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Abnormal psychology. Those words conjure up things like people who eat other people or those possessed by demons. Zombies that are real due to some abnormality of the amygdala. Electroshock “therapy”. Strait jackets (which you can purchase, by the way, at a place called Handcuff Warehouse online for only $188). It occurred to me that no fledgling psychiatrist needs to spend years studying any of that stuff. All they need to do is binge watch any true crime channel. That’s where they can really see people devolving to the bottom of the food chain. To the point that murder, like telling a white lie or not answering the phone, becomes just another way to deal with people.
I’ve always believed that the true crime genre definitely can make positive contributions to society. Especially by helping solve cold cases. But I can’t deny there’s a certain moral one upness going on. A holy sh*t at least I’m not that crazy kind of thing. Maybe that’s part of the appeal for others as well, I don’t know. But true crime, in all its gritty, dirty, and twisted detail, really lays bare someone’s motives. As well as their true selves. Stabbing people thirty eight times and/or dismembering them is kind of hard to rationalize.
You don’t need to tell me that there are some god-awful brutal individuals in this world. I don’t even want to think about what some of those people do. But I don’t know how else to work through it. I mean, it’s not like you can bring it up at the water cooler: “what’s with all those crazy sons of bitches on the Oxygen Channel, right?” Perhaps psychiatrists, with their years of training and experience, could help process the nightmare of the wide range of intense violence exposed in the genre. But I think I’d rather have someone with first hand experience (and a gun) guide me through it.
Certainly if we’re going to wade into this swamp, we want to hear from those who have really been there (whether as a survivor or as law enforcement). Because a whole nation of psychiatrists can’t explain the wretched underbelly of human behavior (and protect us from it) the way a couple of hardened murder detectives can. The best investigators have seen all sorts of crimes and heard every possible lie that people tell to cover their trails. They’ve developed keen intuition about alibis (so you say you were helping your Grandma with her crocheting?). And the best shows are the one where those detectives tell you all about it.
Here’s an example. So this man and woman living in Florida in the 90’s end up having an affair. She’s married, the guy is single but he is the best friend of the woman’s husband. Gross, I know, but there’s more. The woman wants to divorce her husband but she’s afraid she’ll lose custody of their daughter. So she and her boy toy hatch a plan to murder the husband so they can live happily ever after (and collect his life insurance). Because, I guess, murder isn’t something that goes against you in a custody hearing.
The worst part is that even though they did a really bad job of planting evidence to make his death look like a boating accident, none of the authorities caught on. Nearly thirty years went by before things started to crack. Turns out that after the killers got married she found out her new husband had severe drinking and anger management problems (ya think?) Almost three decades after the murder, he threatens to kill her, almost does, and she escapes to the police. The whole facade fell apart with the help of some cold case investigators who were (finally) on their trail.
Another case involves a woman in California. Her husband took out a million dollar life insurance policy on her three days after they were married (but they dated for several months, so that’s not bad, right?) With the same initiative and efficiency, he then contacted some gang members in LA and hired them to kill her. The hired hit men followed the couple one night and “forced” the complicit husband to pull over at an on-ramp to a freeway. As he moved to the backseat to protect his young daughter, a person from the tailing vehicle approached and shot the wife as she tried to flee.
That was in 1998. It wasn’t until 2012 that police re-examined evidence in the case in response to the victim’s father who never stopped pressing law enforcement. Investigators found that the woman had written down the license plate of that car; that information eventually outed two of the three perpetrators. During their days in court in 2014, they confessed that the husband had hired them. He got twenty five years but had already collected the life insurance payment a few years after her death. For sure he had already spent it all (2).
Then there’s the guy who set his house on fire in 1991. He helped his three kids out and then stood with them as it burned down before their eyes. The problem was his wife, the mother of those kids, was still inside. She was insured for $200,000. Fast forward seventeen years and one of those children, now a twenty three year old man, dies when the car he is helping his dad work on falls off the jack and crushes him. Dad had insured that son for over $700,000.
The murderer then purchased a $200,000 policy on his second wife. When someone reported the payout from his son’s death to police as suspicious, the authorities opened an investigation. The jerk was finally arrested (although the judge ruled that details from the death of the victim’s mother twenty years earlier were not admissible).
If those stories aren’t enough to convince you that people can be ice cold mother effers, perhaps some about children killing their parents will do the trick. Not the ones where the kids were terrorized and abused and the parents deserved it. No, we’re talking about the ones where the daughter wants to hang with her scummy boyfriend and smoke weed all day. Guess what? Her dad doesn’t approve. So she convinces the guy to murder her father and helps him plan the whole thing. That story, unfortunately, is repeated here and here. And, I’m sure, there are thousands of others.
Some insurance companies and government officials are figuring things out (see this and this). They should share this information. People need to know, unequivocally, not only that there are evil people in the world, but that they could be dating you right now. Or listed on your marriage license someday. Or named on one of those birth certificates you filed in the safe. It makes you wonder if those crime prevention tips you see in articles or on the web pages of security systems shouldn’t include things like Don’t let your new spouse buy life insurance on you. And Sleep in a safe room if your daughter has a scummy, weed-smoking boyfriend.
What to do? I’m thinking about beefing up those psych 101 courses in high school or college. Forget the textbooks, just pick out the worst crime documentaries you can find and watch them as a class. Then talk about it. What should she have noticed in order to avoid marrying this psychotic bastard? Why didn’t he figure out that her buying a million dollar life insurance policy on him was red flag number one? Class discussion ensues; the trusting types who might eventually get victimized are forced to confront ugliness while still surrounded by support. They can learn in a safe environment.
Oh and maybe put one of those hardened detectives behind one way glass to watch the class. Perhaps he or she can pick out a few students to keep an eye on (who doesn’t flinch when the dude tosses those bodies in the wood chipper?) It’s a wild idea, the one way glass part, but the class itself might not be. Some folks really don’t know what’s out there. They might have been raised on Veggie Tales and Sunday school. Grandma’s house for the holidays. They might be truly sweet and decent. In other words clueless.
And even if you’re not truly sweet and decent—maybe you’re just sometimes sort of nice and most of the time not much of a jerk—you still deserve a heads up. There’s some bad sh*t out there. Why not teach that in our institutions of learning? Why not offer that knowledge as a service to our communities?
I argue that topic would be way more helpful than most of the stuff taught in schools already. I mean, c’mon, how many lives has algebra saved?