is no reason for them to be concerned.
When asked if he had any regrets about stabbing a robbery victim who subsequently spent three months in the hospital as a result of his wounds, one of our subjects replied, “Get real! He spends a few months in a hospital and I rot here. I cut him up a bit, but if I wanted to kill him I would have slit his throat. That’s the kind of guy I am; I gave him a break.” Asked if he regretted any of his crimes, he said, “I don’t regret nothing. What’s done is done. There must have been a reason why I did it at the time, and that is why it was done.”
Before his execution, serial killer Ted Bundy spoke directly of guilt in several interviews with Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth.5 “[Whatever] I’ve done in the past,” he said, “you know—the emotions of omissions or commissions—doesn’t bother me. Try to touch the past! Try to deal with the past. It’s not real. It’s just a dream!” [p. 284] Bundy’s “dream” contained his murders of as many as a hundred young women—not only had he walked away from his past, but he extinguished the future of each of his young victims, one by one. “Guilt?” he remarked in prison. “It’s this mechanism we use to control people. It’s an illusion. It’s a kind of social control mechanism—and it’s very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our bodies. And there are much better ways to control our behavior than that rather extraordinary use of guilt.” [p. 288]
On the other hand, psychopaths sometimes verbalize remorse but then contradict themselves in words or actions. Criminals in prison quickly learn that remorse is an important word. When asked if he experienced remorse over a murder he’d committed, one young inmate told us, “Yeah, sure, I feel remorse.” Pressed further, he said that he didn’t “feel bad inside about it.”
I was once dumbfounded by the logic of an inmate who described his murder victim as having benefited from the crime by learning “a hard lesson about life.”
“The guy only had himself to blame,” another inmate said of the man he’d murdered in an argument about paying a bar tab. “Anybody could have seen I was in a rotten mood that night. What did he want to go and bother me for?” He continued, “Anyway, the guy never suffered. Knife wounds to an artery are the easiest way to go.”
Psychopaths’ lack of remorse or guilt is associated with a remarkable ability to rationalize their behavior and to shrug off personal responsibility for actions that cause shock and disappointment to family, friends, associates, and others who have played by the rules. Usually they have handy excuses for their behavior, and in some cases they deny that it happened at all.
JACK ABBOTT GAINED prominence in the news when writer Norman Mailer helped the inmate with the publication of his book, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison. Abbott gained not only fame from his association with the well-known novelist and political figure; he gained his freedom as well. Shortly after his parole, Abbott got into an altercation with a waiter in a New York restaurant who had asked Abbott to leave. Abbott balked, and the two wound up behind the restaurant, where Abbott slipped a knife into the unarmed waiter, Richard Adan, wounding him fatally.
Interviewed on A Current Affair, a network “news magazine” television program, Abbott was asked if he felt remorse. “I don’t think that’s the proper word.... Remorse implies you did something wrong.... If I’m the one who stabbed him, it was an accident.”
Abbott was convicted of the crime and sent back to prison. Some years later, Adan’s wife sued him in civil court for the wrongful death of her husband, and Abbott served as his own attorney. Ricci Adan, the victim’s wife, described Abbott’s treatment of her on the stand: “He would say I’m sorry and then all of a sudden he would insult me.”
“Everybody in that courtroom knew I was railroaded,” Abbott told the TV interviewer. Regarding the depth of his conscious feelings about the death, we must draw our conclusions from these remarks: “There was no pain, it was a clean wound.” Then he focused on Richard Adan himself: “He had no future as an actor—chances are he would have gone into another line of work.”
The N.Y. Times News Service (June 16, 1990) reported that Abbott had told Ricci Adan that her husband’s life was “not w
orth a dime.” Nevertheless, she was awarded more than $7 million.
Memory loss, amnesia, blackouts, multiple personality, and temporary insanity crop up constantly in interrogations of psychopaths. For example, a well-publicized film clip from a PBS special shows Kenneth Bianchi, one of the infamous “Hillside Stranglers” of Los Angeles, in a pathetic and transparent pantomime of a case of multiple personality.6
Although sometimes a psychopath will admit to having performed the actions, he will greatly minimize or even deny the consequences to others. An inmate with a very high score on the Psychopathy Checklist said that his crimes actually had a positive effect on the victims. “The next day I’d get the newspaper and read about a caper I’d pulled—a robbery or a rape. There’d be interviews with the victims. They’d get their names in the paper. Women, for example, would say nice things about me—that I was really polite and considerate, very meticulous. I wasn’t abusive to them, you understand. Some of them thanked me.”
Another subject, up for breaking and entering for the twentieth time, said, “Sure I stole the stuff. But, hey! Those folks were insured up the kazoo—nobody got hurt, nobody suffered. What’s the big deal? In fact, I’m doing them a favor by giving them a chance to collect insurance. They’ll put in for more than that junk was worth, you know. They always do.”
In an ironic twist, psychopaths frequently see themselves as the real victims.
“I was made an asshole and a scapegoat when I look back I see myself more as a victim than a perpetrator.” So said John Wayne Gacy, a psychopathic serial killer who tortured and murdered thirty-three young men and boys and buried their bodies in the basement of his house.7
While discussing these murders Gacy portrayed himself as the thirty-fourth victim. “I was the victim, I was cheated out of my childhood.” He wondered to himself if “there would be someone, somewhere who would understand how badly it had hurt to be John Wayne Gacy.”
Without Conscience Page 5
