The Anatomy of Evil

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The Anatomy of Evil Page 43

by Michael H. Stone


  36. David Reichert, Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004), p. 304.

  37. Carlton Smith, The BTKMurders (New York: St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2006), p. 335.

  38. Tom Henderson, Darker than the Night (New York: St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2006), p. 353. In a similar vein, Detective Morgan, commenting on Ann Brier Miller, who murdered her husband with arsenic, seemingly just to be "free," said, "There are certain kinds of criminals motivated by something that no ordinary person can truly understand-evil." Cited in Amanda Lamb, Deadly Dose (New York: Berkley Books, 2008), p. 210.

  CHAPTER ONE. EVIL IN PEACETIME

  1. Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn-The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochfoid (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007).

  2. Ibid., p. 265.

  3. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (first published in 1513).

  4. The full story is told in Emlyn Williams's biography Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection (New York: Random House, 1968). Ian Brady gave still further details in a book he wrote himself-about a subject he knows best: serial killing. The Gates ofjanus (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2001).

  5. Not so rare a phenomenon, as it turns out. Dr. Salter's data suggest that about 45 percent of such men make recordings of these acts. Anna C. Salter, Predators (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 114. She cites J. L. Warren, "The Sexually Sadistic Serial Killer," journal of Forensic Sciences 6 (1996): 970-74.

  6. Alan Prendergast, The Poison Tree (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1986). Cf. Seattle Times, October 18, 1985.

  7. Exodus 21:15.

  8. Leviticus 20:9.

  9. Malice aforethought is an aspect of mens rea ("guilty mind"), which must accompany an act of murder if an act resulting in death is to be regarded as murder in common law. Cf. Glanville Williams, Textbook of Criminal Law, 2nd ed. (London: Stevens & Sons, 1983).

  10. The mechanism of overcoming humiliation by what the killer considers a "righteous slaughter" is brilliantly told by sociologist Jack Katz in Seductions of Crime: A Chilling Exploration of the Criminal Mind from juvenile Delinquency to Cold-Blooded Murder (New York: Basic Books), 1988.

  11. Jean Harris, Stranger in Two Worlds (New York: Zebra Press, 1986). In this autobiography, Harris tells of discovering the panties of another woman, Lynn Try- foros, in a drawer in Tarnower's house, next to where Harris's clothes were kept.

  12. C. P. Anderson, The Serpent's Tooth (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).

  13. Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, The Only Living Witness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983). There is some evidence that toward the end of his chain of murders, Bundy bit part of the breast off one of his victims. This would suggest that he began to escalate toward more pain-inducing, torturous acts before he was finally captured.

  14. I expand on this point in chapter 9.

  15. Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994 [1974]).

  16. Schizophrenia is currently defined in a narrower way-as a severe mental illness characterized by a marked disorder of thought, disorganized speech, delusions (often of a persecutory type) and hallucinations, and flattening of emotional expression.

  17. It is better known in the United States by the name Thorazine.

  18. The first such medication was lithium, developed by Cade in Australia and used in Europe in the 1950s before it was made available in the United States in the 1960s through the pioneering work of Dr. Ronald Fieve and Dr. Lothar Kalinowsky.

  19. Developed in the mid-1970s, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique used by radiologists to visualize bodily structures, in a way that yields greater clarity and definition than conventional X-rays. MRI is particularly useful in visualizing soft tissues, including brain tissues, whose detailed structures are often "opaque" to ordinary X-ray methods. The patient is placed within a powerful magnetic field capable of aligning the hydrogen atoms in the water of the body (water making up 70 percent of the body's volume). The hydrogen atoms produce a rotating magnetic field that the MRI scanner can detect, resulting in an image of the body areas under examination, which can then be reconstructed. Cf. Mark Brown and Richard Semelka, MRI: Basic Principles and Applications (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999). The basic principle was discovered in 1946, but the use of MRI for imaging was pioneered by Paul Lauterbur (1929-2007) in 1973. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2003. Cf. Nancy Andreasen, MD, Brain Imaging: Applications in Psychiatry (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1989).

  20. V. L. Quinsey et al., Violent Offenders: Appraising and Managing Risk (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 1998).

  2 1. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/ nathaniel_bar_jonah/13 .html.

  22. Though raised in a Protestant family, he claimed he wanted to take a Jewish name so as to have the experience of knowing what it was like to be the "object of prejudice." He made this change while incarcerated for sexual offenses in Massachusetts. When I interviewed him years later, he denied that story and said he did made the change because he liked the Jewish faith. It is common for "career" criminals to take on aliases by way of eluding justice and distancing themselves from their true and original persona.

  23. Peter Davidson, Death by Cannibal (New York: Berkley Books, 2006).

  24. It is important to note that Lundgren was a charismatic con man who was given to outrageous boasts of this sort, by which he managed to mesmerize and dupe his followers. He was not a psychotic person with delusions of grandeur; that is to say, he knew that he was not God or a prophet, but he chose for his own nefarious purposes to speak of himself in that fashion in order to produce the effect he wanted-to enslave and make puppets out of his followers, who would do his bidding, no matter what. By way of comparison, Hitler's mesmerizing abilities were far greater than those of Charles Manson, whose powers were far greater than those of Lundgren.

  25. The entire story is told in the chilling biography by Cynthia Statler- Sasse and Peggy Widder, The Kirtland Massacre: The True and Terrible Story of the Mormon Cult Murders (New York: Donald I. Fine, 1991).

  26. The situation with Lundgren and Luff is analogous in certain ways to that of Saddam Hussein and his closest followers, to whom he gave pistols and commanded that they shoot a number of their colleagues whom Saddam considered untrustworthy "conspirators." And shoot them they did-lest they be killed themselves by Saddam's guards. But the greater evil lay with Saddam, who sadistically trapped his followers into becoming murderers themselves, so they could no longer claim innocence. Cf. Con Coughlin, Saddam: King of Terror (New York: Harper Collins, 2002).

  27. Billy Wayne Sinclair and Jodie Sinclair, A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story, A Journey from Murder to Redemption inside America's Worst Prison System (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000).

  28. The original play was produced in 1938. William Drummond's novel was published in 1966. Drummond, Gaslight (New York: Paperback Library, 1966).

  29. This was the meaning of the term psychopathie, used by the famous German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in his 1915 textbook Psychiatrie, 8th ed., 4 vols. (Leipzig: J. A. Barth).

  3 0. The more specific definition derives from the monograph by American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley. Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1941).

  31. Robert D. Hare, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Toronto: Multi-Health Systems, 1991); T. J. Harpur, A. R. Hakstian, and R. D. Hare, "Factor Structure of the Psychopathy Checklist," journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 56 (1988): 741-47.

  32. The twenty items of the Hare Checklist are divided into two main pctors. One concerns personality traits and emotional qualities. The qualities of both factors are found on page 117.

  3 3. Michaud and Aynesworth, Only Living Witness.

  34. Francine du Plessix Gray, At Home with the Marquis de Sade (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).

  3 5. Jack Altman and Marvin Ziporyn,
Born to Raise Hell: The Untold Story of Richard Speck (New York: Grove Press, 1967).

  36. Michael H. Stone, Abnormalities of 'Personality: Within and Beyond the Realm of Treatment (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993).

  3 7. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Vol. One: Inferno, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

  38. Proverbs 6:16-19.

  39. Some have considered Pride to be the worst, theologically, although from the standpoint of contemporary psychiatry, Envy often proves to be the most intractable.

  40. Dante adhered to the orthodox Christian view of his era, one tenet of which was that beatitude was achieved via a "free gift of God predicated on faith in Christ" (cf. Inferno, Canto N, p. 80, Durling's note to lines 34-42). As beatitude was not available to those who were born before Christ or who were not baptized, even if they lived some of their adult life during the early years of Christ's life (as was the case with Virgil), their souls remained in this First Circle as pagans. Some (like Virgil), albeit sinless, could not be considered "saved."

  41. A simonist was someone who acted like Simon Magus, who offered money to the apostle Peter for the power of laying on of hands (Acts 8:9-24). As Durling mentions, this man gave his name to the sin of simony the selling of indulgences, by which priests in exchange for money gave various sacramental benefits (Inferno, Canto XIX, line 1).

  42. Georges Bataille, Dark Stars: The Satanic Rites of Gilles de Rais (London: Creation Books, 2004).

  43. Valentine Penrose, The Bloody Countess: The Crimes of Erzsebet Bathory (London: Creations Books, 1996).

  44. See note 41 above.

  45. Inferno, Canto XXXII, line 65.

  46. Durling's notes to the Inferno, p. 510.

  CHAPTER TWO. CRIMES OF IMPULSE: MURDERS OF JEALOUSY AND RAGE

  1. Cf. Grover Goodwin, ed., Criminal Psychology & Forensic Technology (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000).

  2. Arthur P. Will, A Treatise on the Law of Circumstantial Evidence (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Company, 1896).

  3. As in the life of the prizefighter Jake LaMotta, whose persecution of his innocent wife was depicted in the film Raging Bull, which accurately portrays a man in the grips of delusional jealousy.

  4. Mass murder, according to criteria adopted by the FBI, is described as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders, and occurring usually in the same location. An example is the 1984 mass murder at the San Ysidro McDonald's restaurant in San Diego, California, in which James Huberty shot twenty-one people to death within a very brief period. Cf. Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives forInvestigators (US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Behavioral Analysis Unit, 2008), p. 11.

  5. Cf. J. Reid Meloy, Violent Attachments, chap. 3 (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson Press, 1992). Dr. F Wertham first used the term in 1937, mentioning the stages a person in this crisis state goes through: first, a shattering experience, then the victim blames another person or situation. Carrying out a violent act seems like the "only solution." The violent act is committed, and the victim now feels relief of the original tension and a return to a state of apparent normalcy.

  6. Cf. Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime: A Chilling Exploration of the Criminal Mind from juvenile Delinquency to Cold-Blooded Murder (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

  7. Life as it may have been in the African savannah from which we all came is beautifully depicted in Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).

  8. Cf. Baron Patrick Balfour Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries (New York: William Morrow), p. 146.

  9. The nature and neurochemistry of love, including intense passion, is described in Helen Fisher, Why We Love (New York: Henry Holt/Owl Books, 2004).

  10. Though some have cited William James or Ogden Nash as the author of the poem.

  11. Chip Walter, Thumbs, Toes, and Tears, and Other Traits that Make Us Human (New York: Walker and Company, 2006), p. 40.

  12. Exodus 20:7.

  13. Matthew 6:13.

  14. John Glatt, Blind Passion. A True Story of Seduction, Obsession, and Murder: An American Beauty Falls for a Dashing Greek Sailor-with Deadly Consequences (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000).

  15. Clifford Linedecker, Driven to Kill (Boca Raton, FL: America Media, 2003).

  16. Lisa Pulitzer, Fatal Romance (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001).

  17. John Glatt, Never Leave Me (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006).

  18. Lisa Pulitzer, A Woman Scorned (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).

  19. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics Series, 2005 [1847]).

  20. It was the presence of hallucinations that marked Rowe's depression as psychotic.

  21. Julie Salamon, Facing the Wind (New York: Random House, 2001).

  22. Eric Francis, A Wife's Revenge (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005).

  23. Jim Fischer, Crimson Stain (New York: Berkley Books, 2000).

  24. Carlton Smith, Bitter Medicine (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000).

  25. Edwin Chen, Deadly Scholarship (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995).

  26. This stems from the 1843 McNaghten test in England, created after Daniel McNaghten, who, while targeting Prime Minister Robert Peel, killed his secretary, Edward Drummond, by mistake. McNaghten was declared not responsible because of his insanity; i.e., he had been laboring under such defect of reason as not to know the nature of his act nor that it was wrong.

  27. According to US government statistics. Cf. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ bjs/.

  28. Cf. http://www.psychlaws.org/BriefingPapers/BPl l.htm.

  29. Cf. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/24884/stm.

  30. According to Sheilagh Hodgins, ed., Mental Disorder & Crime (London: Sage Publications, 1993). Also, John Monahan and Henry Steadman, eds., Violence and Mental Disorders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

  31. The complexities of the issue are well discussed in Vernon Quinsey, Grant Harris, Marnie Rice, and Catherine Cormier, Violent Offenders (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 1998).

  32. Cf. http://www.psychlaws.org/PressRoom/presskits/Kendra%27sLaw- PressKit/kendraslaw.htm.

  33. Cf. http://www.omh.state.ny.us/omhweb/Kendra_web/Khome.htm. In New York State, for example, the court mandates assisted outpatient treatment for certain patients with mental illness who, in the court's opinion, would be unlikely to survive safely in the community without such supervision. Each patient is assigned a care-coordinator who monitors the patient's compliance with the prescribed treatment (including medications), with the understanding that lack of compliance would result in notification to the authorities, who might then take whatever steps were necessary to remedy the situation so as to safeguard both the patient and (in the case of potentially violent patients) the community.

  34. Cited in http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2007/03/15/index.htinl.

  35. New York Post, April 20, 1989. This man had been living in Ms. Berle's apartment without paying rent. When she began to insist that he contribute to her expenses, he became angry and argumentative. This was the context in which he then killed her.

  36. http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2008/01/lam-luong.html.

  37. Suzy Spencer, Breaking Point (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002).

  38. New York Times, September 8, 2001.

  39. Peter Davidson, Death by Cannibal (New York: Berkley Books, 2006).

  40. Such as the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, founded in 1992 by the Los Angeles Police Department.

  41. Cf. Hodgins, Mental Disorder & Crime; Quinsey et al., Violent Offenders. Also, John Monahan et al., Rethinking Risk Assessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and John Monahan et al., "Classification of Violent Risk (COVR)," Psychiatric Services 56 (2005): 810-15.

  42. New York Times, February
20, 2008.

  43. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/ AR2 00609040043 0.httnl.

  CHAPTER THREE. OTHER CRIMES OF IMPULSE: EMPHASIS ON ANTISOCIAL PERSONS

  1. The case of Dr. Bruce Rowan from the previous chapter had the element of attempted cover-up (via a staged "car accident"), but in personality he was not antisocial and, although seriously depressed, was not grossly psychotic. The persons highlighted in this chapter tended to have more antisocial traits; some were more obviously mentally ill.

  2. Soo Hyun Rhee and Irwin D. Waldman, "Behavior-Genetics of Criminality and Aggression," in The Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression, ed. Daniel J. Flannery, Alexander T. Vazsonyi, and Irwin D. Waldman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 77-90.

  3. http://lifestyle.aol.co.uk/go-green/home-arson-linked-to-radical/article 20080304012.

  4. Melissa Weininger, "The Trials of Lorena Bobbitt: A Study in Media Backlash." http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/-perspy/old/issues/2000/retro/ lorena bobbitt.html.

  5. Bryce Marshall and Paul Williams, Zero at the Bone (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).

  6. Roger Wilkes, Blood Relations (New York: Penguin Books, 1994).

  7. New York Post, March 24, 1989.

  8. Emmanuel Carrere, The Adversary (New York: Henry Holt, 2000).

  9. New York City Daily News, November 7, 2006.

  10. As in the case of Beatles star John Lennon, murdered by Mark David Chapman, December 8, 1980.

  It. E.g., Colin Thatcher of Canada, former Saskatchewan premier, who shot his wife to death in 1983.

  12. New York Times, July 6, 1999.

  13. Cf. Newsweek, May 3, 1999.

  14. http://www.albionmonitor.com/9907a/wcotc.html.

  15. These cases involve psychopaths and are discussed further in chapter 6.

  16. http://www.detnews.com/205/metro/0509/25DO1-326371.html.

  17. New York Observer, January 28, 1991.

  18. The technical term for throwing someone out a window. Historians will recall the famous defenestration in Prague in 1618 at the onset of the Thirty Years' War, when Protestant assemblymen threw two Catholic imperial governors out the window, in reaction to what the Protestants considered a violation of their rights.

 

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