My attention went back to Kramer, who was talking about the letters from the psychiatrist referring to loss of affect and Suzanne’s apathetic manner. She said these behaviors didn’t have anything to do with the murder. And even if she had murdered my uncle, Suzanne could still be talking about the loss of her husband. Then she switched topics and said that Suzanne’s converting to Judaism would have been to gain money, because she knew which side of her bread was buttered. And Kramer spoke about the matter of Suzanne’s invalidism, which gave her a great deal of power and she could be “the Command Control.” All she had to do was express a need and people jumped to fill those needs. It was a power mechanism, and it was likely something she used to maintain control.
Presser, the behavioral nurse practitioner, noted that none of the psychiatrists observed any psychotic or schizophrenic behaviors, and said so in the letters. So they were basing their diagnoses on what Suzanne reported to them about her psychotic state. She went on and said that she assumed if someone had been convicted because of mental instability, it would show a long-standing pattern, not just a brief psychotic episode. Dr. Clinton’s letter said Suzanne suffered a transient psychotic state and lacked capacity. How could a person go in and out of capacity, in a convenient time frame? Presser asked. It can be true, she continued that a person may be judged to lack capacity and at a later date return to capacity, but again it is usually months of incapacity. Not on such a convenient time line. As far as the letter from Dr. Leigh Roberts, Presser couldn’t imagine how he could say she was psychotic when he had never seen her behaving thus. How could she have a chronic condition when no one ever saw her with the condition? Getting “cured” after eleven months did not fit the diagnosis. In Washburn’s letter he mentioned when he saw her hours after the murder she indicated to him that she was psychologically numb, which was a very self-insightful statement to make. Presser didn’t think that was something a psychotic person would say.
* * *
Psychiatrist Dr. d’Angelo read the doctors’ letters, including Dr. Clinton’s, which described Suzanne’s transient psychotic state. There was no evidence she had psychosis before the crime, and, in fact, the doctor said he saw no evidence of schizophrenia during her stay in the hospital. Dr. Washburn had said he thought Suzanne was mentally ill. However, according to Dr. d’Angelo, that is a very nonspecific term. In the court transcripts, Assistant DA Mussallem said the diagnosis was schizophrenia, but d’Angelo was unable to understand how they arrived at that from reading the doctors’ letters.
In Clinton’s letter it said she was treated for depression after the alleged suicide attempt in 1966. Another mental health expert, Dr. Robert Kinney, said some people behave in such a way as to mimic mental illness. It’s called “malingering” and they are going after what mental health professionals call “secondary gain,” which means they expect some reward after the suicide attempt. The general practitioner had written that Suzanne had no affect: no sadness, no happiness. Kinney believed she was feigning a psychological state, which evidently fooled Washburn. Then Roberts said he had given her an extensive psychological evaluation in the hospital. She noted Suzanne’s parents fighting and Dr. Kinney commented, “Who doesn’t have that?”
Regarding Clinton’s observations that Suzanne tied together her family through crises and threats of suicide, Dr. Kinney casually said, “That’s what they do. They are very manipulative and always have to be center stage, with drama and chaos at all times. They don’t want others to be happy, either.”
Kinney said none of the letters indicated any organic problems. Suzanne was not demented, nor intellectually deficient. The letters further described her with a hysterical personality, suspicious of others—especially men—and quite capable of acting impulsively without consideration of harmful consequences. d’Angelo said this was more akin to personality disorder, which Kramer had also noted, or more like mixed personality types. The fact the psychiatrists said she was not able to develop personal relationships didn’t prove anything, these experts said. There could be countless reasons for that. It could be character flaws, which are not really understood much in psychiatry. Kinney also said, “The diagnosis of schizophrenic reaction, chronic paranoid type, means nothing, All schizophrenia is chronic.”
Kinney told me the psychiatrist was essentially saying that Suzanne was crazy at the time of the murder and didn’t understand, but now she did understand, so Suzanne could stand trial. He stated, “This is gobbledygook. That’s my professional assessment.” He went on: “I find the letters useless, because they don’t tell me anything. Nothing substantiates chronic schizophrenia. But for a person who is not a mental health professional, a lawyer or judge, they value what an MD puts in writing. But these letters get an F. They are just terrible. No professionalism. Nothing systemic, nothing consistent. Bad, bad, bad.” None of the mental health experts I consulted felt the letters really led to the diagnosis Mussallem used in the final hearing.
“These letters don’t make sense,” noted Kinney. “They are embarrassing to my profession.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Is She a Psychopath?
My cousin Donna, the psych nurse, was convinced Suzanne was a sociopath. Since I first talked to her about it, I’ve done extensive research, searched through databases of scholarly articles, read seven books on the topic, and talked to a number of mental health professionals. The recognized leader in the field, Dr. Robert Hare, who has done considerable research on psychopaths, both in prisons and in everyday life, distinguishes between sociopaths and psychopaths, but all mental health professionals do not necessarily distinguish between those two terms. So as to not confuse the reader, I will not differentiate between them, either. Hare, however, is generally understood to be the intellectual giant in the field of psychopathy.
According to recent research and thinking, psychopaths are born with a brain malfunction that is analogous to being color blind, only in this case they are born without a conscience. In fact, the name of Hare’s seminal book is Without Conscience. One school of thought says these people are born with a tendency toward psychopathy and then their childhood reinforces such a condition, much like how babies can be born with a predisposition toward diabetes, but then the kind of diet determines whether they actually become diabetic.
Psychopaths, according to Hare and others, are the ultimate con men (or women). Psychopaths definitely know right from wrong, but don’t feel any sense of “should” in the sense of doing the right thing. Also lacking empathy, they mimic others to know how to pretend to feel and to impersonate sympathy, all in the service of gaining control, seeking admiration, or looking for material rewards. People are the means to an end, and psychopaths have no sense of remorse or any idea that their victims might have suffered. In fact, they despise their victims and find ways to blame them for the violence or misfortune that they, the psychopaths, have caused. The only kinds of “happy” feelings for them are ones of dominance, control, and outsmarting everyone else. Because they feel an extreme superiority to others, they assume no one could figure out what really happened.
* * *
Kramer said that profound narcissists and psychopaths have a very difficult time being alone, because they are emotionally shallow, have no inner life, and cannot have real feelings. They need another person (or people) to be able to give them some focus, to project all their negativity onto. She said someone like Suzanne would need another person to hold the feelings she cannot feel. And this emotional projection is often sadistic because these types of people have feelings that are often negative and they expect the other person to keep those horrendous emotions.
This emotional shallowness and self-centeredness is one reason it is so difficult for narcissists and psychopaths to change, because their only point of reference is themselves. So it made sense to Kramer that Suzanne would move in with her children after her fifth husband, Ronald, died and then basically blackmail them emotionally to leave their lives and adult c
hildren in Alaska and move to Tennessee, where Suzanne insisted they all go. She needed all of them around her. And what better way to keep them forcibly close than to become an invalid?
I asked whether Suzanne’s involving David in Vernie’s murder was an example of how (as one of her psychiatrists stated) she used family crises to tie family members together. Kramer agreed. Suzanne had to be manipulating David his whole life in order for him to be available to commit the crime for her. He had been shaped from babyhood to have his mother’s needs, no matter how bizarre they might seem to others, as a primal purpose in his life. Suzanne would always claim victimhood and how she had been done wrong, and enlisting her children to help her would make David more likely to keep following her commands.
* * *
Researchers agree that psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the population, but 20 percent of the prison population (and 10 percent of CEOs). However, those 20 percent are the cause of 50 percent of violent crime.
In Hare’s book he shares the checklist of psychopaths that was first developed after years of working in prisons and being conned many times. Even as a Ph.D. psychologist studying psychopaths, he was fooled enough times that he realized he wanted to study them more deeply.
After reading all the books by Hare and others, I decided to fly to Portland, or to become certified in the only instrument that measures psychopaths. I sat in a large meeting room of the Portland Art Museum with fifty-nine psychologists, forensic attorneys, prison therapists, district attorneys, and other lawyers, many of whom worked with prisons or as expert witnesses in trials. An unusual number of them worked with sex offenders. Our homework had been to read 450 pages of dense academic articles by Hare and others. Some articles had thirty pages of references at the end.
Dr. Hare, who looks like a thoughtful, bearded Richard Dreyfuss in glasses, taught us theory for half a day. Then he introduced his copresenter Dr. Matt Logan, former Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and crime investigator, who was tall and completely bald and had more of a hard edge than the grandfatherly Hare. Logan gave us a thorough background on the Psychopathy Checklist-revised (PCL-R) and then presented many videos of criminals we had to evaluate and score, in groups. At the end we were all tested on scoring the inventory, which is best used when reports from law enforcement or prison officials, court records, and extensive interviews of four to six hours are also available. It is not a self-report test, because psychopaths would figure out how to get the result they need. Instead, the assessor uses the tools of reading reports and asking questions, always remembering that two of the traits of psychopaths are charm and pathological lying.
The checklist has twenty items, which are to be scored 0, 1, or 2. If 0, it means that particular characteristic does not at all apply in this case, while a 1 means somewhat applies, and a 2 is highly indicative. Maximum score is 40, with a range of 26 to 30 or more indicating a psychopath.
I’m not a psychologist, but I have a doctorate in organizational behavior/managerial psychology, a field I taught full-time for more than twenty-five years, during which time I did a lot of original research in related areas. In addition, I have consulted with one psychiatrist, two psych nurses, and two trained counselors in the writing of this book about items on the checklist. Finally, keep in mind, I have known Suzanne for almost fifty years (though not continuously) and have seen her in a number of situations, as well as having interviewed her for a total of fourteen hours for this book. Here’s my assessment of Suzanne, remembering I am now certified to use this instrument.
1. Glibness/superficial charm. Upon first meeting Suzanne, or even if she is known to you for a length of time, she can be charming and full of witty retorts, especially if she wants to be seen favorably. If she is crossed or feels jealous, that can change in a microsecond. But though she is charming, she’s not the best I’ve seen. I give her a 1.
2. Egocentric/grandiose sense of self-worth. Her needs were always more important than those of others, whether it was her children, who got little attention, or her husbands, whom she casually discarded, after getting their assets. In addition, she saw herself as smarter than 98 percent of people and was smug when she talked about Mensa, all her degrees, and how husbands and other people bored her. When she talked about people she hadn’t seen for a while, she thought they all admired her and wanted to come running to see her in Tennessee, even though I had talked to some of them, who barely even remembered who she was. Then there’s the matter of her doctoral dissertation, which Suzanne’s daughter lovingly gave me. (I got David’s copy, which I treasure because it belonged to him.) My academic career had me reading lots of dissertations and serving on many doctoral committees. As a stand-alone research document, it’s only so-so. The research was more elementary than I’d expected from the sociology department of the University of Minnesota, but then she had a male advisor some years older than she, and I know how she could influence men. It wasn’t until recently that I looked at the dedication and acknowledgments. Generally for dissertations (or books), the dedication is to one person, or maybe two or three children, and you see one or two lines of text. Suzanne, though, dedicated her dissertation to twenty-five people, including a sister who died at birth fifty years ago and her great-granddaughter, and then through to the illegitimate birth of Jocelyn. It took fifteen lines. And then I saw the acknowledgments. Normally, people start with their advisor and committee and give others who helped in the actual work, then list the names of a few family members who were supportive and also some friends. Then came her acknowledgments, which she started by saying she wanted to recognize her entire family, who were supportive during her educational years, allowing her to finish several academic degrees, during a time of her own personal growth. She went on:
I, and all of my accomplishments, are merely part of the continuity of generations—from my parents, through me, on to my great-grandchildren and others to follow. Life (and academic pursuits) has more meaning when shared with loving and supportive friends. I have been particularly blessed in this area. Each of you knows who you are [most people would list names] and how much you mean to me in all of life as well as during the academic adventure.
This illustrates some of grandiosity. I give her a 1.
3. Pathological lying. Her story of the murder just does not fit with physical evidence, and her story to Otis Wahlburger is completely different from her previous story. She claimed not to remember when or where she married Vernie (even though she has total recall on so many other details from those years), the story she told me about how she met Ronald does not square with other things she told me about her research and her stepdaughter, and what it all meant when I lined up the dates. Still, I don’t have as much evidence here as some others. I give her a 1.
4. Cunning/manipulation. One of the letters from the psychiatrist listed how she manipulated her family members, and her parents were not shy about giving other examples. Also, her brother told me Suzanne got great pleasure when she outsmarted others. Psychologist Paul Ekman has termed this “duping delight,” the thrill some people get from fooling—and therefore controlling—another person. Excitement, contempt, and amusement are all contained in duping delight. I am repeating here the statement from Suzanne’s brother about his reaction when he found out she had gotten the insanity plea. “I realized she had conned the system,” he said. “She’s always been smart and tries to fool people. This time it worked.” On this item of the scale, she gets a 2.
5. Lack of remorse or guilt. This goes without saying. All I heard was Vernie’s cruelty and how kids mistreated Danny after the murder, or how people thought less of her. Even when Louisa wanted to give me Vern’s police badge and wallet, because I was his family, Suzanne replied, “I’m his family, too,” and said she’d keep it. On the probate documents when she was applying to get all of Vern’s assets, they asked her relationship to the deceased. “Widow,” she wrote everywhere. And I’m thinking, well, who made you a widow? I give her a 2.
6. Emotionally shallow, sometimes called shallow affect. Though I knew Suzanne for years back in the 1960s and ’70s, I was sufficiently young that I don’t feel comfortable making an assessment on this item from back in that time. But I spent fourteen hours talking to her in the past couple of years. It was impossible to engage her in any conversation that had any degree of emotional depth. She talked about things that happened, about how smart she is, how boring husbands are, and so on, but if I tried to get her to talk about what she might have felt for Vernie (or anyone else for that matter), she was stumped. She couldn’t remember if she loved him. Then later, “I must have been attracted to him,” but she couldn’t ever say how, even though I’d given her lots of prompts. When she talked about the murder, she had the same level of affect as when she was commenting on her dinner. And whenever a topic came up that she didn’t want to talk about, she started a conversation with Holstein, her dog. I give her a 2.
7. Callous/lack of empathy. I never felt any emotion coming out of Suzanne during our fourteen hours together, and I am pretty good at knowing what people are feeling, partly due to growing up in an alcoholic home. The only thing I sensed was that she was burrowing into my emotions, trying to figure me out. I saw it in her eyes. When I’d bring up subjects of my family, my uncle, his daughter, Shannon, or even her children and issues in their lives, never did I feel the least trace of empathy. The situation of the police badge: Rather than Suzanne thinking how thoughtful it would be for me, Vern’s niece, to have something of his, she immediately claimed sovereignty. During the last meeting, when we discussed my writing a book with Suzanne as a main character, she got so angry, so defensive, that the callousness was scary. I mean really scary. I give her a 2.
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