The detectives were as depressed by the way things were going as Kenny was pleased, but they were not giving up. Meticulously they scanned the videotapes of the Watkins and Allison interviews, trying to spot a significant slipup. Not that they had any hope of convincing the doctors that Bianchi was pulling a scam. The doctors, Grogan said, obviously had a will to believe Bianchi. Grogan called them “true believers” and compared them to religious enthusiasts. He said that they approached the multiple personality idea as the church faithful view an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Bellingham was becoming like Fatima or Lourdes, and the next thing you knew Bianchi would start healing cripples. A political analogy also occurred to Grogan: “They believe in this thing like my father believed in the Democratic Party. It’s like I told my dad, ‘You’d vote for Mao Tse-tung if somebody told you he’s a Democrat.’ ” But the prosecution was going to call in its own psychiatrists. Grogan knew one of them by reputation and predicted that this doctor, Saul Faerstein, would help to turn things around: “Faerstein’s no fool. Faerstein’s a hard-ass. He’ll nail the bastard. I predict.”
Then at last Salerno and Finnigan thought they might have caught something on the videotapes. It was indistinct, mumbled, but with the volume at full blast they heard Bianchi give Steve the surname Walker, and they heard Dr. Allison repeat the name. It rang a bell. Somewhere in Bianchi’s papers, the ones discovered in his attaché case, they knew they had come across a reference to a Steven Walker.
They searched through the papers and found what they needed: the letter to the registrar at California State University at Northridge asking for a diploma with the name not filled in, signed “Thomas Steven Walker.” The letter said that a ninety-dollar money order was enclosed, and the registrar or his clerk had stamped the letter “paid.” The detectives also found Cal State transcripts with Bianchi’s name on them. This was obviously another one of Bianchi’s scams and fit in with all the other fake degrees and diplomas he liked to collect.
Salerno and Finnigan hurried down to Los Angeles and on to Northridge. They showed Bianchi’s supposed transcripts to the registrar, who checked out the social security number and confirmed that the transcripts were actually those of Thomas Steven Walker. Then they traced Walker to his apartment in Van Nuys and, interviewing him, learned that he had responded to an ad in the Times and had forwarded his transcripts in applying for a job. A search of Times back issues revealed the ad, in which Bianchi had represented himself as “Dr. R. Johnson” but had given his Verdugo address.
They now had everything they needed to show that Bianchi had made the mistake of giving his phony alter ego the name of an actual person, but to round out the picture of Bianchi as the con artist of psychology, they went to see Dr. Charles Weingarten: Kelli and other witnesses had confirmed that Kenny had rented an office from a legitimate therapist, and his counseling-service flyers had listed the address. Salerno and Finnigan wanted to establish that Kenny had been able to fool a professional psychologist even before Bellingham. Dr. Weingarten, who had a gentle, even fragile manner, said that Bianchi had identified himself as a marriage, family, and child-guidance counselor and had said that he needed temporary space while he built up his practice. Dr. Weingarten described Kenny as “very sincere and pleasant” and said that the young man had discussed Gestalt therapy and transactional analysis with obvious expertise. The interview had taken about fifteen minutes. Dr. Weingarten had been reading about Bianchi’s multiple personalities. “From what I’ve read about Steve,” Dr. Weingarten said, “I feel I met Ken.” Somehow it had not occurred to Dr. Weingarten that even as he had been duped, other doctors were being fooled now. But neither Salerno nor Finnigan had the heart to deepen Dr. Weingarten’s disillusionment by asking him what on earth made him think that Steve wasn’t just another Bianchi con.
By the time Salerno and Finnigan had completed all this important work, the prosecution had brought in a very big gun to train on Bianchi. He was Dr. Martin T. Orne, head of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other distinctions, Dr. Orne, who was Vienna-born, was considered the world authority on hypnosis and had written the definitive historical and clinical article on the subject for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In that article, published in 1974, Dr. Orne took a cautious view of the uses of hypnosis and warned of its limitations and potential abuses. “In general,” Dr. Orne wrote, “hypnosis cannot be induced against an individual’s will.” Of equal significance to the Bianchi case, Dr. Orne warned that “when unhypnotizable subjects are asked to simulate hypnosis, their performance can deceive experienced hypnotists. Simulating subjects convincingly perform extraordinary feats of strength and memory. . . .” Dr. Orne was also aware of the controversies in medical literature surrounding diagnoses of multiple personality disorder, and he was mindful that a defendant facing a charge of murder would have much to gain by faking insanity. Dr. Orne approached Bianchi with an open mind and in a truly scientific spirit, assuming nothing except the scientist’s responsibility to prove or to disprove a hypothesis. In the forensic context of Bianchi’s statements, Dr. Orne knew that he had to be particularly alert to possibilities of malingering. Diagnosis in such a situation, he knew, was a very different and more difficult problem than in the ordinary therapeutic context.
After reviewing the Watkins and Allison videotapes, Dr. Orne decided that his primary task would be to determine whether or not Bianchi had in fact been hypnotized. He noted that Steve had first appeared under (apparent) hypnosis when Dr. Watkins had said that he believed there “might be another part of Ken that I haven’t talked to” and proceeded to summon that part. Dr. Orne also noted that Steve appeared to change or to intensify as the interviews progressed. In addition, Dr. Orne went through masses of material accumulated by the police which indicated that Bianchi was an accomplished liar. If Bianchi was faking being hypnotized, it would not prove that he was also faking the symptoms of a multiple personality, but it would obviously suggest that this was the case.
Dr. Orne had developed certain procedures which could help to determine whether someone was actually hypnotized or was simulating the state, and he decided to apply these to Bianchi without, of course, telling Kenny what was going on. Dr. Orne called these procedures double hallucination, single hallucination, suggested anesthesia, and source amnesia. Kenny’s responses to three of the four indicated that he was faking being hypnotized.
At first Dr. Orne asked Kenny to imagine that Dean Brett was sitting next to him in an empty chair. Kenny did so, pretending to speak animatedly to his lawyer. Dr. Orne then pointed to the real Dean Brett. Kenny explained that the hallucinated Brett was no longer there. But he overacted, rattling on in a manner that Dr. Orne knew was inconsistent with actual hypnosis: “Dean, Dean! How can Dean Brett be in two places?” and so on. In true hypnosis, the subject does not question the logic of the hallucination, and it was obvious to Dr. Orne that Kenny was trying to prove to him that he had actually experienced the hallucination, when he had not. Kenny also made the mistake of getting up and pretending to shake hands with the imagined Dean Brett. It was unprecedented for a hypnotized subject to attempt to have a physical exchange with a hallucination. Equally telling was Kenny’s insistence that Dr. Orne himself “must be able to see” Dean Brett: the truly hypnotized subject simply assumes the induced reality. Kenny’s final error was to ask the phantasmagorical Dean Brett whether he would mind being touched. Again, the truly hypnotized subject would assume that the hallucination would not mind if, as Dr. Orne did, the hypnotist says that it would not mind. The hypnotized subject accepts reality as defined, within limits, by the hypnotist.
The suggested-anesthesia procedure also worked on the principle that the truly hypnotized subject acts according to the logic of the hypnotized state, as defined by the hypnotist, not according to waking, normal logic. This test involved Dr. Orne’s drawing an imaginary circle on the pack of Ke
nny’s hand and telling him that he would feel pressure when touched outside the circle but feel nothing when touched inside the circle. He was supposed to say “Yes” when touched outside the circle and, even though he could supposedly feel nothing, say “No” when touched inside the circle. By normal, waking logic, of course, the subject, supposedly feeling nothing when touched inside the circle, would say nothing. Kenny, seeing the test in this way, trying to prove he was really hypnotized, said nothing when Dr. Orne touched him inside the circle. But he was wrong. The truly hypnotized subject would have gone along with the hypnotist and said “No” when he was supposedly feeling nothing. Dr. Orne knew at that moment that Kenny was faking. Kenny thought that he had outsmarted Dr. Orne when in fact he had demonstrated that he was being logical and fully awake.
Kenny’s reaction to the source-amnesia procedure, however, was inconclusive. In this test Dr. Orne asked Kenny three easy questions (including “What is the capital of the state of New York?”) and one difficult question: “What color does an amethyst turn when heated?” Kenny did not know, and Dr. Orne gave him the answer: yellow. Dr. Orne then told him that when he woke up he would not remember yellow as the correct answer. Kenny did not remember, but this was an inconclusive response. About one-third of all deeply hypnotized subjects do recall the correct answer but cannot remember the source of their knowledge: sometimes they make up a source, such as a book or a college course. Thus Kenny’s pretending not to remember the correct answer at all did not prove by itself that he was faking, only that he had failed to give absolute proof of having been deeply hypnotized, as he would have had he remembered the correct answer but not the source of it. Some hypnotized subjects behave as he had, failing to recall the correct answer altogether, so this test could not be used as certain evidence of his lying.
In sum, however, the tests added up to conclusive proof that Kenny was malingering, as Dr. Orne would phrase it, and his behavior in general convinced Dr. Orne that here was an actor. Kenny went through, as Steve, his cigarette-tearing routine again, once more expressing a childlike bewilderment afterward when he pretended to notice for the first time a heap of filterless butts in the ashtray. To Dr. Orne this was transparent fakery, not only because of the obvious overacting but because, having gone through the cigarette routine before with other doctors, Kenny, had he been telling the truth, would not have been surprised that the mischievous Steve had been at work again. He would have remembered what had supposedly happened with Steve before, since he had been told about it when awake, as Ken. And since he was faking amnesia now, Dr. Orne concluded, he had doubtless been faking amnesia from the beginning. What had been obvious to commonsense detectives from the start had now been proved scientifically.
Kenny, unaware that Dr. Orne had tricked him into betraying himself, continued to add baloney to his diary:
I just had my first session with Dr. Orne, nice guy. Strangest thing happened, we were doing the test for hypnosis and it seemed that I was dreaming that Dean came into the room only it wasn’t clear. It was like I was seeing him in a strobe [light], and it looked like he was standing next to Dr. Orne.
There remained for Dr. Orne the question of multiple personality disorder itself. Dr. Orne cagily admitted to Kenny that there might be a problem with the multiple personality diagnosis. Although Dr. Allison had asked whether there were more than two personalities involved, so far only Ken and Steve had emerged. “That’s pretty rare for there to be two,” Dr. Orne suggested. Usually, he said, there were more than two. Three at least and sometimes eight or ten or more. Dr. Orne conducted this discussion when Kenny had not been hypnotized, or rather without giving Kenny the opportunity to pretend to be hypnotized. Dr. Orne wanted to establish that Kenny was reacting to cues and clues thrown out by the doctors. If Kenny was faking multiple personality, he would find a way to invent a third personality. Dr. Orne hinted that it was an important matter and that he was worried about there being only two parts.
Dr. Orne went through a hypnotic induction again and summoned Steve. He then sent Steve away and began exploring whether or not a third personality might exist. Kenny crouched down into his chair and began whimpering.
“Are you Steve?” Dr. Orne asked. “Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s all right. Tell me.”
Kenny began crying, like a frightened child, and pleaded, “You’re not going to hit me, are you?”
“No, I’m not going to hit you. It’s all right. I’m not your mother. She hit you a lot?”
“Yes.”
All this was Dr. Orne’s way of setting Kenny up. All he had to do was throw out a cue, and Kenny would pick up on it. Deliberately using the same language as Watkins and Allison, Dr. Orne then asked to talk to that “part” that was trying to get out, a “part” separate from Ken and Steve. Kenny was having trouble coming up with another name. Mewling about, he finally called his new self Billy. But poor Billy was afraid. Billy needed more time to come out. That was just fine with Dr. Orne: as far as he was concerned, Billy could keep his own schedule, there was no need to rush. Dr. Orne suggested that they break for dinner:
“Billy, all right. I will soon wake you and the next time, you may talk to me. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” Kenny said, whining. Dr. Orne offered him a Kleenex.
Kenny had two hours to get his new self together, and, sure enough, after dinner Billy emerged right away. He was a little bitty boy. He did not know his last name. Did he know Steve?
“He’s a bad egg,” Kenny said in his new Billy-voice, small and scared, full of infantile metaphors. Billy did not get into trouble like bad Steve. Billy did not know foolish Ken. Billy liked to eat tuna fish, yum-yum. But under Dr. Orne’s questioning, which deliberately suggested more of a role for Billy than a mere baby Kenny, Billy grew up a little and took responsibility for the psychologist scam in Los Angeles. He had just done it for fun, he said, posing as a psychologist. Dr. Orne told little Billy not to worry himself. That was not a serious crime. With his faint German accent that made sarcasm easy but not blatant, Dr. Orne remarked:
“Los Angeles people don’t take these things that seriously. There are so many quacks.” No doubt Dr. Orne was thinking of one or two quacks he had encountered himself.
“I was introduced to the existence of Billy,” Kenny wrote in his diary that night. “I wonder what he’s like.”
Dr. Orne had proved that Kenny had been faking multiple personality disorder. All one had to do, he saw, was to suggest a new self and Kenny would invent one, given enough time and sufficient guidance. But, unlike Dr. Watkins, Dr. Orne did not take his findings to the press. Rather he kept them to himself until the appropriate moment in the judicial process, working over his conclusions and phrasing them precisely.
Dr. Orne was not one to criticize his colleagues; he was content to let his work stand on its merits. He went so far as to invite Drs. Watkins and Allison to write up their own diagnoses of Bianchi for Dr. Orne’s Journal of Experimental Hypnosis, where he published his diagnosis as well. But later Dr. Orne did say publicly that it was probably easier for someone to fool a professional than a layman when it came to hypnosis.
Although they were deceived by Bianchi’s multiple personality hoax, Drs. Watkins and Allison can in no way be accused of unprofessional conduct. In truth they were being so thoroughly professional that what was obvious to the layman was not to them. The detectives saw the fraud at once; a BBC producer who was filming a documentary about Bianchi sensed the fakery after viewing the videotape of one session with Dr. Watkins; a writer who was doing a book about the Stranglers recognized the sham at once; the writer’s daughter, who was fifteen at the time and who knew nothing then about the case, happened to see five minutes of a tape showing Bianchi playing Steve for Dr. Allison and commented of Kenny, “What a lousy actor!”
How can it be that professionals were so easily hood-winked? A key lies in Dr. Watkins’s comment
to the skeptical BBC producer that Bianchi could not possibly have known enough about hypnosis and psychology to fake multiple personality syndrome. Dr. Watkins said Bianchi would have to have had “several years of study in Rorschach [tests] and graduate study in psychology for him to be able to do that.” So great is the belief of some professionals in the intricacy and obscurity of their specialty that they can become blind to the obvious. Nor was Dr. Watkins impressed by Bianchi’s library of psychology texts. After all, Bianchi did not have a degree.
Fortunately not all professionals have so deep a belief in credentials. Kenny sensed right away that however friendly Dr. Orne had appeared, this psychiatrist might be less gullible than others. He actually seemed to be looking for the truth. Nor had Dr. Orne said anything about trying to help Kenny or even to cure him, as had Drs. Allison and Watkins. Dr. Orne was alarmingly precise and dispassionate. Kenny started trying to cover himself. He wrote in his diary:
I don’t envy [Dr. Orne] his position. I don’t have any real ideas except I don’t see how he can reach a definite conclusion. I’m beginning to wonder if the personality I’ve been told about is not being truthful with me (the Dr’s that is). What bothers me is I’m told I have a problem, I’m told what it is. I’m told because I don’t know, now I don’t know what to think. . . .
In other words, Kenny was already trying to find a way of blaming Drs. Allison and Watkins for the entire scam, just in case he was found not to have multiple personalities. Something in Dr. Orne’s manner—his scientific approach—had made Kenny begin to worry.
Dr. Saul Faerstein, who followed Dr. Orne, did nothing to reassure Kenny. Dr. Faerstein simply made Kenny talk, as Kenny, about his past and about the murders, and elicited a history of lies. “I had my first day with Dr. F[aerstein],” Kenny wrote in his diary on June 1st:
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