by Robert House
Another study, by Pamela Taylor, Bruce Link, et al., reported, “Strong predictors of violence in the mentally ill are the feeling that others are out to harm them and a feeling that their mind is dominated by forces beyond their control or that thoughts are being put into their head.”24 A further study revealed that the causal relationship between schizophrenia and violent behavior was largely due to “threat/control override” symptoms, defined as “experiences of patients feeling that people are trying to harm them and experiences of their minds being dominated by forces outside their control.”25 Such symptoms clearly fit Kozminski.
In yet another study, researchers determined that 19 percent of schizophrenic participants had had an incident of minor or severe violence within a six-month period. “Although most individuals with mental illnesses are not violent,” the study director pointed out, “violence by a subgroup of individuals with schizophrenia is far from rare.”26 Violence was found to be associated with a cluster of positive psychotic symptoms, such as “hallucinations, paranoid delusions, delusions of persecution, and grandiosity.” The odds of violence were also found to “vary with factors other than psychotic symptoms.” The study found, for example, that “serious violence was associated with depressive symptoms” and “having been victimized.” Because of such findings, both Kozminski’s domination by an “instinct” and the anti-Semitism he experienced in Russia and London are relevant, because they have been shown to be predictors of violence in schizophrenics.
Another study found that there was a high rate of violence in schizophrenics who had comorbid (simultaneous) psychopathic characteristics—in other words, among insane patients who were also psychopathic. The concepts of psychosis and psychopathy are often confused. “Psychosis” is a generic psychiatric term that means an “abnormal condition of the mind,” as characterized by a general break with reality (hallucinations, delusional thinking, and so on). For example, a person with a mental illness such as schizophrenia would be described as psychotic, meaning insane. On the other hand, psychopathy (also known as sociopathy or antisocial personality disorder) is not recognized as a form of insanity but instead is considered a personality disorder.
The concept of psychopathy was first recognized in the early eighteenth century, when Philippe Pinel used the term la folie raisonnante (insanity without delirium) to describe patients whose “reasoning abilities were unimpaired,” that is, they were not insane but were at the same time “under the dominion of instinctive and abstract fury.” In 1835, the British alienist J. C. Prichard coined the term “moral insanity” to describe a “form of mental derangement in which the intellectual functions appear to have sustained little or no injury,” but “the moral or active principles of the mind are strangely perverted or depraved, the power of self-government is impaired, and the individual is found to be incapable, not of talking or reasoning upon any subject proposed to him, but of conducting himself with a decency and propriety in the business of life.”27 Prichard’s definition, although archaic in tone, is actually quite similar to the modern meaning of the term. At the end of the nineteenth century, Emil Kraepelin began to use the term psychopath in a way that is similar to how we use the term today.
The modern meaning of the term was laid out in Hervey Cleckley’s groundbreaking 1941 work The Mask of Sanity. Cleckley defined a psychopath as “an intelligent person characterised by poverty of emotions, who has no sense of shame, is superficially charming, is manipulative, who shows irresponsible behaviour, and is inadequately motivated.”28 According to Cleckley, with the psychopath, “We are dealing here not with a complete man at all but with something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly.”29 Cleckley’s book was the basis for Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), which identified twenty traits that indicate a diagnosis of psychopathy. These included glibness/superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, a lack of empathy, the failure to accept responsibility, promiscuous sexual behavior, “socially deviant lifestyle,” the need for stimulation/proneness to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioral control, the lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, juvenile delinquency, early behavior problems, numerous short-term marital relationships, revocation of conditional release, and criminal versatility.
The rate of psychopathy in the population is now estimated to be about 1 percent. The disorder is a common trait of serial killers and is tied to a general lack of socialization. A 1965 study of mass murderers and serial killers showed that they “gave preponderant evidence of never having experienced normal communication with a dependable, understanding part of the social world about them. They had no workable system of social or personal frames of reference.”30 As noted by Robert Ressler, Ann Burgess, and John Douglas, “Seldom does the lust murderer come from an environment of love and understanding. It is more likely that he was an abused and neglected child who experienced a great deal of conflict in his early life and was unable to develop and use adequate coping devices.”31
A 1999 study found that a significant percentage of violent patients with schizophrenia scored high on Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist, suggesting that they may have had psychopathic traits that preceded the emergence of psychotic symptoms (that is, schizophrenia). The report found that “approximately two-thirds of the violent subjects in this sample were rated as possibly or definitely psychopathic” and concluded that “underlying personality features may be responsible for some of the violent behavior of patients with schizophrenia.” The study also found that schizophrenic patients in the violent group had a lower socioeconomic status, a lower IQ, and an earlier age of onset of schizophrenic symptoms.32
A similar report noted, “Evidence suggests that the presence of psychopathic traits that do not meet the threshold diagnostic criteria for psychopathy also elevates the likelihood of violent behaviour in schizophrenia patients.”33 In other words, schizophrenic patients who possessed even some of the traits from Hare’s PCL checklist were more likely to be violent, even if they did not score high enough to be diagnosed as psychopaths. The report concluded that “a proportion of violence in patients with schizophrenia is attributable to comorbidity with psychopathy and possibly other personality disorders.” It also noted, “There are at least three aetiological subtypes of violence in schizophrenia (i) that related directly to positive psychotic symptoms, (ii) impulsive violence and (iii) violence stemming from comorbidity with personality disorders, particularly psychopathy.” Interestingly, the study claimed that its findings were “consistent with the concept of ‘pseudopsychopathic schizophrenia’ that was used 50 years ago to describe cases that began as conduct-disorder type behavioural problems and then developed schizophrenia.”
The results of these studies provide a good explanation for violent behavior in schizophrenics and suggest that much of the violent behavior attributed to schizophrenics is not motivated by command-type hallucinations, as some people have assumed. Instead, as noted in “Psychopathy and Violent Behavior,” “Psychotic symptoms do not fully account for violence in schizophrenia.”34 Of course, this does not mean that psychosis is not a factor in violent behavior, merely that it is probably not a sufficient explanation of the phenomenon. For example, one report found that “only about 20 percent of assaults committed by psychotic inpatients are directly attributable to positive symptoms [in other words, command hallucinations].”35
As noted by England’s National Schizophrenia Fellowship, auditory hallucination “can describe activities taking place, carry on a conversation, warn of dangers, or even issue orders to a person.”36 There are several well-known examples of people who claimed that they were ordered to kill by command-type auditory hallucinations. One such case was the widely reported murder of Kendra Webdale in 1999 by a schizophrenic man named Andrew Goldstein of Queens, New York. In the decade following his first psychotic episode a
t age eighteen, Goldstein received various diagnoses from psychiatrists, including paranoid schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Goldstein checked himself into numerous hospitals and desperately wanted help, but despite the fact that doctors considered him dangerous both to himself and to others, he was always released. Goldstein told doctors that he was controlled by someone called Larry, and that he was “concerned about his impulses to hurt women.”37 Goldstein acted on these impulses numerous times, and in one two-year period, he attacked thirteen people (mostly women) in various places—several were hospital nurses, but others were simply strangers in a bookstore or a fast-food restaurant. “Someone is inhabiting me and making me do things,” Goldstein said. “You feel like something’s entering you, like you’re being inhabited. I don’t know. And then, and then it’s like an overwhelming urge to strike out or to push or punch. And then, I feel like it’s not there, that sensation. Now I’m sane again. Then I’m normal. And then, it’s there again and then, it’s not.”38
During Goldstein’s final hospital admission in December 1998, it was reported that he was “disorganized, thought disordered, and delusional,” and that he was unwashed and smelled bad (December 9); on December 10, the records showed that he “remains psychotic”; on December 11, he “remains paranoid.”39 Doctors attempted to have Goldstein admitted to a long-term care facility, but finding no vacancy, they instead released him a few days later.
On Sunday, January 3, 1999, Goldstein spent much of the day listening to Madonna and claimed that he “drew pictures in his mind of a blimp on a green lawn in Germany during the 1930s.” In the afternoon he went out to a record store, and at 5 p.m., he descended into the subway station at Broadway and 23rd Street. According to witnesses, in the subway station Goldstein was mumbling to himself, alternately standing on his tiptoes and pacing back and forth. He approached a young blond woman named Dawn Lorenzino and tried to talk to her, but Lorenzino turned around and said, “What are you looking at?” Goldstein then approached a second woman, Kendra Webdale, and asked her the time. After Webdale answered, Goldstein walked away and stood near the wall behind her.
As the train began to enter the station, according to Goldstein, “He felt a sensation, like a ghost or a spirit entering him and he got the urge to push, kick or punch the woman with blonde hair [that is, Lorenzino].” Then, inexplicably, he rushed forward and instead shoved Webdale so hard that she flew in front of the train “like a skydiver.” When police arrived at the scene, Goldstein was sitting calmly on the floor, surrounded by a crowd of people. “I don’t know the woman,” he said. “I just pushed her.”40
In a taped interview that was shown during his trial, Goldstein was asked why he did it. “Oh, I don’t know,” he responded. “I feel like people talk, uh, talk through me, you know.”
“Who talks through you?” the interviewer asked.
“People. Like they say things, you know, like it’s a plot or something.”
“What’s a plot?”
“Against, against, against me.”41
Goldstein’s case is interesting because he apparently had psychopathic characteristics in addition to hearing command-type hallucinations. At his trial, the prosecution argued that he had a relatively mild disorder “in the schizophrenic spectrum,” but that he “had ‘anti-social’ features that were more relevant to his act than his schizophrenia.”42 Although the statement that Goldstein’s mental disorder was “mild” is almost certainly inaccurate, given the overwhelming evidence of his psychosis, it is quite possible that a psychopathic antisocial tendency was an even greater factor in his numerous attacks on women. The prosecution, for example, presented evidence that Goldstein had a great anger due to rejection by women, and that a former roommate’s stripper girlfriend had teased him. Goldstein’s landlady testified that when the maid went downstairs to clean the apartment, she found Goldstein “lying on his bed exposed and he didn’t cover himself.” According to the prosecution, this was evidence that Goldstein “had been sexually inappropriate with women.” Yet at the same time, Goldstein’s roommate testified that he “was never disrespectful and never violent and very calm.” This presents a complex picture, but in many respects, Goldstein may have been similar to Kozminski. Like Goldstein, Kozminski claimed to be controlled by an “instinct,” was unwashed, and clearly exhibited disorganized, delusional thinking. And Melville Macnaghten’s statement that Kozminski “had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies” may be evidence of comorbid psychopathic characteristics.
Several notorious serial killers have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, including Ed Gein, Ottis Toole, Andrei Chikatilo, Albert Fish, Issei Sagawa, and Robert Napper. Others, such as David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam) and Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper), apparently faked insanity in the hope of getting a lighter sentence. Although Berkowitz and Sutcliffe claimed that they heard voices that told them to commit murder—for the Son of Sam, it was a neighbor’s dog, whereas Sutcliffe claimed that God ordered him to rid the world of prostitutes—both were too organized and methodical to have been likely schizophrenics. True schizophrenic serial killers tend to be more disorganized, and their murders are frenzied, brutal affairs that often involve postmortem mutilation and cannibalism.
One such example was Marc Sappington, a young black man who became known as the Kansas City Vampire. The son of a schizophrenic mother, Sappington was raised as a regular churchgoer and was described as well spoken, intelligent, and funny. But the temptations of street life in the ghettos of Kansas City loomed as a constant threat, and in his teens Sappington began to drift into drug use, first smoking “danks,” cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid, and then graduating to phencyclidine (PCP), a powerful dissociative drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to those experienced by schizophrenics. When Sappington reached the age of twenty, full-blown schizophrenia set in, and he began to receive orders to kill from voices inside his head. As he walked the ghetto streets, he would ask the voices, “How about her? What about him?”43 Sappington ultimately killed three or four people. He tried to drink the blood of his victims and, in one case, ate part of a victim’s leg.
An interesting example from the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit study was a man referred to only as Warren. After his incarceration for “assault with intent to commit murder,” Warren underwent a series of psychological evaluations and was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic with a severe antisocial personality disorder. He was found to be “uncooperative, withdrawn, irritable, resentful and hostile,” and although he had a tested IQ of 115, he was described as “pre-occupied, and at times he seemed to be listening to some inner voice (as though he were experiencing auditory hallucinations, which he denied).”44 Warren sounds eerily similar to Kozminski as he was described in some of his psychiatric evaluations. Warren was eventually released and went on to commit several murders, some of which included postmortem mutilations. In one case, reminiscent of the Mary Kelly murder, Warren removed both of the victim’s breasts and put them between her legs.
Another clear example of a very dangerous schizophrenic serial killer was Richard Chase, the so-called Vampire of Sacramento, who killed six people during a span of one month in the late 1970s. Chase believed that he had soap-dish poisoning, the result of which was that “his blood was turning to powder and that he thus needed blood from other creatures to replenish it.” This became, in Chase’s mind, a justification for several murders in which he cannibalized his victims and drank their blood. Like Kozminski, Chase was paranoid—he believed that Nazis were behind the soap-dish poisoning and later thought that prison officials were poisoning his food.45
Probably the most notable example of an extremely dangerous schizophrenic serial killer was Herbert Mullin. Mullin began to exhibit signs of insanity in his early twenties and then, at the age of twenty-five, started to receive telepathic messages from his father ordering him to kill. In a five-month period between October 1972 and February 1
973, Mullin murdered thirteen people—in one instance, cutting open a woman’s stomach and removing her intestines. He killed for a variety of reasons that made sense only in the context of his paranoid fantasies. Among other reasons, he claimed that he killed to prevent a catastrophic earthquake from happening in California, and because he thought the victims themselves sent him telepathic messages offering to be sacrificed. As Mullin explained to the jury at his trial, “One man consenting to be murdered protects the millions of other human beings living in the cataclysmic earthquake/tidal area. For this reason, the designated hero/leader and associates have the responsibilities of getting enough people to commit suicide and/or consent to being murdered every day.”46 Enough said.
In many respects, the Ripper seems to have been similar to these schizophrenic killers. In fact, according to former FBI agent Roy Hazelwood, Jack the Ripper was a classic example of a particular type of serial killer called a disorganized “lust murderer.”47 Defined as a killer whose focus is a “mutilating attack or displacement of the breasts, rectum, or genitals,” the disorganized lust murderer is often mentally disturbed and “approaches his victim in much the same way as an inquisitive child with a new toy . . . in an exploratory examination of the sexually significant parts of the body in an attempt to determine how they function and appear below the surface.” A lust murderer sometimes takes souvenirs from the body, eats body parts, or “inserts foreign objects into body orifices in a probing and curiosity-motivated, yet brutal, manner.” Such behavior, according to Hazelwood, reflects a “desire to outrage society and call attention to his total disdain for societal acceptance.” Hazelwood also suggested that “while there is no evidence to support anthropophagy [cannibalism], given the dissection and taking of body parts, it is my opinion that the Ripper likely consumed parts of his victim’s bodies away from the murder scenes.”48 If this is true, this would perhaps support the notion that the “From Hell” letter, which referred to eating part of Eddowes’s kidney, may have been from the real killer.
