The Movie Star Psychopath

by Gina Simmons, Ph.D.

I love movies. Action films, chick flicks, mock-umentaries, I love them all. One kind of film really troubles me, though. Picture a handsome leading man with a great sense of humor and eyes that seductively penetrate. He appears to understand the leading lady's every emotional need. His only flaw? The guy just happens to kill people for a living.

The plot to these films goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy kills people for a living and for obvious reasons has to keep it a secret. Girl finds out secret. Boy gets a conscience because of love for girl. The End. Films like Gross Pointe Blank show a handsome, witty, bright, socially skilled John Cusack growing a conscience after attending a high school reunion party and meeting his love interest (Minnie Driver).

Of course, filmmakers vary the theme. In the 2005 comedy, The Matador, the astonishingly handsome Pierce Brosnan plays the hit-man with a newly discovered conscience. He's transformed by his relationship with a "normal" guy, played by Greg Kinnear. Sometimes the girl is the sympathetic psychopath. She usually hides a background of severe abuse (the sympathy factor) with predatory sex appeal (to sell movie tickets). La Femme Nikita and The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo fall into that category. In another variation on this theme, the 2005 film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, shows the two most attractive people in the world playing serial killers for hire. The couple rekindle their love while trying to assassinate each other.

Films that portray attractive killers can psychologically liberate us from conventional morality. We get to imagine what it would feel like to place no limits on our behavior. Free from a conscience we can play god and enjoy limitless control over others. When the killer finds his/her conscience, we feel redeemed. The killer's redemption gives us permission enjoy the psychopath, because he's charming, smart and deep down inside, a good guy. We can laugh at a dark comedy about a sexy serial killer and the absurd predicaments he navigates because we suspend our sense of right and wrong for a time, only to get it back in the end.

The troubling concern I have about these films stems from the wreckage I see in the lives of some of my patients. These men and women find themselves in love with a psychopath, hoping for a happy ending. Some films show more realistic portrayals of psychopathic killers. The Godfather's Michael Corleone, the mental patient, Bushman, played by J.T. Walsh in Sling Blade, and Nicole Kidman in To Die For, capture the lack of empathy and emotional coldness of a true psychopath. I worry for those in relationships with these anti-social personalities. These cold-blooded individuals don't get better, grow a conscience, or become caring people. Instead, psychopaths:

Lack insight and judgment 

At the funeral for your beloved mother, the psychopath leans over and whispers, "This speaker is boring. I'm going to take a walk." Later when confronted by the insensitivity of that behavior, he says, "Why should I have to sit there just because your mother died?" These people cannot imagine how the feelings of others matter at all. 

Lack guilt or shame 

While shopping, the psychopath notices a beautiful necklace lying on a counter. She puts the necklace on and leaves the store. Horrified, you demand she put it back or pay for it. With a calm smile, she says, "Take a chill pill." The psychopath feels no remorse, regret or shame.

Lack anxiety or fear

Your parents visit from out of state. After dinner, everyone goes into the living room to relax and have a cup of coffee together. The psychopath motions you to come into the kitchen. While in the kitchen, he tries to have sex with you on the table. You say, "Not now, not here, we have guests!" The psychopath experiences no embarrassment or anxiety about inappropriate behavior.

Lack love and capacity for empathy

 

You just suffered a double mastectomy and while recovering in the hospital your psychopathic husband says, "I'm just not attracted to you any more." He pulls out divorce papers and asks you to sign them now because he has a plane to catch. These people don't love and cannot feel the emotional needs of others.

Are unreliable, irresponsible and insincere

Your psychopathic husband drops you and the baby off at the pediatrician's office and says, "I'll be right back." Three months later your car and husband are still missing. You get the bills for the credit card showing hotel and entertainment charges he's made all over the country. These people lie, cheat and steal without regret

These above examples are true stories from people both unknown and famous. See if you can spot the famous ones. I see too many good people in relationships with these predatory sharks. They forever feel surprised when the psychopath doesn't understand feelings and doesn't seem to care. They operate under the assumption that everyone possesses their capacity for emotional connection. This lack of awareness leaves people defenseless targets for an opportunistic psychopath. While these anti-social characters operate under a "mask of sanity," if you pay attention you can quickly spot the deviant behavior.

Researchers find both structural and chemical dysfunction in the brains of psychopaths. One difference is an overactive dopamine system. Dopamine regulates our pleasure and reward centers of the brain. This over-activity may explain why psychopaths appear most concerned about their own pleasure and lack fear while attempting to obtain rewards.

Psychology and modern medicine offer no cure for these human predators. Our best defense against victimization is awareness. The next time you see a movie where the self-centered, dead-beat, child-neglecting father comes back after screwing up the protagonist's life and does something nice (Wall Street 2, The Royal Tenenbaums), I hope a little buzzer goes off in your head. Wrong. This script needs a rewrite.

Photos courtesy of hot rod, Mika Stetsovski and Ben Fredericson.

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Made Off With Plenty

by Donna Pendergast

Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison yesterday. The appropriately named Madoff pled guilty on March 12th to eleven felony counts including mail fraud, wire fraud, perjury, money laundering, securities fraud, theft from an employee benefit fund and false filings with the Securities Exchange Commission for running a Ponzi scheme valued at over fifty billion dollars.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin referred to Madoff''s crimes as "extraordinary evil" at sentencing stating that "this type of manipulation is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper but one instead that takes a staggering toll."

Although many of the victims present in the courtroom were pleased with the sentence, they all understand that a a century and a half of largely symbolic punishment will do little to help the legions of persons that were financially wiped out by the fraud of staggering proportions perpetrated on victims who trusted Madoff with their money, their future and their retirement dreams

Now 71 years old, Madoff will spend the rest of his days on earth in a cell that is a far cry from the opulent residences that he shared with his wife and family. Maybe a few months of that kind of existence will convince Madoff that his heinous acts are more than "an error of judgement", a "problem" or a "tragic mistake" which were the terms that he used at sentencing to refer to his elaborate financial ruse

But then again probably not

The victims, who at sentencing referred to Madoff as a "monster" and a "psychopath" were right on base. Working as a prosecutor for over two decades I have come across my share of clinical psychopaths over the years. Although the psychopaths that I normally deal with commit crimes of a violent nature, they share plenty in common with Bernie Madoff. Lying, manipulation, coldness and lack of empathy are the hallmarks of a psychopath, a person who exploits relationships and persons with abandon and without remorse. Bernie Madoff certainly fits the bill on all points.

For those who wonder whether Madoff ever thinks of the persons that he has ruined, the answer is complex. He thinks about them he doesn't care in a way that a normal person can relate to. He cares that he got caught. He cares that his luxurious life has been taken away but he won't lay awake at night thinking about the daily struggles that his victims will have to endure.

His courtroom statements were very telling about what is important in the mind of Bernie Madoff. How can one stand in a courtroom looking in the eyes of persons who have been ruined by your actions, and refer to your misdeeds as an "error of judgement?" Those words alone pretty much say it all. The man understands but fails to care that he has condemned scores of persons to a life of poverty and struggle. His later feeble attempts at apology were overshadowed by the references to his "problem" and his "tragic mistake," the same tragic mistake that he kept making over and over while in the process imprisoning his victims in their own version of hell.

Judge Chin noted at sentencing that not a single letter had attested to Madoff''s good deeds or charitable activities further commenting that the silence was telling.

The silence is telling? The silence is deafening and yet says it all.


Statements made in this post are my own and are not intended to reflect the views, opinion or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

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The Doctor is In (1 of 2 parts)

by Vanessa Leggett

A psychological riddle of sorts has been making the rounds in cyberspace. It might have landed in your Inbox. Now you might be good at guessing the answer to riddles like this one. My failure to solve this particular puzzle cast a self-revealing light on something I'm accustomed to examining in others: Motive.

Though motive need not be proved in a courtroom, in a crime story, discovering and revealing motivation is essential. Motivation is something I brood on as intensely as some people I write about try to conceal it. Here's what I've noticed. Even with suspects who confess—those who are willing to ask themselves and reveal to others the Why of their crimes—what drives us to extremes is often more of a mystery to ourselves than it is to observers.

You might recall a scene from The Silence of the Lambs, where Special Agent Clarice Starling says to serial killer Hannibal Lecter: "You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to turn that high-powered perception on yourself?"

If you read mysteries and crime stories, you likely see a lot too when it comes to identifying what powers the mens rea behind every criminal act.

In this riddle, you will be asked to discern another's motivation. How you answer will shine a high-powered light of perception on yourself. I racked my brain on this one but did not get it right. Let's see how good you are at guessing motive. Here is the text of the message I received:

The following is not a trick question. It is as it reads. No one I know has gotten it right. A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing. She believed him to be her dream guy so much, that she fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.

Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?

So that's the riddle. Give this some thought before you answer, then click here to move to the below post: "Are You a Psychopath?"

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Are You a Psychopath? (2 of 2 parts)

by Vanessa Leggett

Note to readers: If you have not read "The Doctor is In" above, visit here before reading this post.

Scenario: A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a man whom she did not know. After meeting him, she was convinced he was Mr. Right. For her, it was love at first sight, but at the funeral she did not ask for his number nor could she find him afterward. A few days later she killed her sister.

Now for the rest of that e-mail riddle:

Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?

Answer: She was hoping the guy would appear at the funeral again.

If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath.

This was a test by a famous American psychologist used to tell if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in the test and answered the question correctly. If you didn't answer the question correctly, good for you. If you got the answer correct, bad for us.

How did you do? If you're like me, you've never been so relieved to have missed an answer.

In closing, I should note that I cannot vouch for the riddle being a "test by a famous American psychologist." Again, I received this as an e-mail message. The one that landed in my Inbox had been forwarded to recipients from New York all the way to Texas. The original sender was someone I don't know at all.

Come to think of it, I may not even know the person who sent it to me—at least not as well as I might have thought. He may have had an unfair advantage in guessing what would motivate someone to commit murder. He's a criminal defense lawyer. All the same, he did not say how he did on the test. . . .

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Really, THIS Time I am Telling the Truth!

by Pat Brown

A myth about interviewing leads one to believe that a crack interviewer will know just the right thing to get even a psychopath to confess. There is an old story about criminal profiler John Douglas who cleverly plans a strategy to push the buttons on the suspect in the brutal rape and murder of 12-year-old Mary Frances Stoner. Darrel Gene Devier is brought in to a carefully staged interview room by a huge team of law enforcement. Files are stacked up (most of them are fake) with his name conspicuously displayed on them. Then the investigator talks about the blood spatter he knows is on Devier's clothes (though there is actually no evidence). Now the suspect is very unnerved. But the key, Douglas says, to breaking this man down, is the big, bloodied rock he used to kill the girl. It is placed on a table in the room.

Devier can't keep his eyes off the rock.

Douglas explains the methodology and the results of this psychological strategy:

I warned the interrogators that they'd have to sink to Devier's level. They would need to project blame onto the victim by suggesting that she'd seduced him. Allowing Devier a face-saving scenario was their only chance of getting a confession because Devier knew that Georgia is a death penalty state.The instant Devier entered the interrogation room, he was transfixed by the rock. He started sweating, breathing hard and cowering. As planned, interrogators projected blame onto the victim. Devier got really quiet. An innocent man will scream and protest, but a guilty man will listen to what you have to say if you've surprised him with a chance to save face.

This may sound like a pretty brilliant ruse conducted by a skilled interrogator but Devier's confession had nothing to do with saving face. It had everything to do with saving his butt.

I will use a more recent case as an example of how this works. Keep in mind that a psychopath has no empathy or shame so he feels no remorse nor does he care what you think about him. He only does what is he thinks will get himself the best results. Clever though the interrogator may be, the manipulation has less to do with psychology than conning the suspect into believing you have more evidence than you do so he will confess.

Recently in Maryland an interrogation was videotaped. The video shows exactly why this is true. Gary Smith, a former Army Ranger, is being questioned about the shooting of his roommate, a fellow Ranger. He tells three stories.

Story One: Smith tells the police he arrived home to find his friend, Michael McQueen, dead. No gun was present at the scene.

Obviously the police label this a homicide as dead men do not get rid of guns. They focus in on Smith, something he was hoping they would not do. But now that they have focused on him, he has to come up with a good story to get them to go away. He decides he will convince them it is a suicide.

Story Two: Smith weeps and tells the police he altered the crime scene because he was afraid he would be accused of killing McQueen. He said he came home and found his roommate slumped over in the chair, the gun on the floor below his right hand. He guessed his buddy had found Smith's gun from under the counter where it was hidden. He took the gun and threw it in the lake. Smith swears on his dead buddy's grave this was the truth.

The police let him know that his story isn't adding up. The gun hadn't been in the house under the counter; they learned it had just been brought from his mother's house. Now Smith knew that it would seem like a premeditated homicide if he brought the gun the night the man was killed. He needed a more believable story.

Story Three: Smith brought the gun to the house that night and either left it on the counter or on the floor. He warned his roommate the gun was loaded but while he was in the shower, he heard the gun go off. With so little time between his arrival and the gunshot, Smith figures the police will believe the shooting could have been accidental.

The police have evidence that the blood-spatter patterns do not match Smith's story. Plus, if Smith's statement were true, the gun should have been on the floor below McQueen's right hand. But that's where the TV remote control was found, not the gun.

Smith has been inching closing and closer to the truth, not because the interrogator is breaking down his psychological barriers, but because each time he believes the police have a certain added bit of damning information, he reassesses his situation and decides what is the next best thing he can say to get the lowest penalty possible.

At this point in the interview, Smith has admitted to bringing the gun and being in the house when the gun went off and altering a crime scene by removing and disposing of the weapon that killed McQueen. He tried to be totally innocent and get no charge, but when he couldn't get around the gun issue, he was willing to admit to disposing of the gun because this is by far a lesser charge than murder.

Now the police are letting him know the blood-spatter pattern contradicts his story. And in this interview saga, the remote control becomes Douglas's bloody rock. Look, they say. Look at that television remote control over there. We think, Mr. Smith, that he had that in his hand when he died and he wasn't holding the gun.

Now for the confession. Smith believes they have him cornered. He stares at the remote and tries desperately to come up with the next best story that will keep him out of the electric chair. He needs to believe the police will accept this story and charge him accordingly. He will confess but not out of remorse or because he wants to save face. He wants to get out of a death penalty conviction. What will his story be? What story will the investigator offer for Smith to agree with so that he thinks he will get out of the most serious charge? Readers?

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