The young criminal you see today is more detached from his victim, more ready to hurt or kill. The lack of empathy for their victims among young criminals is just one symptom of a problem that afflicts the whole society. The general stance of the psychopath is more common these days; the sense that I am responsible for the well-being of others is on the wane.6
Are we unknowingly allowing a society to evolve that is the perfect breeding ground, and perhaps even a “killing field,” for psychopaths? As our morning newspaper tells us, this question grows more pressing every day.
Chapter 6
Crime: The
Logical Choice
If crime is the job description, the psychopath is the perfect applicant.
In Fritz Lang’s classic 1931 movie M, Peter Lorre played a child molester/murderer who snatches his unlucky victims off the streets as the impulse hits him. The police are unable to find the killer, and the underworld of hoods and criminals takes on the job itself. Once it tracks down its prey, the seedy, creepy outlaw mob drags him to a deserted brewery and tries and convicts him in its own underworld court. This movie was one of the most effective dramatizations ever of the notion of “honor among thieves.”
Is there honor among thieves? Scratch the surface of the average prison inmate and you’ll find some sort of moral code—not necessarily the code of mainstream society, but a moral code nevertheless, with its own rules and proscriptions. These criminals, although at odds with some of the rules and values of society at large, may still follow the rules of their group—a neighborhood, extended family, or gang. So, to be a criminal does not mean to be without conscience—or even to be weakly socialized. Criminals come to crime in a variety of ways, most of them entailing outside forces:1
• Some criminals learn to do crime—they are raised in families or social environments in which criminal behavior, to one degree or another, is the accepted norm. One of our subjects, for example, had a father who was a “professional” thief and a mother who was a prostitute. From an early age he “went to work” with his father. More dramatic examples of these “subculture] criminals” include the mafia families and the bands of Gypsies common in some parts of Europe.
• Some criminals can be understood as largely the products of what is known as “the cycle of violence.” Evidence is emerging to show that victims of early sexual, physical, or emotional abuse frequently become perpetrators of the same as adults. It is not uncommon, for example, to find that child molesters were themselves sexually abused, or for wife assaulters to have witnessed domestic violence at an early age.
• Still others run afoul of the law because of a powerful need—for example, drug addicts or people without skills or resources who buck their consciences and turn to robbery out of desperation. Many of the subjects in our research first began their criminal activities as refugees from broken, impoverished, or abusive homes; they turned to drugs for comfort or relief, and to crime to support their habit.
Others wound up as offenders by committing “crimes of passion.” One of our subjects, a forty-year-old man without a criminal record or a history of violence, found some condoms in his wife’s purse, got into a heated argument with her, “went crazy,” and severely beat her. He received a sentence of two years but is certain to get an early parole.
For many of these individuals, negative social factors—poverty, family violence, child abuse, poor parenting, economic stress, alcohol and drug abuse, to name but a few—were contributors to, or even the cause of, their criminality. Indeed, had these factors not been present, many of these criminals would not have turned to crime.
But some individuals commit crime simply because it pays, it’s easier than working, or it’s exciting.2 Not all are psychopaths, but for those who are, crime is less the result of adverse social conditions than of a character structure that operates with no reference to the rules and regulations of society. Typical of many of our psychopathic subjects, when asked why she committed crime a female in one of our studies replied, “You want the truth? Just for the fun of it.”
Unlike most other criminals, psychopaths show no loyalty to groups, codes, or principles, other than to “look out for number one.” Law enforcement agencies often make use of this when trying to solve a crime or to break up a gang or terrorist cell. To say, “Be smart, save your own skin; tell us who else was involved and you walk,” is more likely to pay off with a psychopath than with an ordinary criminal.
TERRENCE MALICK’S MOVIE Badlands, loosely based on the killing career of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, is a chilling film fantasy with a coldly realistic core. The fantasy resides in the character of Kit Carruthers, whose irresistible charm and slick patter is absolutely consistent with the psychopathic profile but whose attachment to his girlfriend Holly runs too deep and strong to ring true. One might be tempted to dismiss this movie as the typical Hollywood romance of the psychopath with a heart of gold, but look again. Behind Kit sits Holly, strictly along for the ride. It takes a second viewing for the real case history to pop into the foreground: If Kit is the moviemaker’s conception of a psychopath, Holly is the real thing, a true “other” brilliantly portrayed by Sissy Spacek as a talking mask.
Two aspects of Holly’s character exemplify and dramatize important aspects of the psychopathic personality. One is her emotional impoverishment and the clear sense she conveys of simply going through the motions of feeling deeply. One clue is the sometimes outrageous inappropriateness of her behavior. After Kit guns down her father before her eyes for objecting to his presence in Holly’s life, the fifteen-year-old youngster slaps Kit’s face. Later she flops into a chair and complains of a headache; later still she flees with Kit on a cross-country killing spree after he sets fire to her house to conceal her father’s body.
In another example, with several more murders to his name now, Kit lazily separates a terrified couple from their car at gunpoint and directs them out into an empty field. Casually, Holly falls into step with the frightened woman. “Hi,” she says in her flat, childish voice. “What will happen?” asks the woman, desperate for some understanding of what’s going on. “Oh,” answers Holly, “Kit says he feels like he just might explode. I feel like that myself sometimes. Don’t you?” The scene ends with Kit locking the two in a root cellar in the middle of the field. Just about to walk away, he suddenly shoots into the cellar door. “Think I got ‘em?” he asks, as if swatting at flies in the dark.
Perhaps the film’s most subtle evidence of psychopathy comes through in Holly’s narration of the film, delivered in a monotone and embellished with phrases drawn straight from the glossies telling young girls what they should feel. Holly speaks of the love she and Kit share, but the actress manages somehow to convey the notion that Holly has no experiential knowledge of the feelings she reports. If there was ever an example of “knowing the words but not the music,” Spacek’s character is it, giving viewers a firsthand experience of the odd sensation, the unnamable distrust and skin-crawling feeling, that many—lay people and professionals alike—report after their interactions with psychopaths.
THE FORMULA FOR CRIME
In many respects it is difficult to see how any psychopaths—with their lack of internal controls, their unconventional attitudes about ethics and morality, their callous, remorseless, and egocentric view of the world, and so forth—could manage to avoid coming into conflict with society at some point in their lives. A great many do, of course, and their criminal activities cover the spectrum of possibilities, from petty theft and embezzlement to assault, extortion, and armed robbery, from vandalism and disturbing the peace to kidnapping, murder, and crimes against the state such as treason, espionage, and terrorism.
Although not all criminals are psychopaths, and not all psychopaths are criminals, psychopaths are well represented in our prison populations and are responsible for crime far out of proportion to their numbers:3
• On average, about 20 percent of male and female pr
ison inmates are psychopaths.
• Psychopaths are responsible for more than 50 percent of the serious crimes committed.
The truth is, the personality structure of the psychopath spells trouble for the rest of us. Just as the great white shark is a natural killing machine, psychopaths naturally slip into the role of criminal. Their readiness to take advantage of any situation that arises, combined with their lack of the internal controls we know as conscience, creates a potent formula for crime.
So, for example, when a dazzling smile throws a young woman on the beach off guard, a young psychopath like Jeffrey wastes no time in attaching himself firmly and finding ways of drawing off all the warmth, sexual gratification, shelter, food, and money he can—all in the name of “love.”
When a young man of the age and type that appeals to John Wayne Gacy happens to apply for a job at his business, Gacy wastes no time in intimidating the boy into sex play. And he doesn’t stop until he murders the boy and disposes of his body underneath his house.4
When Utah killer Gary Gilmore has an argument with his girlfriend, he drives around (with another woman) until the urge to vent his rage becomes too great to contain. He pulls into a gas station, leaves his young companion alone to listen to the radio for a few minutes, and shoots to death the first person he comes across. The next night he repeats the pattern. He describes the two men he shoots as simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the way of his need to strike out.5
A recent study by the FBI found that 44% of the offenders who killed a law enforcement officer on duty were psychopaths. [Killed in the Line of Duty, The Uniform Crime Reports Section, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice, September, 1992]
LIVING FOR THE MOMENT
Although a student of New Age philosophies might shudder at the desecration of sacred principles, much of the psychopath’s behavior and motivation makes sense if we think of him or her as a person rooted completely in the present and unable to resist a good opportunity. As an inmate who scored high on the Psychopathy Checklist said, “What’s a guy gonna do? She had a nice ass. I helped myself.” He was convicted of rape. Another was picked up by police after he appeared on a television game show in the very city where his victims lived. Five minutes of stardom and two years in prison!
In the Playboy interview shortly before his execution, Gary Gilmore conveyed a sense of what it was like to be anchored so firmly in the present. When asked why, although he had a very high IQ, he had been caught at crime so often, Gilmore responded:
I got away with a couple of things. I ain’t a great thief. I’m impulsive. Don’t plan, don’t think. You don’t have to be super intelligent to get away with that shit, you just have to think. But I don’t. I’m impatient. Not greedy enough. I could have gotten away with lots of things that I got caught for. I don’t, ah, really understand it. Maybe I quit caring a long time ago.6
PSYCHOPATHIC VIOLENCE
—COLD-BLOODED AND “CASUAL”
Even more troubling than their heavy involvement in crime is the evidence that both male and female psychopaths are much more likely to be violent and aggressive than are other individuals.7 Of course, violence is not uncommon in most offender populations, but psychopaths still manage to stand out. They commit more than twice as many violent and aggressive acts, both in and out of prison, as do other criminals.
Troubling, yes, but not surprising. While most of us have strong inhibitions about physically injuring others, psychopaths typically do not. For them, violence and threats are handy tools to be used when they are angered, defied, or frustrated, and they give little thought to the pain and humiliation experienced by the victims. Their violence is callous and instrumental—used to satisfy a simple need, such as sex, or to obtain something he or she wants—and the psychopath’s reactions to the event are much more likely to be indifference, a sense of power, pleasure, or smug satisfaction than regret at the damage done. Certainly nothing to lose any sleep over.
Compare the psychopath’s reactions with those of law enforcement officers compelled to use deadly force in the line of duty. Unlike the fictional characters in movies who can kill ten bad guys before dinner and still have seconds—“Dirty Harry” Callahan, played by Clint (“Make my day”) Eastwood, comes to mind—most police officers are severely disturbed by shootings, and many experience “emotional flashbacks” or suffer from what has come to be known as posttraumatic stress syndrome. The aftereffects can be so debilitating that many jurisdictions routinely stipulate that any officer involved in a shooting, fatal or not, must receive psychological counseling.
Such counseling would be wasted on psychopaths. Even experienced and case-hardened professionals find it unnerving when they see a psychopath’s reaction to a gut-wrenching event or listen to him or her casually describe a brutal offense as if an apple had been peeled or a fish gutted.
• Gary Gilmore, in explaining to his interviewers how he came to have the nickname “Hammersmith” in prison, offers a good example of the psychopath’s uninhibited approach to violence.8 A friend of Gilmore’s, LeRoy, was robbed and beaten up in prison. He sent word to Gilmore that he needed help in getting even with the perpetrator, Bill. “That night I caught Bill sitting down watching a football game,” recounts Gilmore, “and I just planted the hammer in his head, turned around and walked off. How bad did I hurt him! [laughs] they just kept me in the hole for four months and took Bill to Portland for brain surgery. But Bill was pretty fucked up anyhow. So, to answer your question, this guy nicknamed me Hammersmith over that. He gave me a little toy hammer to wear on a chain.” Apparently, Gilmore later claimed to have killed Bill with the hammer and to have committed another violent murder as well. The interviewers asked him, “Why did you go around telling everybody that you’d killed them? Were you bragging or confessing?”
Gilmore: “[laughing] More bragging, probably, to tell you the truth.”
• An ex-con, previously diagnosed by a prison psychiatrist as a psychopath, calmly told the police that he had stabbed another man in a bar because the man refused his request to vacate a table. His explanation: He was cultivating a don’t-mess-with-me image at the time and the victim had defied him in front of the other bar patrons.
ON NEW YEAR’S Day 1990, twenty-six-year-old Roxanne Murray killed her forty-two-year-old husband of five years with a 12-gauge shotgun. She told police she loved her husband but had to kill him. The court agreed, and the charge of second-degree murder was dropped.
The husband, Doug (Juicer) Murray, was a “pseudo-biker” with a “need for powerful motorcycles and weak, compliant women, and dogs—all possessions to be controlled.” Over the years he had been charged with a string of rapes and assaults, none of which went to trial, for lack of witnesses. He had been married several times before and typically terrorized and battered the women he was involved with. In a macabre twist, “he once ran a home for sexually abused teens. He exploited them mentally and physically as he exploited most women, frequently taking compromising photographs for later use.”
When Roxanne complained about the food bills for their fourteen dogs, Doug dragged her into the trailer, smashed her in the head with a loaded pistol, and shot her favorite dog in front of her. “That could happen to you,” he told her. He “seemed incapable of sex without violence or absolute control. Fellatio was something to be demanded anywhere at any time or a beating followed. He forced his women into brutal fantasy rape scenarios. He forced several to play Russian roulette with a live round in each chamber.” Roxanne’s best friend said that “it was like Doug had several sides to him. Some of them were good, or he wanted to portray them as good, and some of them were just the worst that you could imagine.”
It seems that in pursuing his own brutal course Doug inadvertently helped the community to draw a line in the sand marking out the limits beyond which abused and terrorized victims are justified in taking drastic action to protect themselves, [from an article by Ken McQueen, The V
ancouver Sun, March 1, 1991]
• An offender who scored high on the Psychopathy Checklist killed an elderly man during the course of a burglary, and casually gave this account of the affair: “I was rummaging around when this old geezer comes down stairs and uh he starts yelling and having a fucking fit so I pop him one in the, uh, head and he still doesn’t shut up. I give him a chop to the throat and he like staggers back and falls on the floor. He’s gurgling and making sounds like a stuck pig [laughs] and he’s really getting on my fucking nerves so I uh boot him a few times in the head. That shut him up. I’m pretty tired by now, so I grab a few beers from the fridge and turn on the TV and fall asleep. The cops woke me up [laughs].”
Such simple, dispassionate displays of violence are quite distinct from an act of violence exploding from a heated argument, a staggering emotional blow, uncontrollable anger, rage, or fear. Examples abound in the news media. And most people know what it is like to “lose it,” sometimes with violent results, and to be appalled at their own actions. As I was writing this chapter, a sixty-five-year-old man with no criminal record was tried for attempted murder; he stabbed his ex-wife and her lawyer with a pocketknife during an extremely emotional child-custody hearing. A local psychiatrist testified that the man was so overwrought that he lost control, “went on automatic,” and didn’t even remember what he had done. The man, horrified at his actions, was acquitted.
Even had he been convicted he would have been a good bet for early parole. As criminologists have pointed out, homicides that occur when emotions run high during domestic disputes or arguments among friends or acquaintances are usually “onetime things,” committed by otherwise upstanding, remorseful individuals and unlikely to be repeated.
Without Conscience Page 10
