The Anatomy of Evil

by Michael H. Stone

  To show you something more about the diversity among serial killers, I'd like to take you now on a journey into the lower depths of serial murder and torture. If this were Dante, we'd have to dig a good bit deeper than his (lowest) Ninth Circle, because there were no people he described even at hell's "bottom" that did anything like the people you'll meet in this chapter. Throughout our journey, I will introduce people who exhibit most of the characteristics on the "menu" in the areas of nature, nurture, and what might be called misadventure (head injury, being raped while in a reformatory). These people will illustrate the various degrees on the Gradations scale-from 17 to 22.

  MENTAL ILLNESS; PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS

  Because of the common belief that anyone who would do the things serial killers do must be "crazy," many would conclude they must all be "mentally ill." Granted that "mentally ill" is a vague phrase, psychiatric circles still use it to refer to persons who suffer from an inborn major psychosis, such as schizophrenia, delusional disorder, and manic-depressive psychosis. Heavy abuse of LSD, angel dust, cocaine, methamphetamine, and, in vulnerable persons (adolescents, especially), marijuana can also create a lasting state of "craziness" that resembles schizophrenia. To make matters more complex, some people who start out with a psychotic condition also abuse some of these drugs, ending up with an aggravated psychosis: their original inborn illness is now made considerably worse by drug abuse. Within the ranks of serial killers, though, very few started out with a mental illness where hallucinations, bizarre ideas, and delusions-that is, a psychosis-were present independent of drug abuse. What is extremely common among serial killers is a (less severe) psychiatric disorder of some kind, particularly a personality disorder. It wouldn't be incorrect to assume that they all have a personality disorder-such as narcissistic, antisocial, psychopathic, sadistic, irritable/explosive, schizoid, or various combinations of several of these. It is not always so easy to make a correct diagnosis of mental illness in serial killers once they are on trial for their crimes, since a few feign psychosis in hopes of receiving a less severe sentence via an insanity defense. In the end, however, these attempts almost invariably fall flat.

  PSYCHOSIS

  Two of the most clear-cut cases of psychosis in a serial killer are those of Richard Chase and Joseph Kallinger. Both have been termed, I believe correctly, schizophrenic.

  Richard Chase was born in 1950 in Sacramento into a working-class family where the parents bickered a great deal. His father was a strict disciplinarian and critical, but he was not really abusive. Richard showed peculiarities early on: he liked to set fires and torture animals while in elementary school. He used to bury the cats he'd killed in the backyard. In his teens he began to show signs of "weirdness": whereas he was popular at first, his personality underwent drastic changes as he began to date girls. He was impotent on several occasions and began to abuse LSD, alcohol, and marijuana. A psychiatrist whom he saw briefly thought he had a "major mental illness" but did not suggest hospitalization. His behavior became more bizarre, and he became disheveled. He would nail his closet shut in the belief that people were "invading his space" from within the closet. Once he took himself to an emergency room complaining that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery. On another occasion he claimed that bones were coming out through the back of his head or else that his heart had stopped beating. He was diagnosed as "paranoid schizophrenic" at this point, with the added note that hallucinogenic drugs were making his illness, whatever it was, a great deal worse. When his parents divorced, he lived with his mother but said he was being "poisoned."

  Apparently on the assumption that his impotence was caused by lack of blood, Richard became preoccupied with killing animals and drinking their blood and smearing himself with their blood. He would catch rabbits and tear their organs out, eating their entrails raw. Once he actually injected himself with rabbit blood-and, of course, became violently ill because of the blood incompatibility. He caught and tortured cats, dogs, even a cow. In his twenties he graduated to killing and disemboweling humans: a man, then two women, and three children, drinking their blood in the same vain hopes of curing his sexual dysfunction. With one of the women he committed his most depraved act after he killed her: carving off a nipple and stuffing animal feces in the mouth of her corpse. When he was finally caught in 1978, he was considered a "disorganized" type of serial killer, since his acts were accompanied by rage (one sign of which was multiple stab wounds) and because he made no attempt to hide the evidence of what he had done." He once even called the family of a dog he'd mutilated and told them that he was responsible.

  Chase committed suicide in prison with antidepressant tablets he had saved up. Though considered mentally ill at trial, he did not win an insanity defense because he knew what he had done was wrong. Insanity is now simply a legal term signifying that an offender did not understand the nature of his act nor that it was wrong. One might quibble that serial sexual homicide was not the right term for Chase's crimes because he didn't always have sex with the victims, or if he did, it was only after (in several cases) they were dead; in other words, Chase performed necrophilic acts with some of his victims. But his motivation was certainly sexual in nature. Because of these variations, Chase does not fit neatly into any one of the categories of the scale. The fact that he shot some of his victims and stabbed others-without torture-is consistent with category 17. But the gruesomeness of his acts suggests that he belongs to the extreme end of the scale: Number 22. Mutilation after death can no longer be felt by the victim, however, so it is not considered "torture," nor does it represent the kind of extreme sadism or torture that would place him at the far end of the scale.

  Joseph Kallinger, in contrast, did torture his victims. Kallinger was adopted by a punitive couple in Philadelphia, who, besides beating him, also taunted him when he was an adolescent that his "bird" (that is, his penis) would never get hard. Although he later married and had several children, he always was obsessed with fears about his penis; in his late thirties he claimed God spoke to him, telling him to kill young boys and to cut off their penises. He eventually killed one of his sons (who had accused him of abuse), a young boy, and a nurse, whom he had sexually assaulted. Kallinger said at one point that he was 961 years old and had been a butterfly. There is some question whether Kallinger faked some of these bizarre responses or else exaggerated what he really felt in order to win an insanity plea. Psychiatrist Dr. John Hume, with whom I spoke and who had testified at the trial in October 1976, thought Kallinger had an antisocial personality and was otherwise malingering. The jury agreed and waved aside the insanity defense, consigning Kallinger to life in prison (where he died in 1996). Some experts felt Kallinger was "schizotypal" in personality: eccentric, with odd and magical beliefs but short of full-blown schizophrenia. One author who wrote up the case thought he was schizophrenic, 12 but the truth of his mental state may elude us as to where acting crazy ends and being crazy begins. As far as is known, Kallinger did not abuse drugs, so, unlike Chase, whatever his mental state-mad, malingered, or a combination-drugs had not worsened it.

  ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER

  Richard Ramirez, who earned a measure of celebrity in the mid-1980s as the Los Angeles "Night Stalker," had many more strikes against him than just Attention Deficit Disorder with hyperactivity (often abbreviated to ADD/H). I include him under this heading because he is one of the few serial killers whose history makes explicit mention of the condition. He grew up in El Paso, Texas, as the youngest of five children in a Mexican American family. Richard's great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had all been extremely abusive physically toward their sons down the generations as a means of instilling discipline. Two of Richard's three brothers had gotten in trouble with the law for heroin addiction. Richard suffered at least two bouts of unconsciousness after head injuries: once, when a dresser he had been climbing fell over on him; another time, when a playground swing struck him. After the head injuries he began to have seizures, both grand mal (
causing unconsciousness) and temporal lobe (causing strange visions or automatic movements but without unconsciousness). In the wake of these experiences, he also became hypersexual, aggressive, and prone to "visions" of monsters. In his midteens he began to abuse a host of hallucinogenic drugs: mescaline, LSD, angel dust, and cocaine.

  Richard had a cousin, Mike Ramirez, who had served with the army in Vietnam. Mike boasted about his exploits there: rapes and beheadings of Vietnamese women, stealth killings, and the like, all of which made Mike a hero in Richard's eyes. Mike settled in Los Angeles (after being released for the murder of his wife, committed in full view of Richard) where Richard later joined him. By then, Richard had become reclusive, suspicious, and totally depraved. He began to sneak into the houses of people, mostly women, whom he would kill or rape. On one occasion he cut out the eyes of a victim and took them with him. Ramirez entertained grandiose fantasies of becoming more famous than Jack the Ripper.13 Arrested after his fourteenth murder, he told the authorities with his characteristic callousness: "You don't understand me ... you are not capable of it. I am beyond good and evil," and "I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm.... I love all that blood."14

  One of the qualities that characterizes Ramirez as an "evil" personas opposed to someone who has now and then done evil acts-is his lifelong inability to make a lasting and harmonious attachment to anyone. Unlike a number of the married serial killers who have led double livesbeing thoughtful and attentive to their wives and families while brutal to their victims-Ramirez appeared to spend each of his waking hours in a state of hatred toward people in general, continually planning for his next sadistic act. In this respect he resembles the next person we will discuss, whose case is an example of (among other things) hypersexualitythe need, that is, for excessively frequent sexual release.

  HYPERSEXUALITY

  Leonard Fraser, born in 1951 in northern Australia, had been a compulsive liar and a loner from early childhood-a childhood that was punctuated by frequent tantrums and rages. In all fairness, his father aggravated Leonard's aggressive tendencies by beating his son "black and blue" with his belt-not realizing (as few parents do) that abusively punishing a fear less child who is utterly unresponsive to such treatment is absolutely ineffective and only makes a bad situation worse. Violent and destructive in school, Leonard was markedly hypersexual (heterosexual more than homosexual), defiant, and uncontrollable. The degree to which hypersexuality can be ascribed to heredity rather than to sexual overstimulation in the early years is not always an easy equation to solve. But in Leonard's case, at least, hypersexuality was evident even before he was subjected to forced sex by the bigger boys in the reformatory to which he was later sent. In turn, he raped the boys smaller than himself and, when released at seventeen, he set about raping women in large numbers.

  Typical of serial killers, he also tortured animals, boiling cats alive. He abused alcohol and drugs, stole a car, and at one point raped and killed a French tourist. He went on in this way until he was arrested for rape when he was twenty-three. Sentenced to twenty-one years, he was nevertheless released after seven by a parole board that paid no attention to his having been diagnosed as a psychopath by the prison psychiatrists. Arrested again for rape right after his release, he was sentenced to only two months in jail. After a few more trips in and out of prison, he raped some sixteen women in an area around Brisbane and later raped, killed, and performed necrophilic acts on three more women and a nine-yearold girl. He continued to torture cats and also engaged in bestiality-sex with animals, in his case, with dogs. He kept a woman locked up in a room, insisting on having sex with her six times a day, before finally being arrested once again, this time diagnosed as an "incurable sexual sadist." As a predator, Fraser performed acts that others call evil. He did so seemingly from morning till night, concentrating his efforts on waiflike women whom he would stalk and rape. The police characterized him as "alarmingly evil." 15

  PERSONALITY DISORDERS

  Of the various personality disorders in serial killers, psychopathy is arguably the most common. This disorder was present in 87 percent of 145 serial killers in my biographical records. Psychopathy is common as well in other persons who become known for evil actions (apart from serial sexual homicide), such as Charles Manson, who showed all the behavioral tendencies and the narcissistic personality traits in about equal measure. In such a crowded field it seems quite arbitrary to single out any one particular serial killer as the example for psychopathy. Serial killers in general are predators who, by their very nature, are indifferent to their victims and are self-centered to the utmost. These men are narcissistic at the least. Most go the extra mile and show the special traits of callousness, lack of remorse, glibness, and deceitfulness that put them at the outer edge of narcissism-that is, in the category of the psychopath. Perhaps it is their total lack of compassion for their victims that is their most important characteristic, even in those serial killers who, like Gary Ridgway or Herman Mudgett, led double lives and retained a measure of compassion for their wives.

  PSYCHOPATHY

  Paul Bernardo grew up in an Ontario family. His mother was a frumpy and undemonstrative woman; his father, an ill-tempered man who was also a Peeping Tom. As a child, Paul was a teaser and a bully who, once in his teens, got involved in various scams and rip-offs to make money. Very much the braggart, he was cocky and, as he began to date girls, possessive. His mother informed him when he was about sixteen that her husband was not his biological father. After this revelation about being a "halfadoptee," he turned abusive and rebellious toward his mother. He developed into a con artist and supersalesman of no mean aptitude. A string of girlfriends followed. Paul was jealous and abusive, calling one girl a whore and beating her savagely because she'd gone to a bar with a girlfriend. To another girl he made obscene phone calls and was slapped with a restraining order. He became obsessed with rape, anal sex, and power fan- tasies.ib A man without scruples or morals, he became all the more immersed in get-rich-quick schemes, relying on his considerable charm.

  At twenty-three, he met Karla Homolka, whom he mesmerized to the point of making her his willing sexual slave and eventually his wife. After the flowers and candy came the bondage and the criticisms of her being "ugly"-all with the effect of subjugating her to his will.17 Ultimately Paul engaged in many acts of voyeurism, pedophilia, kidnap, and murder and was responsible for the deaths of three women.

  His first victim was his sister-in-law, Tammy. Paul convinced Karla, who worked in a veterinarian facility, to anesthetize her fifteen-year-old sister so Paul could have sex with her. Upon awakening, Tammy vomited and aspirated some of the stomach contents into her lungs-and died. This was not planned, but Paul and Karla made it seem accidental, so they were not charged with any crime. Paul did rape and murder two young women, however, around the time that he and Karla married in 1991.

  To exert maximal control over Karla, Paul made videotapes of her in sexually compromising situations to use as blackmail, should she ever feel like squealing on her husband. Finally he went a bit too far, punching Karla and giving her two black eyes. She turned state's evidence, and Paul was sent to prison for life without parole. She herself was given a lengthy sentence but was released in 2006. As for Paul's sadistic traits (with which psychopathy in serial killers is often mingled), one story tells all: Karla had a pet iguana, which bit Paul when he incautiously put his hand in its cage. For "retribution" Paul cut its head off and made Karla cook the iguana and eat it.

  George Schaefer was a psychopathic serial killer who was less outwardly charming than Paul Bernardo and whose sadistic traits were, if anything, even more repugnant. He was raised in an upper-class family in the South. His father was alcoholic and abusive toward his wife, at times beating her and calling her a whore. George was tormented during his teens by violent sexual fantasies. His attitudes toward sex swung wildly between craving it and vilifying girls who wore re
vealing clothescondemning them as "sluts." He became a deputy cop, and in that guise lured women by pretending they had committed a driving offense, then handcuffing, raping, and strangling them. His "signature" act was to frighten the women to such an extent that they would lose control of their bowels. Handsome and charming, but also hypersexual and ghoulish, he boasted of killing over eighty women, though the actual number remains uncertain. Once arrested and imprisoned, he penned stories of his crimes (either actual crimes or ones he aspired to), adding nauseating and sadistic details. Considered an "organized" type of serial killer by the venerated former FBI profiler Robert Ressler, Schaefer was depicted as one of the most evil and sadistic.18 Schaefer, while serving his life sentence, was killed by another inmate in 1995.

  SCHIZOID PERSONALITY

  The hallmark of a schizoid personality is aloofness. Unlike avoidant persons, who simultaneously crave connectedness with others yet are too fearful to reach out for it, schizoid persons are predominantly hermit-like and live as loners-unattached and not keen on becoming intimate with others. There are some types that don't fall into either of these categories: loners who do experience loneliness and like the idea of being close with someone yet run from such relationships, fearing they would not be accepted. Or, perhaps they lack the social skills to keep a relationship going. Among serial killers this personality type is unusually common: about half the men are schizoid or at best loners with mostly schizoid traits, though some of them do yearn for an attachment they are psychologically unable to negotiate.