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66 SNAKES IN SUITS
there other signs? Perhaps with more information about their personality
and interactions with others over the years, their crimes might
become less inexplicable. Even so, psychological “autopsies” are more
useful for generating hypotheses about behavioral patterns than they
are for providing causal explanations of an event. Furthermore, even
if family members, close friends, and associates had noticed that all
was not right with these individuals, they would not necessarily have
appreciated the potential significance of the information, and they
might not have known how to act on it. What we can say, however, is
that even if we cannot predict specific events, the behavior of psychopathic
individuals does not occur out of the blue and seldom is out of
character. The problem is that without prolonged and perceptive interactions
with these individuals, we typically are not sure what this
character is, particularly when it is obscured by a charming physically
and socially attractive exterior.
Where Was the Emotional Connection?
Many trial watchers came to see Scott Peterson as a manipulative,
charming, pathological liar with a grandiose sense of self
and an inability to empathize. “The absence of emotion is a hallmark
of a psychopath,” forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy said.
“They don’t have the internal psychological structure to feel and
relate to other people. Sometimes they can imitate it, so they can
fool other people, but there will come a point when they can’t
maintain it.” Even passionate, angry, and accusatory outbursts
from the family members Peterson was once close to didn’t appear
to faze him. That fits too, Dr. Meloy said—psychopaths can’t
form truly intimate bonds with others.
Such an absence of heartfelt emotion “gives the psychopath
the ability at times to kill without remorse and to kill for reasons
filled with banality,” he explained. “Others’ emotions of grief and
rage and fury are like water off a duck’s back.”
That apparent lack of emotion raised investigators’ suspicions
in the first place, police and prosecutors said when they