by Adrian Raine
JIMMY “THE FUSE”—EXPLOSIVE BRAIN CHEMISTRY
I’ve so far discussed one particular gene—the “warrior gene”—because it has quite strong scientific support as contributing to antisocial and aggressive behavior. Yet other genes are also involved. The 5HTT gene,61 the DRD2 gene,62 the DAT1 gene,63 and the DRD464 have all appeared on the gene landscape as linked to antisocial and aggressive behavior. What do these particular genes do? They regulate two important neurotransmitters in the brain—serotonin and dopamine.
But before going further, let’s gain another perspective on this aspect of the anatomy of violence. From the genetic makeup of the brain it’s only a brief step to the chemistry of violence. The essence of the molecular genetic research we have been touching on above—identifying specific genes that predispose individuals to crime—is that genes code for neurotransmitter functioning. Neurotransmitters are brain chemicals essential to brain functioning. There are more than a hundred of them and they help to transmit signals from one brain cell to another to communicate information. Change the level of these neurotransmitters, and you change cognition, emotion, and behavior. Genes that influence neurotransmitter functioning can therefore result in aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Take dopamine, for example. Dopamine helps produce drive and motivation. It is critically involved in reward-seeking behavior. Aggressive behavior can be rewarding, and in animals dopamine receptors help code for this rewarding property of aggression.65 When dopamine is experimentally increased in animals it fuels aggression, while blocking dopamine decreases aggression.66 You can think of it as the accelerator in the car that helps move us forward to things that we want.
There is a very different story to tell on serotonin. The serotonin-transporter gene is one of the most intensively researched genes in my fields of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience.67 There are two versions of this gene—the short-allele version and the long-allele version. About 16 percent of us have the short-allele version.68 This version makes our brains overrespond to emotional stimuli69 and can result in us letting off steam when we get overheated. It is thought to be associated with low serotonin because those with the short-allele version have reduced levels of serotonin in their bloodstream.70
So, do violent offenders have low serotonin levels? The research on this started with a seminal study in 1979 of military personnel. Fred Goodwin was an exceptional scientist and director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He first asked his military-personnel participants how many fights and assaults they’d gotten themselves into. They were then put on bed rest and fasted overnight. Instead of getting a breakfast when they woke up the next morning, they got a spinal tap—a needle through their spinal cord—to obtain a sample of their cerebrospinal fluid. From this fluid Fred and his team assayed levels of serotonin.
What they found was dramatic and created a watershed in the research field on the biology of violence. Resting levels of serotonin explained a full 85 percent of the variation in the incidents of aggression in the lives of these military men.71 That relationship is enormously high, and perhaps the finding was a little too good to be true. Subsequent studies have shown that the relationship between aggression and low serotonin levels is not as strong as originally thought—it explains more like 10 percent of the variation in aggression—but it is still relatively strong and has been extremely well replicated in adults,72 especially in relation to those committing impulsive violent acts.73
Why would low serotonin result in violence? Serotonin is a mood stabilizer, which has an inhibitory function in the brain. It is thought to be one of the biological brakes on impulsive, thoughtless behavior. It innervates—or lubricates—a part of the brain called the frontal cortex, which, as we will see in the next chapter, is critically important in regulating aggression. The less serotonin you have, the more rash you may be. Brain-imaging research has shown that people given a drink that reduces serotonin by depleting tryptophan—an amino acid critical for serotonin production—are more likely to retaliate when they are made an unfair offer in a game.74 Without serotonin they get upset more easily when annoyed. Combine a low serotonin predisposition to an unfair social situation that irritates you, and blowing your fuse is just around the corner.
That may explain what happened to James Filiaggi—known as “Jimmy the Fuse.” Jimmy was of Italian ancestry with a pretty good upbringing—not all that different from me and Lombroso. In fact, like me, he used to be an accountant. But throughout Jimmy’s life he showed signs of a very short temper—the reason for his nickname. As a boy, Filiaggi bit off the end of his brother Tony’s finger, and took a piece out of his schoolteacher’s hand. He also attacked a nun, which, not surprisingly, resulted in expulsion from school. And yet he was also a smart kid who graduated with honors and went into finance. One night Filiaggi got really upset during an argument with his estranged wife, and, feeling threatened by him, she called 911. He shot her in the head.
Facing the death penalty, Jimmy’s defense team brought in another Italian, Emil Coccaro—a dynamic worldwide authority on serotonin and aggression. A spinal tap and consequent biochemical assay conducted by Emil convincingly demonstrated that Filiaggi had extremely low levels of serotonin.
And that was not all. Coccaro also found that Filiaggi had very high levels of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that promotes reward-seeking behavior and drug abuse. Filiaggi had the worst of both worlds—a combination of reward-seeking together with reduced inhibition. His foot was pushing down hard on the accelerator for rewards, but never applying the brakes for inhibition. It was that chemical cocktail that likely sent Filiaggi off the rails with the estranged wife he wanted back. Most of us have biochemical brakes on our behavior. Filiaggi didn’t.
As Filiaggi faced the death penalty for his crime, could these neurotransmitter abnormalities perhaps be used as a mitigating factor to persuade the court that due to a biological makeup beyond his control, he was prone to impulsive, aggressive behavior? No. Filiaggi was executed by lethal injection. We will consider whether such mitigation could and should happen in a later chapter, but for now imagine whether in your mind it might make a difference if you were on the jury.
The links between brain chemistry and violence in humans are complex, as the case of Jimmy the Fuse illustrates. But let us also not forget that the environment is critically important. Filiaggi’s low serotonin did not act in isolation in predisposing him to aggression. It also required a suitably provocative social context to result in his hot-blooded violence. In contrast to the link between the short-allele version of the serotonin transporter gene, which links to impulsive, hot-headed aggression, the long allele, as one of my former graduate students, Andrea Glenn, has persuasively argued, is associated with more cold-blooded and planned psychopathic behavior in those with low responsivity to stress.75
We have a long way to go in understanding the neurochemistry of violence, not just with respect to soothing serotonin but also to reward-driving dopamine. Yet there are some provocative links. For example, one study has observed that the dopamine transporter DAT1 gene, which is linked to violence, is also associated with the number of sexual partners you have.76 As we just saw in the previous chapter, this suggests from an evolutionary perspective that violence—while self-damaging in many ways—may still be adaptive in terms of reproducing one’s genes. There is a common genetic mechanism that plays out at the neurotransmitter level linking the two topics of hot sex and heated violence, and in the next decade we are sure to find out much more on this neurochemical component of the anatomy of violence.
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
Scientific inquiry is just beginning to scratch the surface in understanding the specific genes that create violence. We have reasons to be humble about our conclusions, and yet proud for how far we’ve come. Twenty years ago, molecular genetics was a fledgling field of research. Now it is a major enterprise providing us with a detailed look at the structure and function of genes. A m
ajor beginning step was the Human Genome Project—one of the most important international research projects of our time. It began in 1990, and by 2000 researchers had come up with a working draft of the human genome. It turns out that we have far fewer genes than was originally thought—about 21,000—roughly the same number that mice have. Although human genes are mapped and are available to all of us on the Internet, a lot remains unknown. For example, about 98 percent of our DNA is “junk” DNA,77 meaning that it does not encode protein sequences—we don’t yet know what it’s there for or what it does.
Take that as a crucial caveat. The knowledge base that I have quickly sketched out above on what genes are connected to violence is going to change enormously over time. Nevertheless, the basic message—that genes have a strong influence on our behavior—will remain intact. We stand on the threshold of unlocking many untold secrets of our genetic makeup with all the medical benefits and ethical conundrums that come with that knowledge. Behavioral genetics is a shadowy black box because, while it tells us what proportion of a given behavior is genetically influenced, it does not identify the specific genes lurking in there that predispose one to violence. Molecular genetics is poised to pry open that black box and shed light on the dark figures of violence. As researchers illuminate the role that “junk” DNA has in the transcription of protein-coding sequences and the regulation of gene expression,78 we’ll uncover yet more knowledge on the genetics of violence. Critical here will be uncovering what environmental influences interact with what genes in causing crime—a new development that is finally beginning to excite social scientists who previously held the genetics of crime in distrust.
With this chapter on genetics we have reached the end of the beginning. Scientifically, the Human Genome Project has completed the task of setting the stage of gene-behavior discovery, and we will move on to a more complete elaboration of what genes shape crime and violence. This also marks the end of the beginning of our investigation into the seeds of sin. But before ending, let’s return briefly to our beginning. Darrel Hill, on death row, summed it up succinctly when he said:
I don’t think there can be any doubt in anyone’s mind that he (Jeffrey Landrigan) was fulfilling his destiny … I believe that when he was conceived, what I was, he became … The last time I saw him he was a baby in a bed, and underneath his mattress I had two .38 pistols and Demerol; that’s what he was sleeping on.79
Placing that gun and drugs under his baby boy’s pillow foreshadowed what was to come. Like father, like son—whether it is violence, drugs, or alcohol. Landrigan was seemingly doing little more in life than acting out the sins of his biological father.
3.
MURDEROUS MINDS
How Violent Brains Malfunction
Randy Kraft was a man with a murderous mind. But you would never have guessed it from meeting with him. A computer consultant with an IQ of 129, close to mine, he grew up in Southern California just south of where I used to teach, at USC. Randy, like me, was brought up the son of respectable, hardworking parents. He was the youngest in his family, and again like me he had three older sisters. He grew up in a middle-class, conservative area in a rather normal, even uneventful home life that matched my own. A smart schoolkid, he was placed in accelerated classes, just like I was. He attended Westminster High School and the prestigious Claremont Men’s College, an elite liberal-arts college, where he gained a degree in economics. Randy had a lot going for him.
You can see for yourself from Randy’s Web page, where he reminisces about his childhood, that his life was pretty much all “apple pie and Chevrolet” back in the good old ’50s and ’60s. Randy talks affectionately about his home life, replete with happy memories of bowling with his dad and preparing strawberries and whipped cream with his mother. He reflects on the excitement of witnessing with his father the pale, eerie light thrown from a Nevada nuclear test-site explosion, and his first school dance with a girl, at age thirteen. Randy ruminates on his home, set against the backdrop of strawberry fields in rural Orange County. He clearly loved helping his dad make a morning fire from garden rubbish, and he paints a multimodal, colorful scene of sounds, smells, and textures:
Today, when I look back, I can smell the distinct, sweet odor of a damp grass fire, and hear the frenetic crackle of the struggling flame, and see the ribbon of white smoke curling far into the blue morning sky. And there is Dad in his old style undershirt and baggy pants, piling more onto the fire with the pitchfork, and I’m helping him.1
It could be something you or I might write about our home lives. Except when you look back at your life there is no smell of fresh blood. You do not hear the frenetic cries of your struggling victims, echoing through the deathly dark night sky. You do not see their loosened and disordered underwear, their pants undone in a violent assault, or feel the fire flaming your passion during the heated rapes. The whitening of your victim’s face as you strangle them until they turn a pale shade of blue. The wetness of their lap as their pelvic muscles relax after death, releasing urine from their bladder.
You would not have experienced this. Randy repeatedly did. It’s a different scene from the one that Randy sketched, and one he insists he never acted in. Yet he is on death row in San Quentin, having killed an estimated sixty-four times between September 1971 and May 1983.
The very likeable Randy would socialize in the evenings with his adult and teenage victims-to-be, share beers with them, and take them cruising around in his car. Then, after drugging them with a mix of tranquilizers and beer, he would playfully torture them, rape them, and then dump their bodies out of his car—earning him the nickname “the Freeway Killer.” Some he would strangle, some he’d shoot. All were teenage boys and young adult men.2
Randy could still be killing today if not for a bit of bad luck on May 14, 1983. It was one o’clock in the morning. He’d been out having a good time. After a drink or two he was driving at a steady 45 m.p.h. in his Toyota Celica on the Interstate 5 portion of the San Diego Freeway just south of L.A. Although he wasn’t speeding, Randy’s driving was just a little bit erratic. He then made an illegal lane change that ended his killing career.
A California Highway Patrol car had been following him. It put on its lights and hailed him with its public-address system. Randy dutifully pulled over, just ahead of the police. Rather than wait for the cops to come to his car, he walked back to them with a bottle of Moosehead beer.
Kraft admitted that he’d had three to four beers that night, but said he was not drunk. The cops checked him out with a sobriety test. This was one test in his life that Randy failed. They had to charge him with driving under the influence of alcohol.
That meant having to take him in and impound his vehicle. Sergeant Michael Howard walked ahead to Randy’s car. It was only then that he became a little suspicious. There was someone slumped in the passenger seat. You have to give the California Highway Patrol some credit. They normally allow a sober passenger to drive the car back home—that way the driver would not have to pay the impound fee. Maybe this other guy could help Randy out.
Thinking the passenger was asleep, Sergeant Howard politely knocked on the window, but there was no response. That was a bit odd. He opened the door and shook the passenger. Still no response. Most peculiar—maybe he was drunk, too. He then lifted the jacket lying on the passenger’s lap, and that’s when he noticed that his pants were undone, his penis and testicles were sticking out, and there were ligature marks on his wrists.
The paramedics were brought to the scene but it was too late. The dead body belonged to Terry Gambrel, a twenty-five-year-old U.S. Marine. He had drunk the equivalent of two beers and had ingested some Ativan—but not enough to kill him. The responsibility for that lay at Randy’s door. He had strangled the Marine to death.
Randy was up the creek without a paddle. The well-mannered, meticulous, soft-spoken, hardworking computer consultant was none other than the Freeway Killer, soon to be renamed the Scorecard Killer. The nickname evolved f
rom the fact that in the trunk of his car, lying inside his briefcase, was a long, two-columned list of coded names like “England,” “Angel,” and “Hari Kari.” This was Randy’s hit list. Like myself in my accounting days, Randy liked to keep orderly numerical lists. Some entries appeared to have been double killings because their code names were “2 in 1 Hitch” or “2 in 1 Beach”—perhaps two hitchhikers or two killings down by the beach. Many of the coded entries made a lot of sense. “Euclid” referred to the ramp where Kraft dumped the body of his victim Scott Hughes, “EDM” referred to the initials of another victim, Edward Daniel Moore, while “Jail Out” was a reference to Roland Young, whom Randy killed just hours after Young’s release from jail.
After every sexual score with these men, Randy wrote them up. According to his notes, the Scorecard Killer had murdered sixty-four young men in a twelve-year period, getting away scot-free all those years, until that fateful night when he was caught for little more than a traffic violation. A trivial mistake by an otherwise meticulously detailed murderous mind—a mind and brain that we’ll examine soon in our search for understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of violence.
Unlike Kraft, the vast majority of murderers kill only once. Such was Antonio Bustamante. A different killer with a different background, Antonio was born in Mexico and came to the United States at the age of fourteen. Like many Mexican-Americans he had a strong connection with his family. Although they were poor, Antonio grew up to be a law-abiding teenager and young adult.
But then an insidious change took place. He got caught up in drugs. He stole to support his habit. His criminal career then took off as his identity as an industrious, law-abiding immigrant ended. He became impulsive, increasingly argumentative, and got into more fights. For the next two decades he was in and out of prison. His heroin addiction meant he was constantly in need of money.