I clicked on the wrong story today. I really hate it when that happens.
Because while the headline read “gamer sends SWAT team to opponent’s house”, the actual tale was this:
Ya know, apart from “Wow. How horrifying”, there’s not much to be said when someone kills a two-year old, is there?
I suppose we can start looking from a solution angle and question whether it’s best to pass the murderer off as monster and lock him in a cage, or try to figure out why this happens. What’s the thought process? Is this rage a function of genetic psychosis? A learned one? Post traumatic stress disorder? I tried looking the video over, but despite my numerous superpowers, psycho-spotting ain’t one of ’em. I’m no Park Dietz.
Ah, good point, Park.
So I’ll keep this less about dreadful details and more about problem solving.
What I will say that this is one of those stories where if I’d just watched the court footage and hadn’t heard any of the context, I might have believed the dude. The tears don’t look forced at first. But dramatic performances like these are often hard to keep up aside from the initial adrenaline-fueled outbursts with self-preservation as your motivation. The rest of the clues are in the science of body language – and mayhaps a better manipulator could fake this with practice. But for this guy, he started to fall out of character the moment they started discussing his case – eyes darting around as if preparing to say thing B if the judge said thing A.
And then there was the forced from-the-chest breathing that nobody does (when a good cry is authentic, it’s more of a spasmodic gasp, which is hard to fake).
This only gets worse the moment he starts hearing the actual case being spoken about and has to speak his piece. He starts doing the eyebrow raise – which might be effective if it didn’t clash so terribly with the tearful act he was trying to pull and keep going; an eyebrow raise typically denotes a kind of confidence or being fully engaged in the convo, while remorse crying is more vulnerable – an emotional, down-guard, shameful surrender where you’re too turned into your emotions to engage fully in the convo at all. That’s the beginning of the end in a psychopath’s act because they’ve got such a deep-seated god complex that if they feel anything, it’s probably disgust about vulnerability in themselves and others alike – which they’d probably refuse to embody even to save themselves.
Bundy’s actually a good example. One relevant instance among many things (I don’t wanna list because even I can only talk Ted deets so long before I start to get depressed), he played the role of his own lawyer. Even though everyone told him it was a surefire ticket to the electric chair, he gave his best legal T.V. show dramatic performance. His time to shine, in his mind. They’d let him off later. They had to. After all, he escaped jail twice. How hard could a third time be?
Similarly, the kid in question had voiced confidence in being set free.
And while some psychos are born into a dangerously intelligent brain, he ain’t one of ’em – because he decided to divulge these innermost thoughts on a recorded call. And despite whatever shadowboxing kid killer was doing as his eyes darted around, he couldn’t have guessed the judge was gonna call him on his shit imminently. Do you see how his face totally changes ctrl+alt+del shutdown style? It’s like Patrick Bateman suddenly learning his secretary has a serial killer I.Q. of potato.
Sure this kid’s not a serial murderer (so far as we know).
But might he have similar tendencies he’s just not smart enough to carry out?
Yet?
I say “yet” because I take an interest in psychopathic behavior as a kinda self-defense preventative sort of a thing. I want to know how many of these are fakers and how many were unknowingly groomed into creatures of the night by parents, society, and the justice system. I mean, in many cases, those who could prove useful to study from a research point of view, just end up in a cement shelter with three square meals a day. Do some benefit from prison? Sure. But for many, it’s a criminal finishing school where those who’ve done a horror like this go to, and then come out the other side with a major in murderology, a minor as a toilet wine sommelier, and an associates in sociopathy.
That can’t be right can it? Put ’em to work! It seems we shouldn’t just let these pained and angry people remain together – stewing in hatred and feeding off each other – until their release into a world of innocents on whom to practice it. Then it ends up on the news. And then young kids have a reinforced concept of “this is the way the world is” and see murderers as the grim iconic hosts of media story orgies. The fact that – however bad they were, they got attention – remains in their mind as they grow up angry and confused. Then they do something like turn a defenseless tot into a pinata because they’ve seen how crooked the system is and how some people “get off because they’re white and blonde”.
(I don’t. But I’d like to! Why don’t you share with the rest of the class?)
There’s no defending this viscera turning tale or the man who did it.
But is it any wonder these tragedies keep turning up?
When we see enough of them and the upward trend of violence in all areas of our society, don’t we at least have to question if the current system’s even working? Having “empathy” for the criminal doesn’t mean saying “there, there – we know you didn’t mean to hit that baby. And then keep on hitting him. Until he was dead.” No. Duh. It doesn’t mean letting him off the hook, either. Clearly. What it means is looking at the larger picture for the sake of the rest of society – all areas of his psychological status, and then sentencing him to being analyzed indefinitely, seeing how well he can be rehabilitated with a battery of tests, and using it to better understand just how men become monsters. A killer helping us catch killers – like Dex and Hannah sans all the romance, great lighting, and philosophical low toned narrative.
I mean, given the choice, do you think that poor mother cradling her head in court (or the inevitable one that will take her place in just a matter of time) would rather see the man who took her son’s life go to prison?
Or have never lost her son at all?