Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind (7 page)

In my opinion Johnstone realized that his lack of predictability made him more difficult to catch. Not following a pattern accorded him an enhanced sense of control, thus feeding his all-powerful self-perception. When months passed with no developments in the case, the police naturally turned their attention to more urgent matters. The delays between incidents were also a way for Johnstone to manipulate Mrs. Smith. She would live in dread of the next call or package, but when nothing occurred for several months, she allowed herself to hope the nightmare was over. Then suddenly, according to his whim, he would be back in her life, as though no time had passed at all.

Johnstone was an archetypal ritualistic sexual criminal who put considerable creative thought into his work. Successfully retrieving Mrs. Smith’s two bras from the Salvation Army bin not only underscored how deeply he desired to possess them, but also showed the careful planning he devoted to the scheme.

Thinking criminals are keen students of their own crimes, honing their skills with each offense, learning from their mistakes. But they also reach out for enlightenment wherever it may be found. Like many deviant offenders, Johnstone was an avid consumer of detective magazines. At the time of his arrest, a hundred of them were found in his possession.

In the Behavioral Science Unit, we called detective magazines “rape and murder manuals.” In fact, it was because detective magazines played such an important role in the cartoon case, that my frequent research partner, the eminent forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, and I, together with Bruce Harry, another forensic psychiatrist, decided to make a survey of the genre.

Working with a broad sample of three thousand detective magazines from numerous publishers throughout the United States, we focused on the periodicals’ covers, editorial content, and advertisements.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with these pulp publications knows the primary theme of their cover art: partially undressed women with frightened expressions, bound by some sort of ligature, and under menace by a weapon-wielding male. The stories tend to be true-crime tales or articles on investigative techniques, interrogation methods, and the forensic capabilities of law enforcement.

Advertisements almost invariably are directed at the inadequate male. He’s told he can learn how to hypnotize women from across the room; how to increase the size of his penis; how to become a private investigator; how to acquire police paraphernalia and identification. This last offer is more ominous than it may at first seem, as in several cases police badges have been used by serial offenders to capture their victims.

Ted Bundy was probably the best-known consumer of detective magazines. He studied abduction and murder stories in them to learn what had worked or hadn’t worked for other deviant offenders. In the process he no doubt found material to feed his unique fantasies of possession.

One staple of the pulp genre is the police-stop story, in which an offender poses as a law officer to bring a potential victim under his control. Bundy used the ploy several times himself. Angelo Buono, murder partner with Ken Bianchi in the infamous Hillside Strangler cases, also used a police badge to abduct women. From his extensive records, we know that the counterfeiter and sexual sadist James Mitchell DeBardeleben, known as Mike, a serial offender who traveled throughout the United States, ordered police badges through ads in detective magazines and similarly used them as abduction props.

Returning to the cartoon case, many readers may wonder, if Johnstone was so intelligent, why did he send Mrs. Smith the incriminating pictures that led to his arrest? Why did he use the motel stationery that enabled authorities to identify him?

The answer is narcissism.

Because he had successfully eluded detection for so long and with such apparent ease, Johnstone grew overconfident, believing himself too smart for the police to catch. Consequently, he let his guard down and took unnecessary chances. He must have felt that no matter what he did, he would never be caught.

For many ritualistic offenders, taking risks intensifies the thrill of the crime. Stealing Mrs. Smith’s bras off her clothesline might have been a safer, surer way of securing them, but that couldn’t compare to the ingenious way in which he extracted them from the donation box while it was under direct police surveillance.

Paid Partners

Ritualistic offenders also act out their deviant fantasies with paid partners. Experienced sexual crimes investigators know that when an offender commits his crimes in a ritualistic manner, they should contact local prostitutes. He likely has attempted to enact with them the same fantasies he plays out with his victims.

In one intriguing California case, an expensive call girl was found dead at a deluxe hotel in a bathtub full of water. The room had been rented under an alias and paid for in advance with cash. The victim was nude. Her hands were bound behind her back, and she had been strangled with a man’s tie.

Medical evidence indicated vaginal intercourse occurred perimortem, that is, just at the time of her death. It appeared the perpetrator had bound her and placed her in the tub, where he strangled her as they were having sex.

Investigators wisely sought out other high-priced prostitutes in the vicinity, asking if any of them remembered encountering customers who desired a similar sort of sex. Two of the women reported such a client, a business executive who subsequently was identified, tried, and convicted of the murder.

Compliant Victims

Some ritualistic offenders (most commonly sexual sadists) act out fantasies with compliant victims, usually wives or girlfriends. The compliant victims I have interviewed report that they often were used as props for the deviant fantasies of their mates. Other times, they were rehearsal partners, stand-ins for future victims.

It is not unusual for a sexual sadist to force his victim to sign a “slave contract,” a physical representation of the master-slave relational fantasy. One of these women described to me the strict rules she was expected to observe. For example, skirts slit up the sides to her upper thighs were all that she was allowed to wear on her lower body. He permitted no underwear, and she was not allowed to cross her legs in his presence.

This man’s deviant interests included fetishism, necrophilia, sadism, and masochism. To help him act out these paraphilias, she sometimes was made to wear fetish items during sex. At other times he directed her to take cold baths and then to lie perfectly still so he could pretend she was dead. On still other occasions, he would demand that she whip him.

Mike DeBardeleben acted out his fantasies against at least four of his five wives. To enhance his pleasure, he even tape-recorded torture sessions with one of them, his fourth wife, Caryn.
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As I listened to the Caryn tapes, I noted his pattern of demanding she call him “Daddy” and beg him to physically abuse her according to a script he forced her to memorize. Then, for comparison, I listened to tapes that DeBardeleben had made with Becky,
^*
one of his stranger-victims. His demands and behavior with both women were virtually identical.

“Do you like the pain?” he asked both partners.

“Yes, I like the pain,” both Caryn and Becky answered.

“Do you love the pain?”

“Yes, I love the pain.”

“How much do you love the pain?”

“I love it a lot.”

Caryn had served as his rehearsal partner for victims such as Becky and countless others.

Autoeroticism

Finally, ritualistic offenders sometimes act out using themselves as props or “costars,” if you will. Some years ago, Dr. Park Dietz, Prof. Ann Wolbert Burgess of the University of Pennsylvania, and I researched and wrote the first textbook ever devoted to fatal autoeroticism. We found that such deaths were basically masochistic. That is, most of the 150 victims we studied were acting out masochistic fantasies at the times of their accidental deaths.

Yet masochism wasn’t the only feature we detected. A large percentage of the victims also were cross-dressed when they were discovered, a provocative finding that opened a new avenue of speculation. While I still believe the great majority of deaths due to dangerous autoeroticism are grounded in the victims’ masochistic fantasies, the males who cross-dress may not be fantasizing only masochistic plots. They may also be acting out sadistic fantasies using themselves as replacements for women who are unsatisfactory, unavailable, or unwilling.

The case of the late Gerard John Schaefer, a Florida deputy sheriff, supports this theory. Shaefer is believed to have kidnapped and killed more than twenty young women, disposing of them in remote swamps. In a photo that he doubtlessly took, Shaefer appears cross-dressed and suspended from a tree in the swamp. From his extensive writings, it is clear that one of his preferred ways of killing his victims was by hanging them exactly this way.

In a similar vein, one of Mike DeBardeleben’s abduction-rape victims reported that after he took her to a safe, prearranged location, he changed into a miniskirt and high heels as he bound and photographed her. On a self-recorded audiotape at a different time, DeBardeleben also directly assumed the role of the victim, pleading with an imaginary tormentor in a falsetto voice to “bite my titties.”

How does a particular offender choose to act out his dangerous fantasies? At what level of experience, from the imaginary to the actual, will a particular person receive sufficient psychosexual gratification? These are the questions that behavioral scientists continue to explore in the quest to identify and apprehend violent sexual criminals. Unfortunately, the ultimate answers likely will be as varied as the details of the crimes themselves.

The fascinating and complex field of mental health often intersects with the world of criminal justice. If you follow the media coverage of sensational crimes, you have undoubtedly heard about instances when a psychiatrist or psychologist is called into a criminal case to testify as to a defendant’s mental condition. Issues of sanity or mental competence to stand trial can have a profound impact on a case’s outcome.

Equally important is the contribution that an understanding of criminal psychology can make even before an offender is identified, apprehended, and charged. This is where the behavioral scientist’s insights can be most useful.

Personality Disorders

According to the American Psychiatric Association, a personality disorder is any human trait that becomes “inflexible and maladaptive,” causing a person “either significant functional impairment or subjective distress.” This bland description masks what a twisted, tortured thing “significant functional impairment” can be in a serial sexual offender.

There are many types of personality disorders. Examples include the antisocial personality disorder (APD), the borderline personality disorder (brilliantly portrayed by Glenn Close in the film
Fatal Attraction
), the schizoid personality disorder, and the narcissistic personality disorder.

Personality disorders are common among sexual offenders, but they are by no means confined to criminals. They are diagnosed in men and women of all races and in all cultures and of widely varying degrees of mental health. A personality disorder is not something you welcome, any more than you want to get diabetes or emphysema. But being diagnosed with one does not mean you are clinically, or legally, insane or even noticeably different from many other people.

Nor are personality disorders always obstacles to personal success. Quite the opposite. I have encountered successful people who display all the hallmarks of the antisocial personality disorder, commonly called psychopaths, in disciplines as diverse as law enforcement, medicine, sales, professional sports, and television evangelism.

Some personality disorders that are common in the general population (and not necessarily pathological) take on a much different manifestation among aberrant offenders. Many years ago, Park Dietz remarked to me his belief that narcissism is the most common personality disorder among sexual offenders, more prevalent even than antisocial personality disorder. I have found this to be true, particularly among ritualistic sexual criminals.

The Narcissist

Take, for example, Mr. Johnstone, who victimized Mrs. Smith in the cartoon case. His fantasies were of unlimited success and power. He believed that he was special and could be understood only by other special people. He displayed a strong presumption of entitlement. These are the classic characteristics of a narcissist.

The narcissist demands constant admiration. He does not hesitate to take advantage of others to achieve his goals, and he is indifferent to their feelings and needs. Essentially, he believes that he is the only one whose satisfaction counts in this world. Everyone else is just a prop in his background scenery.

A sexual offender’s narcissism can be demonstrated in many ways. Before the crime a narcissistic offender exhibits selfishness, self-centeredness, and an inability to accept criticism, even constructive criticism. During the crime the narcissistic criminal may engage in “high-risk” activity, even though he is otherwise an organized offender.

However, the period following a crime is when his narcissism often is most obvious. One of the classic ways in which such an offender betrays his self-centeredness is by courting the media. After Robert Leroy Anderson’s murder convictions, for instance, he granted a press interview. Anderson declined to discuss whether or not he was guilty, but he did speak at length about how similar he was to Albert Einstein. The killer told the reporter he planned to read publications about and by Dr. Einstein in the hope of learning more about
TIME
magazine’s Man of the Century.

A Show-Off for A Client

Of all the self-defeating actions a narcissist’s ego commonly leads him to commit, perhaps the most foolish is a defendant’s decision to act as his own lawyer. It’s axiomatic that such an attorney has a fool for a client, but it is also a measure of how powerful the narcissistic urge can be that a man must show off for the cameras, even if his performance may cost him his life.

In 1979, Ted Bundy was tried and convicted in front of a television audience for the bludgeon murders the year before of two sleeping coeds at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in Tallahassee. During the rampage he also assaulted three other young women and left them for dead.

I remember watching Bundy on TV as he defended himself. He pulled off a kind of courtroom triple play during an evidentiary hearing when he appeared as the defendant, his own attorney, and as a witness. In his second homicide trial, for the abduction-murder of a twelve-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida, Bundy even managed to marry his girlfriend as he examined her on the stand! Carol Bundy later became the mother of his child.

Part of the motivation for acting as his own attorney is the narcissistic offender’s need to assert that he is special. Connected to that is the excitement of reliving his crime on a public stage. At his Chi Omega trial in Miami, Bundy closely cross-examined a police officer, eliciting gruesome details of the crime scene. The information had no particular bearing on the issue of his guilt or innocence, but it certainly impressed the jury with the gory spectacle—Bundy’s handiwork.

Bundy also personally took sworn depositions from a number of the coeds who were in the Chi Omega house that night. He led each of the distressed women through a step-by-step reconstruction of what they saw and when they saw it, right down to the plastic bucket with which paramedics caught one victim’s blood and teeth as she coughed them out.

Another highly narcissistic offender, Mike DeBardeleben, also acted as his own defense attorney and is well remembered around the Manassas, Virginia, courthouse for his cross-examination of an assault victim. With Lori Cobert on the stand, DeBardeleben lingered over details of her abduction and assault. Courtroom onlookers sensed his delight in reconstructing the crime and victimizing Cobert once again. “I felt he was really getting into it,” prosecutor Lee Millette later said.

His pleasure in reliving his crime led the calculating and highly intelligent Mike DeBardeleben to make an uncharacteristic mistake.

“Now, during the incident, inside this man’s car it was dark all the time, wasn’t it?” he asked Ms. Cobert.

“I could see,” she answered.

“The interior lights were not on, were they?”

“No.”

“And there were no overhead interior lights, were there?”

“No.”

“The only lights they had there were these little small ones next to the door at the bottom of the door, right?”

“Correct.”

How did DeBardeleben know about those “little small” lights next to the door if he wasn’t there? No mention of them had come out in any reports or testimony. Prosecutor Millette made sure to remind the jury of DeBardeleben’s slip-up in his summation. The panel required just thirty-eight minutes to convict.

Grandstanding on the Stand

Another reflection of the ritualistic offender’s narcissism after a crime is his insistence on testifying, even when his attorneys advise against it, as they usually do. Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child killer, took the stand and seriously harmed his case by becoming combative with the prosecutor. My colleague in the Behavioral Science Unit, John Douglas, consulted with the prosecution in the Williams case. He correctly predicted the defendant would testify no matter what his lawyers advised.

Williams’s highly capable lawyer, Al Binder, created a portrait of his client as an oppressed, innocent “victim of an embarrassed, racially biased system that needed a suspect fast and had found one,” as Douglas writes in his book,
Mindhunter
.

To counter that impression, Douglas suggested to prosecutor Jack Mallard that he exploit Williams’s mental rigidity, keep circling and circling for hours, and then strike with the question, “Did you panic, Wayne, when you killed these kids?”

The ploy worked. When Mallard reached over to touch the defendant, then ask his question, Williams replied, “No.” Immediately, he realized his mistake and let fly a stream of invective against Douglas and the prosecution team. A very different Wayne Williams suddenly flashed into view, and the jurors took note. “They stared with their mouths open,” Douglas writes.

Journals of Depravity

The narcissist offender expresses himself most revealingly in the ways he preserves a record of his crimes for later use. He may keep diaries, write manuscripts, logs, or journals. Calendars help him plan and remember dates. He may draw maps, invent codes, take photographs, or record audiotapes and videotapes.

I have read countless pages from offenders’ notebooks. I have reviewed thousands of still photographs they’ve taken of their victims. I have listened to tape-recorded tortures, rapes, and murders, as well as the offenders’ narrative descriptions and reconstructions of their offenses. And I’ve watched videos of them interacting with their captives prior to, during, and after sexual assaults.

This material, together with the crime scene itself, is what I call the ritualistic offender’s “work product.” It is by far the richest and most reliable source of information, not only about him as a criminal, but about his personality as well. You really can’t understand a sexual criminal unless you examine his work.

Statistical data provide useful guidelines, but they tell nothing about an individual. Interviews with sexual criminals may yield helpful subjective information (for instance, how does he select victims?), but I can attest from long experience that hard facts, particularly inculpatory information, are usually in short supply when a ritualistic criminal speaks to the police.

Offenders exaggerate, minimize, project, deny, rationalize, and lie, lie, lie. My rule is to accept nothing a sexual criminal tells me unless I can validate it with reliable witnesses, physical trace and/or evidence, or an analysis of his known behavior. In other words I want to study his work product.

Some self-described experts in aberrant criminal behavior reason from the general to the specific, trying to apply what is known about a class of deviant offenders overall to a particular individual sought in connection with a crime. They might say, for example, that since most sexual criminals are white males of European descent, a particular UNSUB is undoubtedly Caucasian, too.

That was the nearly universal supposition in Seattle a decade ago when three young women, all white, all from white, upper-middle-class communities, were raped, bludgeoned to death, and then left horribly displayed—two in their homes, one in a nightclub parking lot. As the writer Jack Olsen skillfully shows in his excellent book,
Charmer: The True Story of a Ladies’ Man and His Victims
, the consensus held that the killer was white, too.

But this was not the case. Had investigators not paid close attention to hard evidence, the black male who actually committed the crimes, George Russell, might have gotten away with murder.

The same was true in the Wayne Williams case. When the FBI dispatched me to Atlanta to consult in the child murders, the newspaper stories quoted alleged experts to the effect that a white man was killing Atlanta’s black children, and therefore the crimes were racially motivated.

I was certain, from the outset, that a black man was the killer. Why? Because I visited the overwhelmingly black neighborhoods where the youths had disappeared. Any white man attempting to abduct a child would have been noticed and reported at once.

Many law enforcement officials have learned the hard way that it is a mistake to uncritically accept what an offender tells you. Probably the most egregious example of this error was the wild story related by drifter Henry Lee Lucas, who claimed to have killed six hundred or more people with his partner, Ottis Toole. A lot of open murder cases were closed because of Lucas’s “confessions,” only to be reopened after he was proved to be a liar.

The practice I find most troubling is the deliberate refusal to consider a criminal’s work product. One psychiatric expert witness once told me that he would not look at crime-scene photographs when evaluating a murder defendant for trial. Reason: He was afraid the photographs would bias his judgment! I should hope they would.

Fond Memories

The crime scene is a central feature of a sexual criminal’s work product, his canvas, if you will. For many offenders, the work is so valuable that they devise elaborate and occasionally ingenious ways to preserve it for later delectation.

Why does the offender keep records when the practice raises his odds of being caught and dramatically increases the possibility of conviction? Isn’t this stupid? Does he want to be apprehended? What’s so important about these materials that he’ll risk so much to maintain them?

When I ask offenders this question, they most frequently reply, “So I could relive the crime.” Based on my experience, I believe that’s an honest answer. Here’s how serial killer Billy Lee Chadd put it:

“I just filed it [a murder] away in the corner of my mind where I was beginning to compile quite a few dark secrets,” wrote Chadd. “A corner from which I could summon out the memories to look at them again and again. To relive my crimes and revel in the horror of my victim.”

The records themselves, along with the information contained in them, can have deep importance to the sexual criminal. It is well established that certain ritualistic offenders take personal belongings (such as a driver’s license, photographs, or items of clothing) from their victims to help them later reenact their crimes in their imagination. Some of these men acknowledge that they do something similar when making a record of their crimes. They are creating trophies or souvenirs, tangible artifacts of the experience.