WOMAN: Onlookers held their noses as
police investigators unearthed two bodies
from shallow graves in a suburban Denver backyard.
MAN: There's a thing inside of me.
It's like...
the appetite.
It's like a wolf that's...
feeling...the hunger.
MORGAN: They don't know what he's alluding to,
so it's an example of the psychological teaser,
uh, when he's saying, you know,
this whole thing could have stopped a long time ago.
What is it he's going to reveal?
So it's part of that dynamic of
being in control of doling out information.
He's basically spreading his peacock feathers in
a sense here by saying, "Nothing can stop me.
"I can't stop myself.
"The only thing that's gonna stop me is if I die,
basically, or you lock me up forever."
There's nothing that convinces me that this is accidental.
He demonstrates no remorse.
He's unable to explain how it happened.
One minute, they're sitting there laughing, and the next
minute, his friend has a hole in his head,
as he put it, and rather than call 911 or try to
get his friend help, if it were an accident,
he instead cleans up the mess and seemingly tries to get rid
of any evidence that might point the finger at him.
It's common in speaking with
people who suffer from psychopathy,
they'll comment on just basic needs,
like, I figured I might get arrested,
so I thought, "I'll go out and have sex first,
because it might be a long time if I get arrested."
It seems very childlike thinking, like,
"Well, if I'm gonna get caught, I might as well eat the cookie
I just took out of the cookie jar."
RAGHAVAN: He makes a distinction between Jason,
whom he claimed he didn't intend to kill, and the prostitutes,
as he calls his other victims, whom he intended to kill.
We found in studies that look at why
killers target prostitutes is they feel
that they're disposable,
and so that feeling comes from sort of contempt, rage,
this idea that they're ridding humanity, um,
of something unwanted, something dirty,
and dehumanizing women in order to
justify their ability to kill them.
MORGAN: She just had her hair done,
and she had perfect teeth.
It's not the identity of the person
that really matters to him.
He points out how beautiful they are,
so that is, one could say, almost trophy-like,
and I would take that as it's a point of pride for him.
He talks about basically almost killing these women as
an act of benevolence, because they're, you know, suffering.
He's basically helping them out of
their miserable lifestyle.
He was doing these women a favor.
But in reality, he doesn't know
anything at all about these women.
MORGAN: He's learned some Bible verses,
and since he's gonna kill her, they do that,
she goes to heaven.
It absolves him of the responsibility,
and since he's saving her,
maybe he hasn't done a bad thing, in his mind.
He sees himself as the angel of death.
White is basically -- well, he's shaming her or blaming her.
Um, it's her fault.
You're supposed to know growing up, you don't
get in cars with strangers, and she did,
so he wasn't able to protect her from himself.
It isn't that he had the responsibility to refrain
from killing her.
In psychopathy, we see that in people like Mr. White,
it's somebody else's fault.
The environment happened to them, it's not his fault.
She's disclosing her fight with her mom.
She's feeling bad about it.
He clearly has no emotional reaction to that other
than saying, "Oh, that sucks."
And then he handcuffs her and rapes her.
These are examples of pure psychopathic --
the traits of callousness and lack of remorse and cruelty.
MORGAN: When he expresses those feelings for his victims,
um, it's most likely that he's feigning them.
A little empathetic response.
He doesn't feel that it's terrible.
It's like a narrative commenting
on, like, a tragic story.
But that has nothing to do with how he feels about her
and anything that would inhibit his violence toward her
or killing her.
The reason he targeted prostitutes was less about
the fact that they sold sex
for money and more because he believed that they were
neglectful of their children.
Why would White be so angry at women whom he
perceives to be poor mothers, on whether or not they were?
And one possibility is that
he had a neglectful and violent childhood.
He does allude to a really
interesting idea that he's been cheated on.
No matter how good he is to women, they cheat on him.
He articulates one of the features in people
with psychopathy, um, Mr. White admits,
um, it's about power and control
over the women that he's killed.
There's either a payback or punishment to women
for what they've done to him,
which, by extension, means it's really not his fault.
Um, he's a victim.
What he seems to be describing is intense desire to
kill and rage that keeps growing and escalating.
It's powerlessness that turns into rage.
Rage that's channeled as contempt, so that he can then
dehumanize the victim, and then the contempt that allows
him to play out these sadistic fantasies and enjoy his moments
of power side-by-side with this perverted intimacy.
And when he kills, that dissipates
the rage, and then it builds up again.
MORGAN: Just like a cat playing with a mouse.
It's gonna kill it maybe eventually,
but it's going to torment it emotionally in that sense.
And that would be playing with other people like toys,
that would come to the callousness,
that ruthlessness, that we see in psychopathy, where other
people are used for our own pleasure,
and that's what Mr. White was doing.
The thrilling part is seeing life leave their eyes,
and with many psychopaths,
um, there's a progression.
There's something that seems exciting at the beginning
that's not exciting later as they kill more people.
He needs more stimulation to get the same level of
excitement from an experience,
that level of neuronal feedback that gives him
that sense of pleasure.
He appears to be performing for the camera.
He -- he must know that he's being videoed, and, you know,
he comes in and out of being sincere, and this has
a performative feel.
Um, but there's also, I think, this interesting grandiose,
self-righteous reference to himself
where he sees himself as merciful, because he doesn't
torture his victims, when, in fact, he does,
emotionally does torture them and sexually assaults them.
WOMAN: Onlookers held their noses
as police investigators unearthed two bodies
from shallow graves in a suburban Denver backyard.
WOMAN: Richard Paul White walks out of the courtroom
moments after he pleads guilty to two counts of murder
and three counts of sexual assault.
The result of this plea bargain is that Richard White
will spend the rest of his life in prison
without parole, and there will not be a trial.