The Psychopath Test

by Jon Ronson

  There was only one person on the landscape: a young woman shivering in a glass shelter, so I went and stood near her.

  “It’s cold,” I said.

  “It’s always cold here,” she said.

  Eventually, we heard a clang. A gate automatically opened, and we walked through an outdoor metal corridor underneath a tapestry of barbed wire and into a dark lobby filled with prison guards.

  “Hello,” I said cheerfully.

  “Hey, well, look who it is!” hollered one. “Harry Potter.” The guards surrounded me.

  “Hello, mister jolly old mister marvelous,” someone said.

  “Oh, ribbing!” I said.

  “Jolly good jolly good,” they said. “Who are you here to see?”

  “Emmanuel Constant,” I said.

  At this, they stopped laughing.

  “He’s a mass murderer,” said a guard, looking quite impressed.

  “He once had dinner with Bill Clinton,” said another. “Have you met him before?”

  1997. Emmanuel “Toto” Constant stood on the sidewalk of a long, flat residential street in Queens, New York, looking up and down, trying to spot me. Far away in the distance, through the heat haze and the traffic fumes, you could just make out the Manhattan skyline, a glint of the Chrysler Building, the Twin Towers, but there were no magnificent skyscrapers around here, no downtown bars full of sophisticates, just boxy one-story DVD rental places and fast-food restaurants. Unlike his neighbors, who were dressed in T-shirts and shorts and baseball caps on this hot day, Toto Constant was wearing an immaculate pale suit with a silk handkerchief in his top pocket. He was manicured and dapper (very similarly dapper, in retrospect, to how I would first see Tony, years later, in Broadmoor).

  I pulled up and parked.

  “Welcome to Queens,” he said, sounding apologetic.

  There was a time, in the early 1990s, when Toto Constant owned a sprawling Art Deco mansion with a swimming pool and fountains in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was skinny and handsome and charismatic back then and was seen around town carrying an Uzi or a .357 Magnum. It was from his mansion that he set up a far-right paramilitary group, FRAPH, created to terrorize supporters of the recently exiled left-wing democratic president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It was unclear back then who was backing Constant, who was paying his way.

  According to human rights groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch, when FRAPH caught an Aristide supporter, they’d sometimes slice off the person’s face. When a group of Aristide supporters holed up in a shantytown called Cité Soleil, Constant’s men turned up with gasoline—this was December 1993—and burned the place to the ground. At one point that day some children tried to run away from the fire. The men from FRAPH caught them and forced them back inside their burning homes. There were fifty murders that day, and many other bloodbaths during Constant’s reign. In April 1994, for example, FRAPH men raided a harbor town, Raboteau, another center of Aristide support. They arrested and beat and shot and dunked into the open sewers all the residents they could catch. They commandeered fishing boats so they could shoot people fleeing across the sea.

  The modus operandi of FRAPH was to team up with members of the Haitian Armed Forces in midnight raids of the poorest neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, Gonaives and other cities. In a typical raid, the attackers would invade a house in search of evidence of pro-democracy activity, such as photos of Aristide. The men of the house would frequently be abducted and subjected to torture; many would be summarily executed. The women would frequently be gang-raped, often in front of the remaining family members. The ages of documented victims range from as young as 10 to as old as 80. According to witness reports, sons were forced at gunpoint to rape their own mothers.

  —CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY

  Aristide was restored to power in October 1994, and Toto Constant fled to America, leaving photos of the mutilated bodies of FRAPH victims pasted to the walls of his Port-au-Prince headquarters. He was arrested in New York. U.S. authorities announced their intention to deport him back to Port-au-Prince so he could stand trial for crimes against humanity. There was much celebrating in Haiti. In readiness for the impending trial, three women stepped forward to tell prosecutors they had been raped by Constant’s men and left for dead. His fate looked sealed.

  But he had one play left. From his jail cell he announced on CBS’s 60 Minutes that he was ready to reveal the names of his backers, the mysterious men who had encouraged the creation of FRAPH and put him on their payroll. They were agents from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

  “If I’m guilty of the crimes they say I was,” he told the interviewer, Ed Bradley, “the CIA is also guilty.”

  It wasn’t easy to understand why the CIA would want to back a murderous, antidemocratic death squad. Aristide was a charismatic man, a leftist, a former priest. Maybe they feared he was a Castro in the making, a man who might threaten business relations between Haiti and the U.S.

  Still, if anyone doubted Constant’s word, they didn’t for long. He inferred that should the extradition go ahead, he’d reveal devastating secrets about American foreign policy in Haiti. Almost immediately—on June 14, 1996—the U.S. authorities released him from jail and gave him a green card to work in the U.S. But there were conditions, laid out in a five-page settlement deal that was faxed by the U.S. Department of Justice to the prison’s booking area and handed to Constant on his exit. He was forbidden from ever talking to the media. He had to move in with his mother in Queens and could never, ever leave the borough, except for an hour each week when he was to check in with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Manhattan. But as soon as he checked in, he had to drive straight back to Queens.

  Queens was to be his prison.

  When I heard this story back in the late 1990s, I decided to approach Toto Constant for an interview. I wanted to learn how a man used to wielding such tremendous, malevolent power was adapting to life back home in the suburbs with his mother. Now that he had crash-landed into the ordinary world, would the memory of his crimes eat him up, like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov? Plus, Queens had a thriving Haitian community, which meant he was surely living among some of his own victims. I wrote to him, fully expecting a refusal. Talking to me would, after all, have violated the terms of his release. Once the authorities found out, he could well have been arrested, deported back to Haiti, and executed. Prospective interviewees tend to turn me down for a lot less than that. Many decline my interview requests simply because they think I might portray them as a little crazy. Nonetheless, he cheerfully agreed to meet me. I didn’t ask why because I was just glad to get the interview and—if I’m honest—I didn’t really worry about what would happen to him as a result, which I suppose is a little Item 6: Lack of Remorse or Guilt, Item 7: Shallow Affect, and Item 8: Callous/Lack of Empathy, but he was a death-squad leader, so who cares?

  That day in Queens was strange and memorable. Well-dressed men came and went. They sometimes huddled in corners and talked about things I couldn’t hear, although I strained to eavesdrop. Maybe they were planning a military coup or something.

  I asked him how he was adjusting to everyday life. What did he do to pass the time? Did he have hobbies? He smiled slightly.

  “I’ll show you,” he said.

  He led me from his mother’s house and down an alleyway, and then down another alleyway, and into a cluster of apartment blocks.

  “Nearly there,” he said. “Don’t worry!”

  We climbed the stairs. I looked apprehensively behind me. We reached a doorway. He opened it. I took in the room.

  On every table, every surface, there were the kinds of tiny plastic figures that come free with McDonald’s and Burger King promotions—little Dumbos and Goofys and Muppets from Space and Rugrats and Batmen and Powerpuff Girls and Men in Black and Luke Skywalkers and Bart Simpsons and Fred Flintstones and Jackie Chans and Buzz Lightyears and on and on.

  We looked at each
other.

  “What impresses me most about them is the artistry,” he said.

  “Do you arrange them into battalions?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  There was a silence.

  “Shall we go?” he murmured, I think regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.

  A few minutes later we were back in his mother’s house, the two of us sitting at the kitchen table. His mother shuffled in and out. He was telling me that one day the people of Haiti would call him back to lead them—“They adore me in Haiti,” he said—and, yes, when that day came, he would do his duty for the people.

  I asked him about Cité Soleil and Raboteau and the other charges against him.

  “There’s not even smoke to those claims,” he said. “Not even smoke!”

  “Is that it?” I thought. “Is that all you’re going to say on the subject?”

  “The lies they tell about me break my heart,” he said.

  And then I heard a strange noise coming from Constant. His body was shaking. The noise I could hear was something like sobbing. But it wasn’t quite sobbing. It was an approximation of sobbing. His face was screwed up like a face would be if it were crying, but it was weird, like bad acting. A grown man in a dapper suit was pretending to cry in front of me. This would have been awkward enough if he was actually crying—I find displays of overt emotion not at all pleasant—but this was a man palpably simulating crying, which made the moment at once awkward, surreal, and quite disturbing.

  Our time together ended soon afterward. He showed me to his door, the epitome of good manners, laughing, giving me a warm handshake, saying we’ll meet again soon. Just as I reached my car I turned around to wave again, and when I saw him, I felt a jolt pass through me—like my amygdala had just shot a signal of fear through to my central nervous system. His face was very different, much colder, suspicious. He was scrutinizing me hard. The instant I caught his eye, he put on that warm look again. He grinned and waved. I waved back, climbed into the car, and drove away.

  I never wrote up my interview with Toto Constant. There was something eerily vacant about him. I couldn’t find a way in. But throughout my time in West Wales, I kept recalling images from our day together. That fake crying seemed very Item 7: Shallow Affect—Displays of emotion are dramatic, shallow, short lived, leaving the impression that he is play acting—and also extremely Item 16: Failure to Accept Responsibility for Own Actions. The assertion about the people of Haiti adoring him struck me as somewhat Item 2: Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth—He may claim that others respect him, fear him, envy him, dislike him, and so forth. His belief that he would one day return to Haiti as their leader seemed quite Item 13: Lack of Realistic Long-Term Goals. Maybe Bob’s checklist even solved the mystery of why he agreed to meet me at all. Maybe it was Item 3: Need for Stimulation/Proneness to Boredom, Item 14: Impulsivity—He is unlikely to spend much time considering the possible consequences of his actions—and Item 2: Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth.

  Maybe items 3, 14, and 2 are the reasons why loads of my interviewees agree to meet me.

  I couldn’t see where the collection of Burger King figurines fit in, but I supposed there was no reason why psychopaths shouldn’t have unrelated hobbies.

  Where was he now? After I returned from Wales, I did a search. He was, unexpectedly, housed inside Coxsackie Correctional Facility, not yet two years into a twelve- to thirty-seven-year sentence for mortgage fraud.

  Item 20: Criminal Versatility.

  I wrote to him. I reminded him of our last meeting, gave him a potted account of amygdala dysfunction, asked him if he felt it applied to him. He wrote back that I was welcome to pay him a visit. I booked a flight. The Icelandic volcano erupted. I booked another flight a week later, and now here I was, sitting at Row 2, Table 6, in an almost empty visitors’ room.

  Coxsackie had one thousand prisoners. Only four had company today. There was a young couple playing cards; an elderly inmate surrounded by his children and grandchildren; the woman I’d met in the shelter, holding an inmate’s hand across the table, casually snaking her fingers through his, pulling at each finger, touching his face; and Toto Constant, sitting opposite me.

  He had been led here five minutes earlier, and I was already struck by what easy company he was proving to be. He was doing what I expected he would, protesting his innocence of the mortgage fraud, saying he was guilty only of “trusting the wrong people,” expressing shock at the gigantic sentence, mortgage fraud usually getting you only five years.

  “Five years,” he said. “Fine. Okay. But thirty-seven years?”

  It was true that the length of the sentence didn’t seem fair, in a way. I empathized with him a little about this.

  I told him, with some nervousness, that the brain anomaly I spoke of in my letter would, if he had it, classify him as a psychopath.

  “Well, I’m not one,” he said.

  “Would you be happy to explore the issues with me anyway?” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Fire away.”

  I figured we both had something to gain from the meeting. He was a bit of a guinea pig for me. I could practice my psychopath-spotting skills on him, and he’d have a day out of his cell, away from the monotony, eating burgers brought by me from the machine in the corner of the visitors’ room.

  What did I hope to accomplish? I wondered if I’d catch a glimpse of Tony in Toto—maybe I’d identify some shared personality traits, just as Bob’s course had taught me—and I had a bigger objective, too. Terrible things had been done in Haiti in his name. He had profoundly altered Haitian society for three years, set it spiraling frantically in the wrong direction, destroying the lives of thousands, tainting hundreds of thousands more. Was Bob Hare and Martha Stout’s theory right? Was it all because of some malfunctioning relationship between his amygdala and his central nervous system? If so, it was a powerful brain anomaly indeed.

  “Why didn’t you come and see me last Tuesday?” he asked me.

  “That volcano erupted in Iceland and everything got put on hold,” I said.

  “Ah!” he said, nodding. “Okay. I understand. When I got your letter I was so excited!”

  “Really?” I said.

  “All the inmates were saying, ‘The guy who wrote the Men Who Stare at Goats book is coming to visit YOU? Wow!’ Ha ha! Everyone in here has heard of that movie!”

  “Really!” I said.

  “Yeah, we have a movie night every Saturday night. Last Saturday was Avatar. That movie touched me. It touched me. The invasion of the small nation by the big nation. I found those blue people beautiful. I found a beauty in them.”

  “Are you an emotional man?” I asked.

  “I am emotional.” He nodded. “Anyway, a couple of months ago they chose the Men Who Stare at Goats movie. Most of the inmates didn’t know what the hell was going on. They were saying, ‘What’s this?’ But I was saying, ‘No no, I’ve met the guy who wrote the book! You don’t understand the guy’s mind! And then you wrote to me and said you wanted to meet me again. Everyone was so jealous.”

  “Oh! That’s nice!” I said.

  “When I heard you were coming last week, my hair was a real mess, but I wasn’t scheduled to have my hair cut so another inmate said, ‘You take my slot.’ We switched slots at the barbershop! And someone else gave me a brand-new green shirt to wear!”

  “Oh God!” I said.

  He waved his hand to say, “I know it’s silly.” “The only little thing we have here is a visit,” he explained. “It’s the only little thing we have left.” He fell silent. “I once ate in the most beautiful restaurants in the world. Now I’m in a cell. I dress in green all the time.”

  “Who is the unfeeling one?” I thought. “I only came here to hone my psychopath-spotting skills and this poor guy borrowed a special shirt.”

  “Some guys here won’t accept visitors because of what we have to go through afterwards,” said Toto.

&nbs
p; “What do you have to go through afterwards?” I asked.

  “A strip search,” he said.

  “Oh God!” I said.

  He shuddered.

  “The indignity of it is awful,” he said.

  Just then I looked up. Something had changed in the room. Prisoners and their loved ones were bristling, anxiously noticing something I hadn’t noticed.

  “This is fucked up,” Toto whispered.

  “What is?”

  “That guy.”

  Without taking his eyes off me, Toto indicated a prison guard—a man wearing a white shirt—who was wandering the room.

  “He’s a sadist,” he said. “When he walks into a room, everyone gets scared. None of us want trouble. We all just want to go home.”

  “Did he just do something?”

  “Not really. He told a woman that her T-shirt was too revealing. That’s all.”

  I glanced over. It was the woman I had met in the shelter. She was looking upset.

  “It’s just . . . he scares people,” he said.

  “All those years ago, when I met you, something happened,” I said. “It was right at the end of the day. I was heading to my car and I turned around and saw you staring at me. Really observing me. I saw you do the same thing when you walked into this room. You scanned the place, observing everything.”