The thing inside of me, it's like...
the appetite -- it's like a wolf that's...
feeling...
the hunger.
SAHNI: In this series, we've seen individuals
that have engaged in terrifying acts,
violent acts of horror -- murders, kidnapping, rape.
We've seen that psychopathic individuals
look sometimes like you and me.
They walk among us.
They're our neighbors, they're our co-workers,
they might even be our spouses or family members.
Research has shown us that there are also some
telltale signs that give us the indication
that somebody may have psychopathic behavior.
The reason why we need to recognize the indicators
of psychopathy, those signs of psychopath,
are because they are extensions of
traits that are in all of us as human beings,
and that when some of those traits become
too prominent or are atrophied,
there's not enough of it,
that's when people get into trouble.
It's important to recognize them so that when we do,
we know when we might be in danger.
SAHNI: We'll talk about some common markers that we,
as experts, look for to help identify an individual
that we think is exhibiting psychopathy and that we use to
assess their risk level for future violence.
Confidence is a positive thing.
Confidence can help us succeed in our interpersonal
relationships, at our jobs and our school.
But whenever it begins to escalate to a level of
grandiosity and narcissism where we think that we make
the rules, that's when it becomes pathological.
Somebody that has an intense level of self focus,
an over-inflated sense of self importance, and a belief that
they're somehow better than the rest of us,
it allows them to be in a power differential
position where they're one up, and we're one down.
Richard Ramirez walked into the courtroom as if he was
a rock star
entering into a concert venue rather than somebody who's
facing trial for multiple murder charges.
He seemed more interested in the fame
and the affection that he received from his followers.
That is his way of showing his grandiosity,
that this whole court system was just beneath him.
He was arrogant, he felt that he was
better than everyone else.
While Richard Ramirez is one notorious example
of grandiosity,
we also see that same behavior in Israel Keyes.
SAHNI: For most of us, the experience of interacting
with law enforcement, if you just think about
having been pulled over with a speeding ticket,
people become nervous,
they start babbling and talking quickly.
They show outward signs of stress and discomfort.
What we see here in Keyes,
oozes the concept of grandiosity.
He is self-focused, he is entitled,
he is arrogant, and he is not at all concerned about
the interaction and how he comes across with others.
[Keyes laughs]
TUSSEY: These victims were pawns in Israel Keyes's game,
and whenever they foiled his plan,
he got angry and tried to take back control of the situation,
and the way he callously laughs
about it in retrospect as he's discussing it, in the same way
that you or I might discuss going to the store to buy milk,
he knows what's right and what's wrong,
but he doesn't care.
[laughs]
MORGAN: The comment, "Everything is free if
you take it," is really interesting.
Rules apply to other people.
He's expressing the narcissistic view of
the world that he's unconstrained,
and the world is -- things are there for him,
and he deserves them.
They're owed to him, because he's so great.
SAHNI: Many people have a desire to have nice, material items,
nice cars, nice clothes, nice homes.
But most individuals in society don't take
from other people to gain those accomplishments.
A psychopathic individual uses other people to get
ahead, and they victimize people all along the way.
And for Aeman Presley, it was about fame.
SAHNI: There are people every single day
whose dreams are failed.
For somebody who experiences grandiosity,
being able to stay in a status position is
a critical part of what continues to feed it.
And so for Aeman Presley, having a failed acting
career doesn't really
do anything to help bolster that grandiosity,
but killing people does.
He's not getting the attention and recognition that
he thinks he should have by being an actor.
So he's finding another way to make his mark on the world.
If he can't get adoration, he will settle for fear.
DETECTIVE: Mm-hmm.
SAHNI: When we think of a narcissistic individual,
and we think about their grandiosity,
it's all about themselves.
But in so many of our episodes and crimes,
the high that that individual is after is 100 percent
about the harm another person experiences.
It isn't incidental or a byproduct.
It's actually the focus of how they achieve pleasure.
A sadist is somebody who enjoys seeing
the pain and suffering in another individual.
It's a common trait that we see in psychopathy.
In a way, there is no such
thing as collateral damage for a sadist, because the damage is
the entire goal of their behavior.
MORGAN: In psych, we often think, it's like that old adage,
"I want you to suffer like I do."
Many psychopaths,
they enjoy the control over the person,
and they actually enjoy that person's fear,
their terror, their emotions, and their suffering.
When we think about what has gone on over the years in
social media and the kind of bullying and harassment
and trolling behavior,
most of us, the line that pulls us back is
we realize we don't want to hurt another human being.
The difference is a sadistic
offender doesn't mind creating victims.
I have many -- what I call them projects.
They were different people in the town
that I followed, watched.
Tying somebody up is very personal.
It can give an individual like Dennis Rader
the ultimate power over their victim.
He derives joy from watching another individual suffer.
The same sadistic tendency and drive that we see in BTK,
we also see in criminals like Gary Sampson.
Sampson victimized complete strangers,
some of whom were even trying to help him.
This exemplifies his sadistic tendencies
to use people as objects.
I mean, he didn't even care about their names.
They're basically a means to an end for him.
Sampson's describing a level of force and violence
that is so excessive to what he needed to do
to render the victim helpless and to gain compliance
that you can only think he must have been
enjoying this and getting a high off of it.
It gives him a sense of power,
and it drove that urge to do it again.
He was finding ways to prolong the deaths,
trying to find different ways to do it in order
to satisfy that urge.
He wanted to torture this person.
He was not trying to do it quickly.
He was trying to inflict as much pain as possible,
and that is sadism.
Sadists might modify their behavior in order to
keep chasing that high and to keep fulfilling
that need to watch someone else suffer.
And that's also true for individuals who
engage in sexual sadism, like Michael Ross.
[Ross laughing]
[laughs]
SAHNI: Ross does a really good job of articulating --
it was the power he was after.
And it was about that urge to control another human being --
evoking fear, evoking fight, evoking humiliation,
evoking pain and torture.
That is the high that he craved.
And once he got a taste of it, he needed to keep it going.
The importance of the strangulation is key here.
For Ross, it allows him to feel
the individual's life being drained from them.
It's an intimate connection that
gives him a sexual fulfillment.
It's the epitome of sexual sadism.
SAHNI: What's interesting about Ross is that while the crimes
are so sadistic and so violent,
he blended into everyday society.
He graduated from a very well-respected school.
Psychopathic individuals, they're oftentimes people
publicly who we might walk right past.
The risk is right in front of you, and you don't see it.
MORGAN: They're good at disarming people,
because they seem nice.
There's another trait in psychopathy.
When we talk about superficial charm,
it's a behavioral strategy on the part of a psychopath to get
what they want -- everybody likes a little flattery,
and they don't see the wolf coming.
MAN: Please state your full name for the record.
[indistinct] It's Theodore Bundy.
Theodore Robert Bundy.
I have got to keep myself together.
I have got to stay calm.
I've got to keep my presence of mind, because as long as I
do that, I'm gonna beat these people.
DERIGHT: Charm can be anything from smiling to someone
to building them up and giving them compliments.
We all use charm to try to get something that we want or in
order to make a situation happen -- in a psychopath,
it's going to make someone disarmed.
Ted Bundy is perhaps one of
the most notorious examples of superficial charm and glibness.
His smile, his wit, his demeanor
helped him meet and become close
with his victims so that he was ultimately able to
murder them.
Using charm allows you to be a wolf in sheep's clothing
and Ted Bundy is not alone in using charm to lure victims.
One of the examples of superficial charm
is in the case of Anthony Allen Shore.
He's studying the things that might put her at ease
or might make her in a position to do what he wants to.
He's literally and figuratively learning how to
speak her language in order
to get closer to her.
MORGAN: For psychopaths, charm is a deadly weapon.
It blinds us when we're normal
to the danger that is in front of us.
It disarms us and makes them more lethal.
We don't see it coming, and they know it.
We'd like to think that most people would accept
the rejection, apologize.
Many psychopaths don't have a good appreciation of how well
they're doing in their charm, and he may have thought it was
working very well, and then when he was rejected,
got angry.
He has a tourniquet with him,
which is not the thing you take on a date.
He's got to be up close
and personal to strangle someone with a tourniquet.
SAHNI: When we think about these different traits
we've discussed in psychopathy,
one of the important distinguishing factors between
those of us who aren't psychopathic and those who are,
is our willingness to manipulate others to a degree
that creates harm.
Manipulation is something that we use
in our everyday life all the time.
Trying to get someone to buy something if you're in sales,
trying to get your toddler to eat their vegetables.
Manipulation is not necessarily a -- a negative quality.
It's a human quality that exists in all of us.
But then also manipulation is yet another tool
that psychopaths use in order to victimize people.
TUSSEY: On the surface, John Wayne Gacy
looked like a regular community member.
He was even involved in local politics.
He performed as Pogo the Clown at kids' parties.
MORGAN: Gacy lured people in with
the promise of getting a construction job.
That was a manipulation. That's a very appealing offer.
There's nothing suspicious about it.
I mean, "Oh, I'll get a job," and it's disarming.
SAHNI: He would create a scenario that he was gonna
show them a magic trick to get victims to voluntarily
agree to be tied up.
Most of us are sitting here thinking, "I would never let
someone just tie me up,"
so that should give you the litmus test and the measure
for how successful he was.
Michael Hernandez is another good example of someone
who uses manipulation to lure his victims in.
Jaime was good friends with Hernandez.
He had no reason to think that
Hernandez would do anything to harm him.
Someone like Hernandez doesn't return loyalties.
He uses them to exploit someone.
He sees them as signs of weakness.
MORGAN: It is a manipulation.
They say whatever they need to tell you to do it,
and then we end up believing if we follow
their instructions, then we believe it'll be okay.
I think that's what Jaime's doing in this setting,
but with psychopaths who manipulate,
they're never gonna let you go.
Hernandez doesn't make any real attempts to cover up
the fact that he manipulated Jaime, that that was his agenda,
that was his goal, and that is what he did to his friend.
That is one of those traits we see in
psychopathic individuals.
We see that display of just willing
to look at humans as transactional characters.
They have something that I want.
How do I get it? That lack of empathy
is definitely a marker of psychopathic behavior.
Lack of empathy is a detachment
from the typical emotions that we,
as humans, experience when we interact with each other.
Jeffrey Dahmer sought out
his victims ultimately wanting to turn them into human zombies
so that they had no real
ability to interact with him, all for his own pleasure,
with zero remorse for what he did.
For most of us, we feel bad that somebody
else is struggling or suffering.
With a psychopathic individual,
they're not bothered by harm and pain and suffering.
They exhibit that lack of empathy,
that lack of connectedness,
even to their own family members.
We see that in the case of John Hummel.
Lack of empathy,
it definitely impact someone's ability
to maintain long-term relationships.
So for Hummel, rather than problem solving in the way that
other individuals might,
when we have relationship issues, he gets rid of his
problem by getting rid of his family.
TUSSEY: He discusses it so calmly.
There's nothing about his actions,
non-verbal or verbal, that suggests he feels remorse
beyond the superficial
acknowledgement that he feels bad about it.
He kills his entire family,
and despite the fact that people would say he was
attached to his daughter, that he loved her,
he was enjoying being a father and a parent,
she was dispensable when, ultimately,
her needs conflicted with his needs.
And that's the key, really, is that for some individuals,
their psychopathic tendencies stay in check for many,
many years, but the minute that their need
comes into conflict with other people's needs,
they choose themselves.
He's talking about being detached.
He's talking about not feeling the closeness
that he should have for his family members.
He's not thinking about what happened
after and getting pleasure out of it.
He's not reveling in it, but he's not remorseful, either.
Not only is he unable to express the typical emotions
that you would see in someone
who's experiencing the loss of someone else,
let alone their own child,
he's not even able to do that for himself.
His relationship with death is really him saying,
"I don't really know how to feel.
"I -- I don't have these positive
or negative feelings associated with it."
One thing we see with both John Hummel and Kevin Davis is
that they both have a very significant lack of empathy,
to a degree that
they're able to victimize people in their own family.
He's saying that it's a beautiful thing that happened,
and he's in awe of people
that can do this in such beautiful and creative ways.
He's not showing any remorse for doing what he did.
He's not showing any regret that it was his mother.
SAHNI: There's a complete lack of empathy.
He knew that she was struggling.
He dragged her from room to room and then continued
to inflict pain on her and inflict harm on her.
And the way he describes this, there's no emotion there.
SAHNI: Individuals who show real remorse,
sincere remorse, are able to focus on how their actions
impacted the victim.
Davis is really illustrating that
he doesn't distinguish -- people are people.
People are just pieces of meat -- he needed to do it.
He's done it now.
He's satisfied that urge, that curiosity.
This lack of regard that we see in individuals
who have little or no empathy
can sometimes propel them to take advantage
of other people, as well.
Using someone or a family member
to get what they need or want.
Parasitic lifestyle is another trait that we often see in
psychopaths, very similar to a parasitic relationship in
the animal world.
The parasite is taking, taking,
taking and giving almost nothing back.
They're able to victimize people in their own family,
and when the livelihood is threatened,
okay, well that's enough of you -- you need to be killed.
What would being a success, what does that mean, you know?
Money?
If I didn't have two or three girls to help me,
I would pretty much be lost, and I wouldn't know what
the hell I'm doing.
TUSSEY: Charles Manson exemplifies parasitic living.
He lived with his followers, he asked them to carry out
tasks on his behalf,
and he took advantage of them.
They catered to him, and he allowed them to.
He even called them the Family.
As humans, we all like to feel safe.
We need to feel safe. That's one of our basic needs.
We enjoy feeling taken care of or catered to.
But someone who is living a parasitic lifestyle is
an individual who takes what they need
or what they want from whoever they can take it from.
They live off of others.
And Grant Amato is a great example of that.
Mr. Amato's living at home and annoyed when his parents say,
"You need to be making a contribution."
It's his view that he shouldn't have to do anything,
and he views their demand as unreasonable.
MORGAN: As we see in psychopathy,
they prefer fantasy to reality.
He will do everything he can to
preserve his relationship with his internet model,
and he doesn't pay any attention
to the actual family around him.
He has the feeling that he's entitled to their money.
He doesn't have to ask to take it.
It's his for the taking, it's an extension
of that view of other people are things from --
for me to benefit from.
He's almost blaming them for expecting him to have a job
or for them refusing to continue to pay
for this virtual girlfriend.
His entire life,
his goal is seeking his own pleasure, and that's at
the expense of everyone else who's willing to fund it.
He couldn't forgive his family
for basically ruining his fantasy love.
Instead, he murders his family.
SAHNI: We've talked about just some of the traits
and behaviors and the psychopathic features
we look at in psychopathy as experts.
MORGAN: We don't know who's gonna be a psychopath.
So I think learning about the traits means we can
examine in our relationships
with other people, to what degree is this
feature going on?
Then we have to ask, when is it dangerous?
So when people realize they might be in danger,
it can save our lives.
These traits live in all of us at different times in
our lives, different life situations
and circumstances, and this is what makes
psychopathic behavior so scary for everybody is there are
times we don't see any warning signs, and they do live and walk
among us -- keep your eyes open for the signs.