The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience (26 page)

My laboratory tried everything to fix these problems. We sent participants postcard reminders, called them the week before, a couple days before, the night before, and even the morning of their appointment. But we still had lots of no-shows. My staff were spending most of their time trying to schedule appointments rather than actually collecting data.

On the rare occasions when individuals did show up for appointments, their appearance was often associated with some interesting
histrionics. They would show up too hungover to be interviewed, and we would have to send them home. Or they would show up drunk or high on drugs. Several times we had to call security to escort a drunk and belligerent psychopath out the door and into a cab for a ride home. I got to know the security personnel at the hospital very well.

It was becoming clear that it was safer to work with psychopaths in prison than to work with them in the community.

Nevertheless, we persevered and continued to make slow but steady progress in scanning psychopaths in the community.

I gave a grand rounds presentation to my colleagues at Yale psychiatry on the latest research developments in psychopathy. Following my lecture, I was approached by a clinician who worked in a local maximum-security prison. The clinician asked if I would come evaluate a female prisoner for treatment amenability. I volunteered.

The offender, “Judy,” was twenty-five years old. She had blond shoulder-length hair and a slim build, weighed just 105 pounds, and stood five feet three inches tall. I prepped for my interview with Judy by reviewing her institutional files. The files were several inches thick, and they also contained a number of videotapes.

As I got situated in the office the prison had prepared for me, I inserted one of the videocassettes into the VHS machine. The tape contained security footage of an interview room not that dissimilar from the one in which I was sitting. The video showed Judy on the opposite side of a large table from a psychologist conducting the interview. I watched the video for about ten minutes and then it happened—Judy launched herself across the table in a full attack on the therapist. Throwing haymakers, left and right, Judy landed two blows before the therapist knew what was happening. The therapist collapsed onto the floor, where Judy straddled her and got six or seven more blows in before security staff entered the room and pulled her off the therapist. Dark blood flowed onto the floor from
the unconscious therapist’s mouth—it appeared that the therapist had lost several teeth in the attack.

I rewound the tape and watched it again. Judy showed no warning signs; it was an unprovoked, vicious attack. Security must have been nearby since the therapist had had no time to hit the emergency call button; she had been completely disabled by the first two blows.

I shut off the tape and started reading Judy’s files. Judy had been in and out of prison since the age of twelve. As a sixteen-year-old, Judy had shot and killed another youth. Judy’s defense was that she did not know the gun was loaded when she pointed it at the other teenager’s head and pulled the trigger. She received a sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

Judy had a long history of getting in trouble, and inside prison she was a nightmare to manage. She had dozens of fights with other inmates and had two other violent assaults against staff. The clinicians at the prison asked me to do an evaluation and determine if she met criteria for psychopathy. Following my evaluation, the treatment team wanted to know if I might have suggestions for any type of treatment that might help them control Judy’s behavior.

I completed my review of the collateral sources of information in Judy’s files. I had evidence of serious emotional and behavioral problems in nearly all domains of her life. Even though I had interviewed hundreds of inmates by this point in my career, this would be the first female inmate I would interview. And I was hoping that it would not be the first interview that ended in a physical altercation.

Judy arrived at my 9 a.m. interview still half asleep. She groggily shook my hand and plunked herself down in the chair opposite from me. I explained to Judy that the interview was to help identify treatment options for her.

Judy’s background was identical to that of the hundreds of male psychopaths I had interviewed. As a young child she failed to learn from experiences or punishment. Judy’s parents responded to her aggressive behavior and mischief with punitive sanctions, culminating with “grounding” her for months at a time to the confines of their
home. While stuck at home, Judy would sabotage electronics, using screwdrivers to mess with televisions, stereo equipment, and even the fire alarm. Indeed, setting off the fire alarm in the middle of the night became a bit of a pastime for Judy. She enjoyed watching her parents search frantically for any sign of smoke or flames.

Judy started carrying a gun at age fourteen, taking it with her just about everyplace she went. It was a Beretta semiautomatic pistol with a nine-round clip. I encouraged Judy to tell me about her firearm escapades. She regaled me with story upon story of her marksmanship and superiority with firearms relative to her peers. She also told me that more than a few times she had emptied the entire clip in drive-by shootings at rival gang members’ houses. She would do her shooting sprees with one teenage boy in the car, a measure to ensure that if they were pulled over by the police, they could act as if they were just out on a date. The ingenious ploy worked more than once when they were stopped and questioned.

I turned the conversation back onto Judy’s relationship with her parents and siblings. Judy had not seen her parents in a couple years, and she assumed her two younger siblings were doing just fine. Her siblings had not followed Judy down the path of antisocial behavior.

As I was wrapping up the interview, I returned to talk about Judy’s most significant index offense as a teenager—the involuntary manslaughter charge for killing another teen.

I asked Judy to explain what had happened.

Judy started to tell her rehearsed story about how she and two other teens were playing with a gun when she looked up at me and paused. I saw in her eyes a mix of anger and confusion. She realized that I had trapped her. I braced for her to attack me, but she just slouched down a bit more into her chair.

I had used our initial rapport to get Judy to talk about being an expert with that Beretta handgun prior to the “accident.” She knew now that claiming the shooting was due to her inexperience was not going to fly given that we had established she was an expert with the handgun several years before the accident.

Sitting in the chair she said: “Well, cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then I might as well tell you the true story. It’s not going to
matter; I can’t be charged again in that case.” Judy was referring to the fact she had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and she could not be tried again for the same crime.

“Michael dared me to pull the trigger, so I raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. Click. I was just going to scare him. But then Michael dissed me again and said that he knew I didn’t have the balls to shoot him. So I racked a round into the chamber and put it up to his head and fired. He’s not dissing me anymore.” She looked at me with flat, emotionless eyes. They were the same eyes I have seen in hundreds of male psychopaths, but it was the first time I had ever seen them in a female.

Judy stood up and said she was done with this interview. She left the room and went back to her cell.

My report to the prison would indicate that Judy was going to be very difficult to treat.

There is not a lot of research on female psychopaths. The best available evidence suggests that for every ten male psychopaths, there is one female psychopath. Like their male counterparts, female psychopaths tend to get in trouble with the law and often end up in prison. The rate of psychopathy in female offenders is 15 to 20 percent, the same as the rate in male offenders. But only about 10 percent of the prison population is female. Thus, female psychopaths are much rarer than male psychopaths. And there have been no published brain imaging studies of female psychopaths. Since my interview with Judy, my laboratory team has collected brain imaging data from female offenders, and we plan to publish the first neuroscience studies of female psychopaths in the near future.

One morning I got a phone call from my old friend Dr. Vince Clark. Dr. Clark had left the University of Connecticut Health Sciences Center a few years earlier for a faculty position at the University of New Mexico. When I would see him at scientific conferences, he
would tout the benefits of living in New Mexico—320 sunny days a year, no humidity, affordable housing, great skiing in Taos Ski Valley, and world-class mountain biking outside your door in the local Albuquerque mountains. Dr. Clark seemed very happy with the move.

He was calling to invite Dr. Calhoun and me out to New Mexico to give talks at the Mind Institute on the campus of the University of New Mexico.
*
The Mind was a nonprofit world-class neuroimaging center to study schizophrenia and other mental illnesses; it had been established by New Mexico’s five-term US senator Pete Domenici.

During the trip, Dr. Clark wined and dined us. One night toward the end of our visit, after he had impressed us with all the resources and opportunities at the Mind and UNM, he put forth his sales pitch. Dr. Clark wanted to know if Vince and I would move to New Mexico.

Vince and I were both flattered, but we told Dr. Clark that we were happy in Connecticut.

But Dr. Clark persisted. He told us that it would be a joint recruitment by the University of New Mexico and the nonprofit Mind Institute. The university would give us our faculty lines, and the Mind would house our research laboratories and provide our start-up packages.

Dr. Clark was a good negotiator. He had already gotten me to confess my frustrations about working with psychopaths in the community in Connecticut. Moreover, the Connecticut Department of Corrections had been unwilling to transfer inmates from prison to the IOL for research studies. Dr. Clark knew I was interested in alternative solutions.

So I told him that I always dreamed of having a mobile MRI and taking it into prisons. And then Vince volunteered his “say no” offer—a high-field MRI for large-scale research studies. We told Dr. Clark that if he could make our requests happen, we would become New Mexicans. Vince and I didn’t think there was any chance Dr. Clark would find the resources to meet our requests. We were wrong.

Just a week later, Dr. Clark called and said that I could have my mobile MRI and Vince could have a new high-field MRI for his research. The Mind would also create a huge database to house all the brain imaging data. They called it a
neuroinformatics system
. That was Vince’s baby.

Vince and I looked at each other across the conference room table and stared down at the speakerphone in disbelief.

“Could you please repeat that, Dr. Clark?” I asked.

There was a laugh on the other end of the line. Then Dr. Clark said, “We want you here. And we believe your science will have a huge impact on society. You guys think about it and let me know.”

As the call ended, Vince turned to me and said that he wanted to go. I told him I had to first figure out if I could get access to the New Mexico prisons. So I booked a flight back to New Mexico.

New Mexico is a large state in terms of square miles but has a population of barely more than two million people. Because of its small population, politicians in New Mexico are rather accessible. Only a few weeks after Dr. Clark’s call, I was able to get an appointment with New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s director of cabinet affairs. Apparently, Senator Pete Domenici, the founder of the Mind Institute, had made a phone call and a meeting was quickly arranged.

The governor’s legal team had already reviewed and verified that my research was legitimate. My work was funded by NIH, and it had been approved by the ethics boards at Hartford Hospital, Yale University, and the federal Office of Human Research Protections.

The director of cabinet affairs said the State of New Mexico welcomed research in general, and in particular any research that was targeted to reduce the incidence of antisocial behavior and substance abuse. Next, I was sent over to meet the New Mexico secretary of corrections.

Secretary of Corrections Joe Williams was a large man. Over six feet tall and barrel chested, he had a very commanding presence. He shook my hand and said to me, “The governor called and said we are going to get into the research business, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “And my laboratory is at your disposal if you
need any research or have any questions about recidivism, risk assessment, or anything else that we might be able to help with.” I was willing to clean the toilets if I could get back in prison.

Secretary Williams had already picked out the first prison where we could start our research program, the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants, New Mexico, about eighty miles due west of Albuquerque. The warden had been briefed and was ready to meet me.

It was amazing what could be accomplished with a single phone call in a small state with a small government. Of course, it helps when an introduction comes from a US senator like Pete Domenici.

The next morning I drove out to the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in my best suit and met with the warden. I told the warden that we needed research offices and a place to park a mobile MRI. The warden handed me over to the deputy warden, Deanna Hoisington, a petite blond woman with a quick smile and ready wit.

Deanna and I were joined by Dominic, the head of facilities, who led us over to the medical wing. Dominic had identified four offices they were going to empty out for my team. He would order new furniture to be installed.

The warden had insisted that he assign a correctional officer to the research area in case there were any problems. The correctional officer would be just down the hall but was within earshot if someone had to yell for help. I knew that my staff would appreciate the gesture; none of them had spent any time in prison.