by Hadena James
“But one of her personalities is like that?” I asked, proving I was keeping up with the conversation.
“Yes, have you seen the crime scene photos from the cult’s compound? She decapitated her mother’s second husband with a steak knife.”
“That requires some serious effort.” I commented.
“It wasn’t just that, though. She stabbed every adult that tried to pull her away from the body as she sawed at his vertebra with the knife, including her mother. Before she ran away to her aunt’s, she grabbed the guy’s head to take with her and stopped to stab her mother several more times, none of them fatally. I don’t believe Martha had that kind of knowledge available to her, and while she can be violent, that seemed over the top for Martha.”
“You think the fourth personality had some kind of anatomical knowledge?” Lucas asked.
“Yes, and possibly a psychopathic personality.” Dr. Abernathy said. “It’s rare, but it does happen. I have studied several cases of multiple personalities where one personality does have knowledge the others don’t. For instance, I once worked with a boy who had an alter personality that could play the piano beautifully, even composed music, but the original personality had never even touched a piano. Unfortunately, he also had a low functioning psychopathic personality that was eventually shot by police after he rammed a police station with his car, repeatedly. How it works is still a mystery to us that may never be solved.”
“And Amber has one of these psychopathic alters,” I said.
“I think so. Possibly a low functioning psychopath. If she is responsible for the Satanist murders, then I think Martha probably plans them and the fourth alter does the actual killing.”
“You mentioned integration,” Lucas said.
“Dr. Durant decided the best way to treat Amber was to integrate Martha into her other personalities. He claimed it a success. I didn’t. Amber requires glasses, really thick lensed glasses. Caroline likes to part her hair in the middle. It may seem like very subtle differences, but there were times after the integration that I was sure I was still dealing with Martha and she was pretending to be Caroline or Amber. Martha doesn’t part her hair in the middle, she parts it on the right side. And she doesn’t need glasses like Amber does. I noticed times when talking to Amber that she would take her glasses off, set them on the desk and rub her eyes and temples, like she had a headache. But Amber only got headaches when she wasn’t wearing her glasses. I voiced my concerns about it, I felt the headaches were because Martha was wearing a very strong prescription lens that she didn’t need. I was ignored, because Dr. Durant doesn’t believe one personality can have a different vision acuity than another since they share a body. But Amber and Martha aren’t the first to exhibit that particular difference.”
“You’re implying neither Amber nor Martha are the true original personality,” Lucas said.
“I know,” Dr. Abernathy rubbed her own forehead and took off her glasses, set them on the table. “I told Dr. Durant I suspected the mystery fourth personality was the true original, but since he didn’t believe in the mystery fourth, I was essentially told to hold my tongue.”
“Why wouldn’t Amber be the original?” Lucas asked.
“Her real name isn’t Amber.” Dr. Abernathy told us. “It’s Melissa. Melissa’s mother legally changed Melissa’s name after her father died. She changed the names of all the children. Martha once told me that her mother killed her father, she saw it happen, and then some men came to the house and helped her move the body to make it look like an accident. I was inclined to believe Martha, there were a lot of details in her account of it. I think that was the original fracture of personality and I think it’s when Martha was created. I think Amber and Caroline came later when the myriad of abuses started.”
“And you suspect Melissa’s personality was basically killed off when the fourth personality was created.”
“Absorbed, I think. Martha had this strange habit of listening to kids’ music and singing nursery rhymes. She never would tell me why. Dr. Durant thought she did it to make Amber and Caroline happy, I suspect it was done to placate the fourth personality.”
“We have found snippets of nursery rhymes at the murder scenes,” I told Dr. Abernathy. “And last night someone took a picture of Amber as she ran from the scene of an interrupted murder. She was identified by a detective that had been a patrol man who responded to the compound after Amber’s aunt called in to tell them about her niece showing up babbling about murders and carrying a human head in a bag.”
“I’ve read the transcripts and listened the audio recordings of the interview and 911 tapes. That was the fourth personality, I’m sure of it. She doesn’t sound anything like Amber, Martha, or Caroline. And her vocabulary and word choices were not what I would expect from a 15-year-old girl who grew up in a devil worshipping cult. She sounds a lot like my college roommate who grew up in Boston. Amber has always lived in Florida.”
“Do you know anything definite about the fourth personality?” Lucas asked her.
“I have never met her.” Dr. Abernathy shrugged. “And Martha didn’t like to talk about it. She was more than happy to talk about Amber and Caroline, but she wouldn’t discuss the fourth, just dropped cryptic clues to the existence of it from time to time. I am positive it’s psychopathic with homicidal tendencies. I said earlier Martha is violent, but not to the level of the murder the physical person committed, and I don’t think Amber nor Caroline are capable of killing. For that matter, I don’t think Martha is either. But someone in that girl is capable of extreme violence and brutality and they have Martha to help.”
Twelve
Lucas and I were silent for several minutes after leaving Dr. Abernathy. We didn’t bother to go talk to Dr. Durant, we figured he’d be useless. We were stuck in traffic when Lucas finally spoke.
“Martha working with the fourth could be why it feels like a team killing.” He finally said.
“Agreed. What do you think of MPD?” I asked.
“It’s called DID now,” Lucas responded. “I think authentic cases of it are rare. Cases like this one I mean. Everyone disassociates now and again, but to get an entirely new personality from it, that is rare. I agree, though, with Dr. Abernathy, Amber or Melissa or whatever her name is, has the perfect background for it.”
“And Dr. Durant’s integration?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t talk to him, although I don’t believe integration is successful in most cases, I don’t know why it would be in this case, especially if the fourth is a psychopathic personality.”
“I’m inclined to think of this as a partnership killing with Martha being the subordinate who does the leg work.” I said.
“Me too.”
“It doesn’t explain why she isn’t mutilating the faces, though.”
“It might,” Lucas said slamming on the brakes as the car in front of us stopped short. “Idiot.” Lucas muttered. “When I was studying psychiatric disorders, we looked at a case where one of the girl’s alters felt gratitude towards the abuser because it created her. She even referred to it as being born and like birth. The only violence in the case was committed by the original personality who attempted to kill herself to kill her alters.”
“That seems drastic.”
“When one personality is aware of all the others, the case tends to be more drastic. That isn’t present in most cases of disassociate identity disorder, rarely is there one alter that knows about the others. As a matter of fact, that lack of knowledge is usually how we discover the alter identities exist, there are fugue states and amnesia and memory lapses and all sorts of other problems, including dreams that are in fact memories belonging to the alters.”
“Going back to the lack of facial mutilation, you think that the psychopathic fourth may not hate the mother the way the other three do, and that is why she doesn’t mutilate the face.”
“We say she, but it doesn’t have to be female just because the body is.
As a matter of fact, it might make more sense if the fourth alter is male. The acid, the killing of the husbands quick, the strength, the psychopathic traits, all these would indicate a man. Remember, no one had even considered a woman until you showed up with your weird theories not based in medical knowledge or science.”
“Are there a lot of cases of different gendered alters?” I asked, having never considered the possibility.
“It isn’t rare, if that’s what you mean. It’s hard to describe it as ‘a lot’ because there aren’t a lot of cases to use for base comparisons. It happens fairly regularly among authentic cases where alters may be any gender they need be at the time of creation. If the first fracture came when she saw her father murdered by her mother, then the creation of Martha and a male protector alter make sense. Her male protector had just been murdered by the adult female in her life. I suspect Martha and her mom have some personality traits in common and that the fourth alter may share some traits with her father.”
“Situational psychopathy coupled with fractured identities.” It was my turn to silently think and maybe brood a bit.
“Why kids music and nursery rhymes for a psychopathic male alter?” I asked.
“Nursery rhymes are soothing and you are not linking them all together,” Lucas told me. “Think of them as a group, not individuals. I’m not convinced Martha is the only personality that knows all that goes on among the personalities. And I’ve seen things go very wrong with integration, which might be what woke up the psychopathic fourth personality.”
“If the psychopathic fourth killed the people at the compound before integration,” I reminded him.
“I meant other problems can arise from integration. I didn’t spend a lot of time doing clinical work with integration and SID, but since joining the SCTU, I’ve researched it quite a bit.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we’ve had other cases pop up where a killer claimed to have multiple personalities. So far, they’ve all been faking it, but you have to understand the condition to recognize faked symptoms.”
“Oh,” I replied to this information. I had been expecting a lecture on how most people with multiple personalities weren’t dangerous and was surprised when I didn’t get one.
“What are your thoughts on it?”
“I don’t know how to react. I mean, let’s say that all in all, Caroline, Amber, and Martha as individuals aren’t dangerous, but the mystery fourth is. How does one punish the fourth?” I sighed. “It’s kind of like Siamese twins in my opinion, will Amber and Caroline understand why they are being punished? Is it cruel to punish them for something they can’t control simply because they share a body with a personality that is out of control? I’m having trouble thinking of them as a group because neither Amber nor Caroline seem to have much control over their situations, and Dr. Abernathy flat out stated she hadn’t really told Amber or Caroline about the others because they weren’t mature enough to handle the information.”
“I know.” Lucas said as we crawled through the city streets. “I don’t know any tricks to help you process it since you rarely think of life in terms of grey areas and this is unfortunately a huge grey area.”
We stopped talking, Lucas allowing me to think, to brood about the problem that lay before me. Would I feel justified in punishing Caroline and Amber for the actions of the mysterious fourth? The question was something of an existential crisis. Punishing the innocent for the actions of the wicked, was wrong. I knew this in the core of my being. It was true I probably wouldn’t lose sleep over it, I wouldn’t stress myself into knots if we did, but it would be something that plagued my waking mind now and then, I knew. In my own mind, it was no different than punishing Gabriel for the actions of his twin brother Raphael. Gabriel couldn’t control Raphael anymore than Caroline or Amber could control the Fourth.
Even as the plural “them” Caroline and Amber weren’t responsible for the actions their body committed under the influence of the fourth and/or Martha. My memory bank searched for information conjured up by the mention of Siamese twins.
Chang and Eng had been side show performers in the 1800s because it was impossible to find a job doing anything else when you and your brother literally shared important body parts, including internal organs. One of them had started a bar brawl, however, they had not been sent to prison because the judge had ruled it would be unlawful confinement for the other. That one had also been an alcoholic while his twin despised being drunk. The shared internal organ played a role in that, it must have been their liver.
“They died only hours apart,” I said out loud.
“What?” Lucas asked.
“Sorry, I was just thinking, I hadn’t mean to say anything out loud.”
“Sometimes when you think really hard about something, you do say things out loud to yourself.”
“I know.” I said. “But I don’t know why.”
“Now what was that about? Who died only hours apart?”
“Chang and Eng.”
“The conjoined twins?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. Did you know they are the reason conjoined twins are referred to as SiameseSiamese twins?”
“I did.” Lucas said. “I’m guessing you are comparing their situation to someone with DID.”
“Sort of, I know it isn’t exact, but it’s close. They shared a liver, I think, and Chang was an alcoholic, but Eng actually hated the feeling of being intoxicated.”
“I see you’re point then, two personalities, one predisposed to be mean spirited and a drinker while the other hated it but had to endure the side effects because they shared a liver.”
“Something like that,” I said after a moment. “I was actually thinking about the bar fight they got involved in. I believe it was Chang that started it, however, they didn’t serve jail time because the judge said it would qualify as unlawful imprisonment of the other if they did.”
“You agree?”
“Mostly, yes. I know the doctor that performed the autopsy said that they should have been separated regardless of the risk of mortality to one or both twins, but he was speaking from a moral base more than medical. He thought sexual relations between the brothers and wives was unnatural given their condition and they did both father a lot of children with their wives.”
“Okay, you lost me,” Lucas said.
“Well, in one situation the morality and legality of it kept Chang from being punished. But on the other, at least one doctor was of the opinion that risking the death of one or both twins was worth it for the cause of morality.
“Ah, gotcha, where does modern morality lie when it comes to punishing non-dominant personalities for crimes committed by their bodies under the influence of a dominant personality?”
“Yes.”
“Modern morality dictates that all personalities should be punished for the actions of the psychopathic personality because the non-dominant personalities Amber and Caroline can’t control when or where that personality will take control of the body and commit more crimes.”
“It doesn’t sound like something that should be sent through on the SK laws. It sounds like the responsibility should lay with an institution dedicated to treating the severely mentally ill with criminal leanings.”
“That I agree with,” Lucas said.
“Which means I can’t go in hard and strong like I normally do when dealing with a psychopath.”
“It also means you may or may not be dealing with a psychopathic personality once you are face to face with them. It may indeed be Amber or Caroline and not Martha or the fourth.”
“Will I be able to tell if the switch occurs?” I asked.
“Yes, remember Dr. Abernathy said that someone had a Bostonian type accent, they might have very different facial expressions that makes them look like a different person. Mannerisms, speech patterns, accents, hand dominance, all of that could change from personality to personality, just as Amber needs glasses, but the others do not seem to. Ofte
n the change is quick and a headache accompanies it. Surely you will recognize those telltale signs.”
“Quick how?” I asked.
“Usually it’s instantaneous. One minute you are talking to Amber and then in the blink of an eye, there is something different about the face or the way they hold themselves straighter through the shoulders and you find you are talking to Martha not Amber.”
“Or vice versa,” I said.
“Yes, but if you go from Martha or the fourth to Amber or Caroline, they may not recognize you or know what the two of you were talking about. If the fourth is aware of them all like I suspect, then the transition comes with knowledge of who you are, where they are, and your entire conversation with whatever personality you were talking with before it happened.”
“That’s complicated.”
“It can be. But I think you will find you actually have the advantage over Gabriel, Fiona, even Xavier and myself in the transitions. You are minutely observant even when you don’t try or realize it. I think you will pick up on the subtleties most people miss when a transition happens.”
“Great,” I said as we passed the police station. Lucas pulled up at the end of the block. Gabriel, Fiona, Kimberly, and Xavier were all standing there.
“That’s weird.” I said.
“I sent a text as we left the hospital. We need to go see the aunt before someone can put the wind up that her incredibly damaged niece is suspected of being the Satanist Slaughterer.”
“What a terrible name,” I said.
“Gotta love the press.”
Thirteen
Connie Oak stood at the door frowning, as Gabriel introduced us as the SCTU plus a local detective. She didn’t look impressed by the credentials or our being at her front door. After a minute or two of silence, she slammed the door in our faces. It was Gabriel’s turn to frown.