Psychopaths among us
Psychopathy is an intriguing subject. Here are some examples of psychopaths
among the serial killers and criminals:
Donald Leroy Evans (2+) Don, an army veteran, drug addict and drifter from Galveston, Texas, is another possible serial killer with a hefty ego. A convicted rapist, he was arrested in Louisiana in 1991 where he confessed to the kidnapping and murder of a ten-year-old girl in Gulfport, Mississippi. But that wasn’t all he wanted to confess. Donny kept on confessing and confessing to the tune of more than eighty kills. What he revealed to authorities was a ten-year killing rampage spanning ten states that later he said was a hoax. Evans made made a career out of leading federal authorities on multistate, fruitless searches for seemingly nonexistent victims.
Gary Evans: (5) On August 14, 1998, suspected serial killer Gary Evans died when he kicked out the window of a police van and jumped — with his hands and feet shackled — into the Hudson River while on his way to a court appearance. Evans, 43, was being transported from Troy by U.S. Marshalls to a federal court appearance in Albany. Evans, a convicted antiques thief, was accused of killing five men, including three accomplices. Police said Evans had confessed to the murders and led them to three of the bodies this summer while he was jailed on unrelated theft charge.
James Evans: Even more precocious than Caril Ann Fugate was Wendy Gardner, 13, subject of the book Kill Grandma for Me. This, apparently, was the sentiment she conveyed to her 15 year old boyfriend, James Evans, when her grandmother wouldn’t let her stay over at his place on Christmas 1994. She stayed with him anyway, and they plotted the hypothetical crime between bouts of sex. They compared the merits of shooting, stabbing and strangling the elderly woman, they discussed the handling and disposal of the body, and even Wendy’s 11 year old sister was accounted for in the plan: "When we tie her up you can fuck her instead of me ‘cause I’m sick of you doing it to me all the time," Wendy allegedly said.
There’s no doubt that James had a history of aggressive behavior, even an apocryphal reputation as a cat killer, though he impresses the reader mostly as a dopey kid, just trying to keep from getting hurt by lashing out. Wendy, meanwhile, was an above-average student, who recorded advanced sexual and violent urges in her diary. She was the brains of the operation, but he was the hands—the hands that strangled Betty Gardner to her death.
Tim Evans: Tim Evans was a violent man diagnosed as a psychopath by the prison doctor, who always thought he was guilty, even after he interviewed Christie. Christie was more the hopeless, sensitive, inadequate, than the psychopathic type.
So, the question is: how deal with psychopaths?
Dr. Robert Hare claims there are 300,000 psychopaths in Canada, but that only a tiny fraction are violent offenders like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen. Who are the rest? Take a look around. […] And it’s really just beginning. Psychopathy may prove to be as important a construct in this century as IQ was in the last (and just as susceptible to abuse), because, thanks to Hare, we now understand that the great majority of psychopaths are not violent criminals and never will be. Hundreds of thousands of psychopaths live and work and prey among us. Your boss, your boyfriend, your mother could be what Hare calls a "subclinical" psychopath, someone who leaves a path of destruction and pain without a single pang of conscience. Even more worrisome is the fact that, at this stage, no one — not even Bob Hare — is quite sure what to do about it. […]
He calls them "subclinical" psychopaths. They’re the charming predators
who, unable to form real emotional bonds, find and use vulnerable women for
sex and money (and inevitably abandon them). They’re the con men like Christophe
Rocancourt, and they’re the stockbrokers and promoters who caused Forbes magazine
to call the Vancouver Stock Exchange (now part of the Canadian Venture Exchange)
the scam capital of the world. (Hare has said that if he couldn’t study psychopaths
in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.)
A significant proportion of persistent wife beaters, and people who have unprotected
sex despite carrying the AIDS virus, are psychopaths. Psychopaths can be found
in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots. They’re your neighbour, your
boss, and your blind date. Because they have no conscience, they’re natural
predators. If you didn’t have a conscience, you’d be one too. […]" … psychopaths have three motivations: thrill-seeking, the pathological
desire to win, and the inclination to hurt people. "They’ll jump on any
opportunity that allows them to do those things," he says. "If something
better comes along, they’ll drop you and move on."[…]"Even in his particular area, Hare is unfailingly circumspect. Asked
if he thinks there will ever be a cure for psychopathy — a drug, an operation
— Hare steps back and examines the question. "The psychopath will say
‘A cure for what?’ I don’t feel comfortable calling it a disease. Much of
their behaviour, even the neurobiological patterns we observe, could be because
they’re using different strategies to get around the world. These strategies
don’t have to involve faulty wiring, just different wiring.""[…]"After thirty-five years of work, Bob Hare has brought us to the stage
where we know what psychopathy is, how much damage psychopaths do, and even
how to identify them. But we don’t know how to treat them or protect the population
from them. The real work is just beginning. Solving the puzzle of the psychopath
is an invigorating prospect — if you’re a scientist. Perhaps the rest of
us can be forgiven for our impatience to see the whole thing come to an end.""The psychopath is a dangerously clever "alien reaction machine"
that has practiced giving all the correct answers. However, much of that verbal
practice will have taken place in institutions or in dysfunctional families
in lower-class neighborhoods. When those same answers are given in upscale
surroundings, they come out as contrived falsehoods.Another clue is that the alien machine will not take responsibility, but
will tend to "blame others" for misfortunes with drugs, sexual partners,
bosses, co- workers, authorities, or whatever. Also, the full-blown psychopath
is NEVER altruistic or ethical (except by accident), but may be shrewd enough
to pretend altruism as sham behavior (to attract votes). By accepting a psychopath’s
statements at face value, without cross- checking public records or other
sources, a careless or inattentive interviewer can fail to pick up on the
frequent lies. For example, to trip up corrupt politicians or self-described
"experts", sometimes it is only necessary to compare two different
answers to the same or similar questions repeated on two or more different
occasions, without involving external sources at all. Any pattern of lies
will stand out as outside the norm of ethical conduct. By itself, this discrepancy
is insufficient to classify the individual as antisocial, but it is an indication
that other tests should be made."
