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That's Chumbu 22 00:00:56.960 --> 00:00:57.759 Casino dot com. 23 00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:00.240 No personesses every d void over every by lost Eaters conff. 24 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:00.880 It's eighty plus. 25 00:01:07.959 --> 00:01:11.400 You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking 26 00:01:11.480 --> 00:01:14.519 killers in true crime history and the authors that have 27 00:01:14.599 --> 00:01:20.680 written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker BTK 28 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:25.400 Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking 29 00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:29.599 and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with 30 00:01:29.719 --> 00:01:42.239 your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening. 31 00:01:42.680 --> 00:01:46.719 Find out what truly creates and defines a psychopath from 32 00:01:46.719 --> 00:01:49.959 the leading expert who helped to create Killing Eves Villanel. 33 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:54.920 Doctor Mark Freestone has worked on some of the most interesting, infamous, 34 00:01:54.959 --> 00:01:59.200 and disturbing cases of psychopathology in recent years. His expertise 35 00:01:59.239 --> 00:02:02.400 has led to a consultant role on several TV series, 36 00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:07.239 helping them accurately portray their fictional villains. Now he shares 37 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:10.319 his phenomenal insight into the minds of some of the 38 00:02:10.319 --> 00:02:15.199 world's most violent real life criminals. Angela the Remorseless, a 39 00:02:15.319 --> 00:02:20.080 rare female psychopath casually confessed to murder on national television 40 00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:23.879 without a hint of regret. Danny the Borderline switched from 41 00:02:23.919 --> 00:02:27.960 grandiosity to rage to despair within minutes and killed his 42 00:02:28.039 --> 00:02:34.000 defenseless friend without explanation. Tony de Khanman preferred charm, intimidation 43 00:02:34.120 --> 00:02:38.120 and sexual abuse over physical violence, and once tried to 44 00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:42.000 dupe someone into buying the Eiffel Tower. Jason the Lyar 45 00:02:42.319 --> 00:02:45.120 had a fantasy life that led to vicious murders around 46 00:02:45.159 --> 00:02:48.360 Europe and preyed on those who see the good in people. 47 00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:52.400 Case by fascinating case, get to know seven of the 48 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:56.199 most dangerous minds that doctor Freestone has encountered over the 49 00:02:56.240 --> 00:02:59.680 last fifteen years. These are up close accounts of some 50 00:02:59.719 --> 00:03:03.240 of them psychopathic criminals and of what can happen if 51 00:03:03.240 --> 00:03:07.719 you fall victim to their supreme powers of manipulation. Exploring 52 00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:11.719 the many factors that make a psychopath, the complexities and 53 00:03:11.800 --> 00:03:15.240 contradictions of their emotions and behavior, as well as an 54 00:03:15.319 --> 00:03:19.360 examination of how the lives of psychopaths develop inside and 55 00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:23.599 outside the institutions that are supposed to contain them. Making 56 00:03:23.719 --> 00:03:27.400 a psychopath opens up a window into the world of 57 00:03:27.439 --> 00:03:31.120 those who operate in a void of human emotion and 58 00:03:31.199 --> 00:03:33.879 what can be done to control them. The book that 59 00:03:33.879 --> 00:03:38.000 we're featuring this evening is Making a Psychopath My Journey 60 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:42.319 into Seven Dangerous Minds with my special guest author, doctor 61 00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:45.520 Mark Freestone. Welcome to the program, and thank you very 62 00:03:45.599 --> 00:03:49.120 much for this interview, Doctor Mark Freestone, closed to be here. 63 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:53.639 Thank you so much, our pleasure. Now you start off 64 00:03:53.759 --> 00:03:56.759 the introduction in this book, you state that you're not 65 00:03:56.800 --> 00:04:01.960 a psychiatrist and you're not a forensic psychologist. So tell 66 00:04:02.039 --> 00:04:07.759 us about your training and also tell us about biopsychosocial 67 00:04:08.199 --> 00:04:11.240 understanding of mental illness a mental disorder. Espone me. 68 00:04:11.439 --> 00:04:13.879 Yeah, of course, Dan, A good way to start out, 69 00:04:13.919 --> 00:04:16.000 so you sort of know where I'm coming from now. 70 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.040 So I was a sociologist. I trained in sociology, and 71 00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:22.920 I think that maybe sociology, although it does include elements 72 00:04:23.199 --> 00:04:27.959 of psychology in its trading pathway, and certainly I did 73 00:04:27.959 --> 00:04:30.600 a lot of psychology as a young student, I think 74 00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:34.600 sociology tends to look for more group based, social level, 75 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:39.560 societal level explanations for behavior and for consequences of people's behavior. 76 00:04:39.839 --> 00:04:43.439 So my PhD was actually based on anti globalization protests, 77 00:04:43.439 --> 00:04:47.160 which sounds a long way away from mental health and psychopathy. 78 00:04:47.240 --> 00:04:49.560 But what I was specifically looking at was how groups 79 00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:53.920 of people form around particular protests organizations, and I found it, actually, 80 00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:57.720 curiously enough, although I was looking at anti globalization protests, 81 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:00.680 there was a big shift around nine eleven actually, which 82 00:05:00.920 --> 00:05:03.000 took place in the middle of my PhD study, away 83 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:05.759 from that sort of anti capitalist, anti globalization moments into 84 00:05:05.759 --> 00:05:08.439 an anti war movement. But what I found was quite 85 00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:11.759 interesting was it was the same people who were organizing 86 00:05:11.800 --> 00:05:14.959 process who are sort of they become almost like professionalized 87 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:18.319 protesters or professionalized protest organizers. And as I was reaching 88 00:05:18.360 --> 00:05:20.920 the end of the PhD, my supervisor said, well, the 89 00:05:21.639 --> 00:05:24.439 methodological approach that you used, the way that you come 90 00:05:24.519 --> 00:05:27.560 to understand and work with these groups of protesters would 91 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:31.240 be really interesting. In a secure hospital, Now, a secure 92 00:05:31.240 --> 00:05:33.519 hospital is not something that exists in quite that form 93 00:05:33.519 --> 00:05:36.160 in the United States. They have these in Canada, but 94 00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:39.360 essentially they're hospitals that exist to house people who are 95 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:42.519 already convicted criminals, or who are or would be convicted 96 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:45.199 criminals if they weren't found not guilty by reason of 97 00:05:45.199 --> 00:05:47.600 insanity as we say right in the UK, or in 98 00:05:47.639 --> 00:05:50.240 other words, they're not culpable for their crime because they 99 00:05:50.279 --> 00:05:52.519 were suffering from a mental disorder at the time they 100 00:05:52.519 --> 00:05:54.399 committed it. And one of these have been set up 101 00:05:54.439 --> 00:05:57.240 at a high security hospital just up the road from 102 00:05:57.240 --> 00:05:59.360 the university where I was working at Rampton Hospital in 103 00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:02.439 the UK, one of our three maxim security hostrils and 104 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:06.040 it was called the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder UNI 105 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:08.079 and essentially the role of this was to try and 106 00:06:08.199 --> 00:06:12.000 treat psychopaths or people with a level of personality pathology, 107 00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:15.319 so difficulties in relating to other people, difficulties and understanding 108 00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:18.519 and dealing with emotion equivalent to those of somebody who 109 00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:21.519 was a psychopath. This was a very bold move. Nobody 110 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:24.600 else really tried this before that. In the Netherlands, the 111 00:06:24.680 --> 00:06:27.319 Dutch have a system kind of analogois called the turber 112 00:06:27.319 --> 00:06:31.279 Shicking Stelling system, but it doesn't explicitly work with psychopaths 113 00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:33.279 in quite the same way. So this was very innovative, 114 00:06:33.439 --> 00:06:36.399 very cutting edge and sort of very exciting place to be. 115 00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:38.959 But as I rapidly discovered, it's not as simple as 116 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:42.120 that to suddenly overturn fifty years of failed attempts to 117 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:44.399 treat psychopathy, and things tended to go a little bit 118 00:06:44.439 --> 00:06:47.920 badly wrong in those units But what I think you 119 00:06:48.079 --> 00:06:50.839 touched on with your question about the biopsychosocial approach is 120 00:06:50.839 --> 00:06:53.759 that a lot of the thinking around mental disorder in 121 00:06:53.800 --> 00:06:55.959 the UK for a long time. I think it's probably 122 00:06:55.959 --> 00:06:58.480 true of the US and Canada as well, it's based 123 00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:00.720 around a biomedical model. So this is the idea that 124 00:07:00.759 --> 00:07:03.959 mental disorders are necessarily biological illnesses that are based in 125 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:07.480 some kind of biological problem. It could be something about 126 00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:10.319 the neurological wiring, it could be a problem that's based 127 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:13.120 in the sort of a genetic coding that leads you 128 00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:15.480 to lack the emotions that other people would have. And 129 00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:19.199 the biopsychosocial model just sort of critiques that biomedical understanding 130 00:07:19.240 --> 00:07:21.519 and says, well, what about the societies that people grow 131 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:24.600 up in, what about the influence of child what about 132 00:07:24.600 --> 00:07:27.639 the influence of attachment in the way that people develop, 133 00:07:28.079 --> 00:07:31.600 and trying to sort of recast mental disorders like psychopathy 134 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:35.319 and personality disorder as problems that are not just medical. 135 00:07:35.519 --> 00:07:37.560 They involve the input from a lot of other kind 136 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:42.279 of professional disciplines social work, probation officers, prison officers, potentially nurses, 137 00:07:42.319 --> 00:07:45.439 and maybe even wacky sociologists like me to try and 138 00:07:45.519 --> 00:07:47.959 understand them and cast them in a way that says, 139 00:07:47.959 --> 00:07:50.560 these are problems that can't just be solved by medicine. 140 00:07:50.839 --> 00:07:53.600 And that's particularly true of psychopathy. Of course, because we 141 00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:55.879 don't have a drug to treat psychopathy. We don't even 142 00:07:55.959 --> 00:07:58.839 have drugs to treat the symptoms. We have to approach 143 00:07:58.879 --> 00:08:01.600 it in a biopside a social way in order to 144 00:08:01.639 --> 00:08:03.920 manage people with a diagnosis of psychopathy. 145 00:08:04.279 --> 00:08:08.759 You talk about the masks of psychopathology or psychopathy pardon me, 146 00:08:09.079 --> 00:08:13.279 and you also have you talk about the gold standard 147 00:08:13.319 --> 00:08:17.600 or research being Hervey Kleckley from nineteen forty one, The 148 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:21.319 Mask of Sanity, and then you say later with Robert 149 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:25.560 Hare the Psychopathic Checklist, and then with his second edition 150 00:08:25.639 --> 00:08:30.360 of the Psychopathic Checklist, tell us just briefly about the 151 00:08:30.399 --> 00:08:35.000 effect that it has on psychopathic research or research about psychopathy, 152 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:40.159 and then your criticism with the second edition of Robert 153 00:08:40.200 --> 00:08:42.039 Hare's Psychopathic Checklist. 154 00:08:42.159 --> 00:08:44.679 Yeah, of course. So I think I talk about the 155 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:48.039 idea of masks of psychopathy in the book, and that 156 00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:51.600 comes from Cleckley's work on what you called the Mask 157 00:08:51.639 --> 00:08:54.600 of sanity, the idea that psychopaths put on a mask 158 00:08:54.919 --> 00:08:58.279 of appearing to be normal to anyone who anyone who 159 00:08:58.279 --> 00:09:01.000 meets a psychopaths for five minutes wouldn't know they'd met 160 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:03.320 a psychopath. In fact, quite the opposite. They might have 161 00:09:03.320 --> 00:09:06.919 thought modern, charming and sort of urbane, interesting individual. So 162 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:09.679 this is what Cleckley means. Psychopaths have the ability to 163 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:14.919 pass themselves off quite competently as a normal, adjusted, functioning, 164 00:09:14.919 --> 00:09:18.120 empathic human being over short spaces of time. So that's 165 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:19.879 the idea of that the sort of the mask that 166 00:09:20.159 --> 00:09:22.879 psychopaths were, and beneath that mask is a sort of 167 00:09:22.919 --> 00:09:25.840 a very sort of a seeding mass of very confused 168 00:09:25.879 --> 00:09:29.159 morality and a real absence of a connection to other 169 00:09:29.240 --> 00:09:32.559 human beings, which looks like insanity in many ways, because 170 00:09:32.559 --> 00:09:35.799 it's impossible for us without being psychopaths, I think to 171 00:09:35.879 --> 00:09:38.720 understand the sort of the absence of a moral code 172 00:09:38.759 --> 00:09:41.080 on moral compass that psychopaths have. And I think that's 173 00:09:41.080 --> 00:09:43.480 one of the reasons why psychopaths in fiction are so compelling, 174 00:09:43.559 --> 00:09:46.279 because it's really really difficult to think, what would my 175 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:49.080 world be like if I simply didn't care about other people? 176 00:09:49.639 --> 00:09:52.840 And then Bob Hair, the Cladian forensic psychologist, sort of 177 00:09:52.879 --> 00:09:56.639 realizes her Cleckley's vision into a number of testable traits 178 00:09:56.960 --> 00:10:00.159 that psychopaths have. There's twenty traits and psychopathy checklists, and 179 00:10:00.360 --> 00:10:04.279 it very quickly becomes, particularly the PCRs. The secondition that 180 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:06.519 you mentioned, the Psychothy Checklist revised that was probabished in 181 00:10:06.639 --> 00:10:10.399 ninety eight, that quickly becomes sort of the only accepted 182 00:10:10.440 --> 00:10:14.639 way of identifying and clinically assessing for psychopathy in just 183 00:10:14.639 --> 00:10:17.279 about any developed country. It's been translated into i think 184 00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:19.679 eighteen languages, and there's a youth version as well, and 185 00:10:19.720 --> 00:10:23.039 a screening tool that sometimes use so many many different versions, 186 00:10:23.039 --> 00:10:25.639 many many different languages. So the exclusion of anything else, 187 00:10:25.799 --> 00:10:28.519 and I think that the issue that I have is 188 00:10:28.519 --> 00:10:31.799 that nothing that's what is it now twenty four years old, 189 00:10:31.879 --> 00:10:33.840 is ever going to represent the state of the art 190 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.080 in research. It just isn't. And I think, just to 191 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:39.799 take an example, something that coleckly noticed was that psychopaths 192 00:10:39.799 --> 00:10:43.399 tend to have much much lower thresholds of anxiety than 193 00:10:43.480 --> 00:10:46.679 people who weren't psychopaths in a usual way. And Bob 194 00:10:46.879 --> 00:10:49.559 has always been very resistant to including anxiety in any 195 00:10:49.559 --> 00:10:51.840 shape or form in the Psychopathy checklist. But actually the 196 00:10:51.919 --> 00:10:56.480 latest research suggests that people's levels of anxiety of what 197 00:10:56.519 --> 00:11:00.279 we call, I guess just sort of general dissatisfaction with 198 00:11:00.360 --> 00:11:02.480 the world. That are a pretty good way of distinguishing, 199 00:11:02.799 --> 00:11:06.120 certainly primary psychopaths from secondary psychopaths, which might learn too later, 200 00:11:06.200 --> 00:11:08.360 but would be a really good trait to add. But 201 00:11:08.679 --> 00:11:11.039 bop Air isn't interested, I think, in changing it now 202 00:11:11.039 --> 00:11:13.480 because it's adopted by most of our legal systems and 203 00:11:13.519 --> 00:11:15.679 we use it in the courts very very regularly, so 204 00:11:16.159 --> 00:11:17.879 why change it. But I'm not sure that that's the 205 00:11:17.919 --> 00:11:19.519 best way of thinking about it, And there's been a 206 00:11:19.559 --> 00:11:22.960 lot of alternative assessments put forward. There was a sort 207 00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:27.159 of a cross atlantic one called the CAP the Comprehensive 208 00:11:27.159 --> 00:11:30.960 Assessment of Psychopathic Personality that was proposed by Stephen Hart 209 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:34.440 in Canada and Caroline Logan and David Cook in the UK, 210 00:11:34.639 --> 00:11:38.080 which looked at psychopathy without the forensic element. So if 211 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:41.279 you take away the antisocial features of the Psychopathy Checklist, 212 00:11:41.320 --> 00:11:44.200 you're left with an assessment that could accurately predict psychopathy 213 00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:46.159 in people who weren't criminals. Whereas a weakness of the 214 00:11:46.200 --> 00:11:48.840 Psychopathy Checklist, in my opinion, is that it contains a 215 00:11:48.919 --> 00:11:52.039 very large number of items that relate simply to antisocial 216 00:11:52.399 --> 00:11:56.559 or offending behavior. So this wonderfully fascinating idea of a 217 00:11:56.600 --> 00:11:59.360 sort of successful or non criminal psychopath is not something 218 00:11:59.399 --> 00:12:01.799 we can add ass for using the pcl art. So 219 00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:04.120 lots of other reasons that I won't go into now, 220 00:12:04.120 --> 00:12:05.960 but I think it's maybe time for us to rethink 221 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.240 the way that we measure psychopathy. 222 00:12:07.759 --> 00:12:10.159 In that vein you t give an example in the 223 00:12:10.159 --> 00:12:14.600 book of Games, Fallon tell us about this in extraordinary example. 224 00:12:14.879 --> 00:12:19.080 Yeah, So, a professor of neuropsychology at Stanford University, James Fallen, 225 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:23.799 conducts a very interesting experiment to look at differential emotional 226 00:12:23.879 --> 00:12:28.159 responses within the brain, so neuropsychological responses to disturbing stimuli. 227 00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:30.799 And he does this using an approach called contrast tomography, 228 00:12:30.879 --> 00:12:33.919 So I sort of scanned the activation of electrical impulses 229 00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:36.559 in the brain. And he recruits two groups of people. 230 00:12:36.559 --> 00:12:39.399 He recruits people who have either been pre screened as 231 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:42.919 having psychopathy or are currently offenders on parole, and then 232 00:12:42.919 --> 00:12:45.320 he recruits a control group are just people on the 233 00:12:45.320 --> 00:12:47.879 street or his grad students. And he realizes that he's 234 00:12:47.879 --> 00:12:50.720 not been putting enough effort into recruiting the control room. 235 00:12:50.720 --> 00:12:52.480 And I can totally relate to this because it's so 236 00:12:52.639 --> 00:12:56.519 time consuming difficult to recruit offenders and psychopaths into any study. 237 00:12:56.559 --> 00:12:58.600 There's a lot of ethical loopholes you have to go through, 238 00:12:58.639 --> 00:13:00.480 a lot of people don't understand it, so you put 239 00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:01.840 a lot of effort into that, and then it's like, well, 240 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:03.720 where's your control group? And oh god, I've got to 241 00:13:03.759 --> 00:13:06.440 find some people to come do my research stump. So 242 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:08.600 he scans himself just to sort of fill in, and 243 00:13:08.600 --> 00:13:11.279 then he's looking through the slides and he's pretty much, 244 00:13:11.399 --> 00:13:14.440 you know, it's actually a really interesting and influential study. 245 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:17.000 He notices that the activation of the amygdala, which is 246 00:13:18.279 --> 00:13:20.039 a lobe in the middle of the brain just above 247 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:22.399 the limbic system, so just above where the brain stem 248 00:13:22.840 --> 00:13:26.080 meets the gray matter of the brain itself, is much 249 00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:28.879 much much lower in one of his controls, and he thinks, oh, 250 00:13:28.919 --> 00:13:31.679 that's on. This looks like a psychopath. What am I 251 00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:33.360 going to do with this one? So he says, well, 252 00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:34.840 I'd better find out who it is so I can 253 00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:37.200 call them and tell them there a psychopath. And he 254 00:13:37.279 --> 00:13:42.000 cross matches it to his master key list of participants 255 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:44.559 and realizes this is his own brainscat well, and he's 256 00:13:44.679 --> 00:13:47.799 very He describes this beautifully and his Ted talk and 257 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:49.440 his book. He says, I just sort of, you know, 258 00:13:49.639 --> 00:13:52.200 I had this Eureka moment where all of these these 259 00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:55.360 difficulties and this lack of understanding I've faced when dealing 260 00:13:55.399 --> 00:13:57.720 with other people in my life suddenly made sense. It's 261 00:13:57.720 --> 00:14:00.440 not because I was going about it wrong, where there 262 00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:02.159 was anything wrong with them. It was something about the 263 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:04.399 way that I am that made it very difficult for 264 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:06.240 me to relate to other people. And this is a 265 00:14:06.279 --> 00:14:09.240 successful man with a you know, a very high profile 266 00:14:09.279 --> 00:14:12.039 career at a you know, an Ivy League university in 267 00:14:12.080 --> 00:14:14.519 the USA, with a family, and this is something else 268 00:14:14.559 --> 00:14:16.840 that's very odd for a psychopath. They tend to have 269 00:14:17.039 --> 00:14:20.600 marital type relationships, so they can become very intimate with people, 270 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:22.919 but only over a short space of time. After about 271 00:14:22.919 --> 00:14:24.799 sort of six to twelve months, they tend to break 272 00:14:24.879 --> 00:14:28.120 up with their partners, usually due to infidelity or simply 273 00:14:28.120 --> 00:14:30.519 boredom on the part of the psychopath, and move on. 274 00:14:30.639 --> 00:14:33.679 And Jim has you know, three kids, successful family life, 275 00:14:33.679 --> 00:14:35.240 and he sort of, you know, he thinks to back 276 00:14:35.279 --> 00:14:37.960 all the times where he's had people over to entertain 277 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.039 them for dinner and he just sits around, sits at 278 00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:42.399 the table. They throw all these people around eating my 279 00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:45.440 food in my house, just gets on and he thinks 280 00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:47.279 that a well that you know, that's the psychopath in 281 00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:50.360 me talking. But at the same time, it doesn't inhibit 282 00:14:50.480 --> 00:14:53.519 him from having a you know, fulfilling family life right right. 283 00:14:53.759 --> 00:14:57.279 In this book, you describe composites of people that you've 284 00:14:57.279 --> 00:15:01.159 dealt with in the fifteen years and beyond, and some 285 00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:03.759 of them are ones that you personally dealt with and 286 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:07.879 others publicly visible ones. So let's start with one of 287 00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:10.879 the examples that you have is Paul the hit man, 288 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:14.240 and what this illustrates. 289 00:15:13.720 --> 00:15:18.200 Yeah, Paul was actually probably the most directly scary of 290 00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:20.799 all the psychopaths. I think, you know, there are a 291 00:15:20.799 --> 00:15:22.879 lot of other people in the book you aren't necessarily 292 00:15:23.399 --> 00:15:25.840 I think looking into their history, they might have very 293 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:28.799 scary crimes, or they might be difficult to deal with, 294 00:15:28.840 --> 00:15:31.000 which I'm sure touch on later. But I think Paul 295 00:15:31.159 --> 00:15:34.960 just interpersonally had an ability to command a room of people. 296 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.600 And the context is important here because this is in 297 00:15:37.639 --> 00:15:40.960 the context of a prison where prisoners have virtually no 298 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:43.960 power at all. They're completely beholden to the staff, the 299 00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:47.480 prison officers and the governors, and to an extent, psychologists 300 00:15:47.559 --> 00:15:50.440 and people like me who sort of work in clinical roles. 301 00:15:50.639 --> 00:15:54.000 And yet virtually every meeting I went to in the 302 00:15:54.039 --> 00:15:56.480 prison he was able to sort of control the room, 303 00:15:56.639 --> 00:16:00.240 and you always thought, well, who among the prisoners does 304 00:16:00.279 --> 00:16:04.159 he have something on that he can basically recruit them 305 00:16:04.200 --> 00:16:05.919 to his cause and get them to devote his way 306 00:16:05.960 --> 00:16:08.200 on any issue that may come up. And his offending 307 00:16:08.279 --> 00:16:11.440 history was, you know, he just sort of enforced nasty 308 00:16:11.480 --> 00:16:14.320 debts for drug dealers. So sure, if you've ever seen 309 00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:17.159 a British crime film Lockstop and Two Smoking Barrels, but 310 00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:19.720 there's a hit man. They're played by Vinnie Jones, who's 311 00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:21.440 actually known in British culture as a bit of a 312 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:23.639 scary character. He was a footballer, but he was known 313 00:16:23.679 --> 00:16:25.720 for sort of instance on the pitch, so he was 314 00:16:25.759 --> 00:16:27.440 sort of the kind of enforce who go around break 315 00:16:27.440 --> 00:16:30.039 people's kneecaps, tie them up and torture them or in 316 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:32.759 some cases kill them. But all was such an effective 317 00:16:32.799 --> 00:16:35.799 psychopath that rather than having to often having to kill 318 00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:38.120 people directly, he would just get other people to do it. 319 00:16:38.159 --> 00:16:39.919 People who are owned money or people who he hadn't 320 00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:41.919 under his thrall, and you could just just sort of 321 00:16:41.919 --> 00:16:43.759 sitting in a room with him and having him hold 322 00:16:43.879 --> 00:16:47.399 court and you know, sort of manipulate people into answering questions. 323 00:16:47.399 --> 00:16:49.320 You had a real sense of like, if this man 324 00:16:49.399 --> 00:16:52.080 asked you to do something in the community, what would 325 00:16:52.080 --> 00:16:54.360 you feel your options were to say no? And this 326 00:16:54.440 --> 00:16:56.759 isn't sort of thinking about is he going to be violent? 327 00:16:56.840 --> 00:16:59.799 This is just his sort of personal gravitass is sort 328 00:16:59.799 --> 00:17:02.679 of feeling that the way he woulded his sentences and 329 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:04.640 the way he spoke, and the way he'd look at 330 00:17:04.680 --> 00:17:06.640 you when he was sort of suggesting that you do 331 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:08.599 something kindly for him, which he did quite a lot. 332 00:17:08.640 --> 00:17:10.960 To me, I think because I was new, really carried 333 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:12.960 a lot of weight and it was difficult to sort 334 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:15.279 of think how you could get out of doing things 335 00:17:15.279 --> 00:17:17.680 for him. But over the course of working with him, 336 00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:21.599 it transpired. You know, he'd actually embedded himself more sinisterly 337 00:17:21.640 --> 00:17:23.119 into the culture of the prison that there were a 338 00:17:23.119 --> 00:17:25.720 lot of people doing favors for him, including some of 339 00:17:25.720 --> 00:17:28.440 the staff, and it actually caused quite a major scandal, 340 00:17:28.559 --> 00:17:30.480 which I detail in the book. 341 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:34.160 Yes You talk about that there was a woman named 342 00:17:34.200 --> 00:17:38.440 Louise running the orientation group, and so to again, as 343 00:17:38.480 --> 00:17:44.240 you have alluded to, that power extended into her compromising 344 00:17:44.359 --> 00:17:48.200 her job, her career, her life for the I guess 345 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:51.079 the favor of this part of the hit Man. 346 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:53.920 Yes, So this is there's a lot of stuff about 347 00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:56.440 psychopathy that we probably know but haven't actually written up 348 00:17:56.440 --> 00:17:59.279 and published because it's clinical material. But we have this 349 00:17:59.319 --> 00:18:02.319 idea of something called boundary violation where when you're working 350 00:18:02.359 --> 00:18:06.440 with people with severe personality disorder or particularly psychopathy, because 351 00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:08.839 you know, one of the constituent parts of the psychopathy 352 00:18:08.920 --> 00:18:12.079 checklist is manipulation, so the ability to con and manipulate 353 00:18:12.079 --> 00:18:14.680 people into getting your own way, and it's actually there's 354 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:17.640 a constant pressure to give way to people like Paul's, 355 00:18:17.640 --> 00:18:20.039 you know, attempts to sort of manipulate you, to control you, 356 00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:22.079 to get you to do what they ask. And I 357 00:18:22.119 --> 00:18:26.279 think in this case, Louise the prison officer had fallen 358 00:18:26.319 --> 00:18:28.680 into a sort of a state where she was able 359 00:18:28.680 --> 00:18:32.559 to actually enter into an sexual relationship with Paul on 360 00:18:32.799 --> 00:18:35.880 the wing, which is absolutely taboo in every single sense. 361 00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:37.640 And I think, you know, if you think about this, 362 00:18:37.720 --> 00:18:41.160 just interpersonally, you can easily think, well, you know that 363 00:18:41.359 --> 00:18:43.799 that could happen. He could sort of corner you in 364 00:18:43.839 --> 00:18:47.000 a room and then make a sort of inappropriate proposal, 365 00:18:47.039 --> 00:18:49.559 and you know, something could happen, but then you probably 366 00:18:49.599 --> 00:18:52.279 go and report it. But what seemed to have happened 367 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:54.920 in this particular case was that there were quite a 368 00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:58.160 few staff who were aware that this was going on. 369 00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:00.119 I must have sort of had that, you know, we 370 00:19:00.200 --> 00:19:03.279 call a false consensus, that everybody thought this was okay, 371 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:06.240 because you know, it was only Paul and he's very charming, 372 00:19:06.279 --> 00:19:08.559 good looking, and you know, Louise must know what she's 373 00:19:08.599 --> 00:19:10.799 doing or something like that, and that the worst part 374 00:19:10.799 --> 00:19:12.920 of this is that I was away from the prison 375 00:19:12.920 --> 00:19:16.039 to visit another hospital at the time, and I missed 376 00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:18.720 sort of the playing out of this. But eventually, the 377 00:19:18.799 --> 00:19:21.680 reason that the affair is discovered is not because somebody 378 00:19:21.759 --> 00:19:25.960 sees them, you know, having you know, an intimate moment 379 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:28.720 somewhere in the prison, but rather that Louise tries to 380 00:19:28.799 --> 00:19:31.599 challenge some other officers with bad behavior elsewhere in the wing, 381 00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:35.319 and that the officers threatened to reveal her affair with 382 00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:38.240 the prisoner, which they were already aware of so a 383 00:19:38.319 --> 00:19:40.079 large proportion of the staff in the wing already knew 384 00:19:40.079 --> 00:19:41.880 about this affair and it only came to light when 385 00:19:41.880 --> 00:19:44.200 she challenged them, and another officer who wasn't aware of 386 00:19:44.240 --> 00:19:46.279 it walking past her what was going and reported it 387 00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:48.519 to a governor. So it just shows you how deeply 388 00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:52.079 the sort of the roots of the psychopaths minipulative power 389 00:19:52.079 --> 00:19:55.440 can extend into a structure like a prison, however tight 390 00:19:55.519 --> 00:19:57.440 and tightly controlled, and this is what we call this 391 00:19:57.480 --> 00:19:59.440 is what we call a category. A prison in the 392 00:19:59.559 --> 00:20:02.519 UK was you know, you couldn't go anywhere without having 393 00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:05.000 helicopter wire above your head in case somebody tried to 394 00:20:05.079 --> 00:20:07.400 airlift a high risk prisoner at so it was one 395 00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:09.680 of the most secure places in the country and actually 396 00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:11.880 quite a well respected jail as well, so with a 397 00:20:11.920 --> 00:20:15.119 good reputation for security. But nevertheless this happened. And my 398 00:20:15.400 --> 00:20:18.200 contention is it wouldn't have happened if Paul hadn't been 399 00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:19.720 such an effective psychopath. 400 00:20:19.880 --> 00:20:23.839 Let's talk about Danny the borderline, because you say that 401 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:26.880