Murderous Minds by Dean Haycock Read Free Book Online

a genetic component, it wasn’t an obvious factor in LTK’s case.
    According to his parents, his mother had an unremarkable pregnancy and an unremarkable birth. LTK seemed like a normal baby: he seemed to respond to people as any baby does. He was born too soon to take part in an experiment that tested skin conductance activity in 1-year-old infants exposed to a fear challenge. Skin conductance, as described earlier, reflects the body’s automatic response to fear or stress by increasing perspiration. The study found that infants who showed low levels of skin conductance activity at age one year were more likely to act aggressively at age three years. 5
    LTK wasn’t a particularly fussy infant either, a trait that has been linked to later conduct problems in boys. 6 When conduct problems lead to a formal diagnosis of conduct disorder during childhood or adolescence, it may precede a diagnosis of psychopathy in adulthood. Reportedly, LTK’s family was not much different from other families that did not produce a psychopathic son. There were no signs that LTK had been abused or subjected to extreme stress as a child. In this regard, LTK differed from many criminal psychopaths who claim, or are known, to have been abused early in life.
    The Homicidal Triad
    He also had no history of setting fires or abusing animals. Arson and animal abuse, together with bed-wetting, are known as the “Homicidal Triad,” “Hellman and Blackman Triad,” or the “Macdonald Triad” 7 among forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, criminal profilers, and many readers of true-crime books. Because they are frequently associated with psychopathic behavior in the public’s mind, it makes sense to ask: why didn’tthey appear in LTK’s medical history? They are, after all, frequently said to predict a child’s future as a psychopath. According to forensic psychologist Karen Franklin, Ph.D., a careful examination of the evidence indicates a weaker connection between the Homicidal Triad and future violence than the original FBI profilers who made the link assumed. 8 More likely, with the exception of bed-wetting, they are indications of severe stress or abuse. In other words, future violent individuals, psychopaths, or serial killers who have suffered childhood abuse may indeed include the Homicidal Triad in their list of youthful experiences, yet other abused children who show the same set of behaviors do not grow up to be violent or to become serial killers.
    It is every caring parent’s nightmare if her child displays the Homicidal Triad by any of its names. But the presence of the Triad by itself doesn’t guarantee that the child will follow in the footsteps of Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, who have become the twin faces of psychopathic serial killing in popular culture. Nor does its absence, as illustrated by LTK, guarantee the absence of psychopathy.
    Who Are You Calling a Psychopath?
    The Homicidal Triad is often linked to serial killers in popular culture. There is an interesting, uncertain, and somewhat controversial relationship between serial killers and psychopaths. We know that not all psychopaths are serial killers and that not all serial killers are psychopaths. Of the estimated one to two million criminal and non-criminal psychopaths in the U.S., a minuscule number are serial killers: estimates range from 35 to 100.
    U.S. federal law makes no mention of psychopathy in its definition of serial killers: “The term ‘serial killings’ means a series of three or more killings, not less than one of which was committed within the United States, having common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes were committed by the same actor or actors.” 9 The FBI recognized the complexity of serial killer motivations and their relationship to psychopathy when it declared that “psychopathy alone does not explain the motivations of a serial killer.” 10
    Christopher Patrick questions what many people