I’m curious: is your working theory that these are human beings with brains that have this tiny little derangement in some key area of their mind but everything else is normal?
Or are you going from a working theory that most human beings are capable of committing such crimes, we just aren’t given the exact right set of information inputs that would cause us to commit these behaviors?
Or is your working theory that some human beings, with exactly the same brains and exactly the same data input, would choose not to commit these crimes from “free will”?
Basically,
a. Did nature screw them over
b. Did nurture screw them over
c. Did these people just decide to do something not in their long term interests because they just wanted to do bad…
You know how when you see other people driving their cars, some people lift off the gas when there’s a red light up ahead, while other people drive full speed until the last few feet and use their brakes to stop hard?
My thought is that this is a silly thing to ask and your degrees and knowledge in medical science should eliminate possibilities right off the bat. (c) is bogus. (b) involves them somehow not knowing that the pain of incarceration long term was a likely punishment for committing the kinds of crimes you mention. It’s one thing to commit a murder in a way you might get away with (and to have a **really **strong reason), but attacking someone with a chainsaw is not one of those ways.
So the problem here would be in (a). Specifically, discount rate - these people have set points for discounting future punishments to an extreme degree.
Which wouldn’t prevent them from “ordinary” speech since the feedback from speaking well are immediate.
Does your sister post here? I swear, I saw this story directly from the source a while back, and was going to mention here that there was a Doper who had worked with him, just like there is a Doper who knew one of the guys in the infamous German cannibalism case from around 2000.
My mother was a police department secretary for many years, and she broke confidentiality to tell me that a man I knew when I was a teenager was a child molester. Pretty much all of his female relatives - sisters, nieces, cousins, (grand)daughters, etc. - had been abused by him, and none of them knew about anyone else being molested until two of his grandchildren admitted to each other than he had done this, told their mother, and got the ball rolling. He couldn’t be prosecuted because there was no physical evidence, but I totally believed it, even though he did not abuse me, because all of his kids (including his son, who denied being abused or knowing about it at the time) made really bad decisions when it came to picking spouses.
Not to derail the thread, but aren’t most cases of child molestation convicted via victim testimony alone? (Since there wouldn’t be much, if any, evidence otherwise)
I don’t believe that she does, though I suspect I’d shared her story here before. (Also, one of Dahmer’s defense attorneys at his trial was the older sister of one of my grade school friends.)
Yes, but I understand it is changing. Just today there was a bit in a Spanish newspaper about a kid who worked with the police to get his abuser in flagrante: that means a recording and testimony from the cops, as well as the boy’s own testimony. This is one of the consequences of the general change in attitudes about abuse, and a very good one I say.
My sister was a corrections officer in Fresno, California. I asked her a few times about some of the infamous people that were in the jail during her time. Pretty much without fail she described them all as very quiet and no trouble at all.
I’m sure that their behavior was somewhat affected by their imprisonment, but I was always surprised at how normal they all appeared to her.
I have a friend that lives outside of Wichita, KS. When Dennis Rader (BTK serial killer) was arrested, she was in shock, because she recognized him from about a year and half before as the man that knocked on her front door and tried to force himself into their house. Fortunately for her, her husband (a very large guy) was home and scared him enough to run away. They reported the incident at the time, but there wasn’t enough info to go on.
Most of these really horrific people can put on a good face to the public. But it’s only a persona, and their deep darkness exists and drives them to do what they do. Ann Rule knew Ted Bundy, and did not believe he was guilty until months after he was arrested. FBI serial killers unit chief Robert Resslear grew up with John Wayne Gacy, but didn’t remember him (but Gacy remembered Resslear).
I knew a woman who married a man who was in prison for murder. She always claimed he didn’t do it, and helped to get him released. Four months later, he was arrested for rape and assault, and sent back to prison. The evidence was overwhelming, but he convinced her everybody was lying and the police set him up to send him back to jail.
I meant to post earlier. I volunteered for several years for a rape crisis group. In addition to the crisis counseling, we also provided victim advocates (who work with the survivor through the criminal process). I worked with people who had horrifying things done to them - systematic torture that lasted for years, as one example. Parents abused and raped their own children. There were perpetrators who also reached out directly to the counselors - to scare us, or try to get satisfaction by describing crimes.
It haunted me at times while I did the work, although I was buoyed by the help I was giving others. Years later, some of those cases haunt me still.
I don’t have any deep thoughts about why people commit evil acts. I don’t think they see others as human.
Fortunately, outside of a few sadistic kids that I was unfortunately acquainted with when I was a child I haven’t knowingly ran into depraved individuals. I have given the subject a bit of thought and I am not sure how much choice is really involved.
Yes. I cut off all contact with her. She was renting a room from a friend of mine, and she tried to illegally take ownership of the house to help her husband get out of prison.