Ted Bundy, Johnny Garrett, Marie Moore, Jonathan, me. Could any one of us become a murderer? Could anyone in the world become a murderer? Probably—at least I think so. Given certain kinds of neurologic and psychiatric problems, and being raised by violent, abusive parents, just about any of us could be turned into a killer. And you don’t need to be born with those problems; they can be acquired. The brain is not as resilient as we might wish. It’s not just the batterings that take their toll, or the car accidents and brain infections. We now know that intense, ongoing emotional stress can change the very structure of our brain, much less its function. No one is immune. It could happen to any of us.
Most people find that hard to believe. They can’t imagine that they could commit murder. Certainly all those people who stood outside the prison at Starke just before Ted Bundy’s execution, chanting, “Burn, Bundy, Burn!” never for a moment thought that they could murder. Only now, as I reread the earlier chapters of this book and seek the words to bring it to a close, am I struck by the irony of that scene. There, as I drove through the gates to meet with Mr. Bundy for the last time, I saw a hoard of citizens, confident that they could never become killers, clamoring for death.
How much do we know about what makes us violent? A better question: How much do we want to know? How curious are we? Sometimes we act as though we haven’t the faintest idea why people become murderers. But, in truth, we know a lot more about what makes for violence than we often care to admit. So we play dumb. To understand sometimes means to forgive, and these days people aren’t in a very forgiving mood. For example, we know that, for the most part, murderers are made, not born. Many of the genetic theories entertained in the 1970s, like the XYY syndrome, have been called into question. Recently scientists in the Netherlands identified a family in which several of the males behaved in wildly aberrant ways. These males, they discovered, carried a mutant gene that affected the way they metabolized certain neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers that transmit impulses from one nerve cell to the next. To me, the most interesting finding of that study was that not all of the affected males were aggressive. The question remains: Why did some of the men with the genetic mutation rape and assault while others did not? What made the difference?
At this time it is safe to say that there is no known genetic abnormality associated specifically with violent crime. No particular national or ethnic or racial or religious group has proved itself to be innately and enduringly more violent than another. That is not to say that from time to time one or another group has not tried to so distinguish itself. There is, of course, a normal genetic condition, characteristic of about 50 percent of the human population, that is associated with violent crime: the XY syndrome, or being male. One can’t simply blame male violence on social conditioning. In almost every animal species—bears, chimpanzees, even fish and lizards—males are more aggressive than females. Male hormones, androgens, must have something to do with this phenomenon. If male animals are deprived of androgens at crucial stages in their development, they will not develop normal male aggressiveness.
However, although men in our society commit about nine times as many murders as women, most men are not violent. Neither having a masculinized brain nor having lots of androgen pouring through one’s bloodstream is sufficient to create a violent man. Nevertheless, it seems somewhat more difficult for men than for women to control their violent impulses. Perhaps, in murder cases, being male should be considered a mitigating circumstance. It’s a thought. I should mention it to Dick Burr—it could make for an interesting defense.
What else do we know about the genesis of violence? We know that our basic aggressive and sexual instincts, and our pleasurable feelings, spring from what we currently call the limbic system—those deep, primitive brain structures we discussed earlier that have widespread connections to the rest of the brain. We know that our sense of fear is localized predominantly in the amygdala, a nucleus of cells hidden within each temporal lobe. We know that destruction of these nuclei eradicates fear, whereas stimulation of them can induce it. We cannot do without the amygdala. But fear is often the nidus for paranoia. A certain amount of fear is necessary for survival. On the other hand, too much can make us dangerous.
There is also evidence that the primitive urges springing from the limbic system are modulated or controlled by our frontal lobes. When we disconnect the pathways between our reptilian brain and our frontal cortex, we no longer have good control of our urges. Accidents and injuries often do just that kind of damage. If the connections between our frontal lobes and limbic system are disrupted, how responsible are we for flying off the handle? It’s a hard call. How responsible is a truck driver for a crash if his brakes are worn? We also know that diffuse damage to our brains, a common consequence of batterings, tends to make us more irritable and impulsive. Damage to just about any part of our brain makes self-control problematic, and repeatedly violent individuals have had more than their share of hard knocks, literally and figuratively.
We are beginning to understand the brain’s neurochemistry and the effects of specific neurotransmitters on behavior. Neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin affect our thinking, our emotions, and our moods. Take serotonin, for instance. We know that by lowering the serotonin levels in animals we can make them more aggressive. We also know that by increasing serotonin levels we can make them gentler. Certain members of monkey colonies are naturally endowed with high concentrations of brain serotonin. These serotonin-rich monkeys are a whole lot nicer to each other than their less well-endowed peers. They are more likely to groom one another and to share their food. It looks to humans as though a certain type of morality comes more easily to them. I wonder if human beings are like that. From the start, is doing the right thing easier for some of us than for others? Studies on human beings have shown that extremely violent men may have lower concentrations of brain serotonin than gentler men. Did they start out that way or did something happen to them to decrease their stores? Whatever the explanation, lawabiding, moral behavior may be especially hard for them.
What fascinates me most is the fact that brain concentrations of substances like serotonin are not immutable. They are not simply genetic givens—experience affects them. Certain kinds of stressors can decrease brain serotonin levels and thereby change behavior. For example, if you isolate animals at crucial developmental stages, if you keep them caged all alone, their serotonin drops. What is more, when you then release them and put them in contact with other animals, they are fiercely aggressive. Pain and fear also reduce serotonin levels and promote aggression. That’s how pit bulls are trained to fight. Heat, crowding, discomfort, and upbringing by aggressive members of a species also increase animal aggressiveness. Now there are a few basic research findings it might make sense to share with the deputy warden at Starke. I could write to him, but would he read my note?
Sometimes, when I have a really bad day, it looks to me as if we, like the deputy warden, are not much interested in understanding violence. It may look as though we are. Those seven Bundy books would seem proof of our curiosity to learn what makes people like Theodore Bundy violent. But think about it: If we really wanted to know what made him violent, would we have killed him? He died with so many questions left unanswered. I never even saw an MRI of his brain. A week or two after his death, I got a couple of calls from the FBI agent who had gotten close to Mr. Bundy while he was in prison and had picked his brain. Now he wanted to pick mine. He kept me on the phone quite a while. We played a game of cat and mouse, each of us trying to find out what the other knew. I knew about the knives Ted Bundy placed in his aunt’s bed when he was only three years old. He knew what Ted Bundy said about the sexual uses of decapitated heads and why their front teeth were often missing. Obviously a lot remained to be discovered about Ted Bundy and his family. By killing him, we blew our chance to learn more.
How curious were people about Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon? Jonathan and I were in the midst of examining him in preparation for a possible insanity defense when an epiphany convinced Mr. Chapman to plead guilty. Did God speak to him and show him the way? Did someone else get to him and convince him to keep quiet? Or did a group of neurons in his limbic system fire off and give rise to his sudden enlightenment? Was it a seizure? A hallucination? A manic moment? A dissociative episode? We shall probably never know for sure. One thing we do know is that Mark David Chapman’s decision to plead guilty and forgo a trial did not seem a reasonable decision, either to me or to his lawyer. It still doesn’t. In fact, his lawyer begged the judge to obtain an independent competency evaluation to assess Chapman’s ability to make such a plea. The judge thought he knew better: he, like the judge in Heath Wilkins’s case, recognized a competent defendant when he saw one. He refused to order the evaluation and accepted the guilty plea.
Prior to sentencing, Mr. Chapman’s lawyer made one final attempt to bring to light some of our psychiatric and neurologic findings. The data might at least influence the kind of sentence he received. However, when I took the stand and started to respond to the lawyer’s first question, the judge cut me off. He was not interested. He wasn’t the least bit curious.
Judges are not the only ones who sometimes find it easier not to know. I think of Velma Barfield. She was a serial murderer. She was also the first and only woman to be executed in the United States in the last quarter-century. Shortly before her scheduled execution, Dick Burr, who was assisting the local attorney on her case, called me and asked me to examine her. There were no funds for the examination. I’m not sure if the court refused them or if the local attorney did not ask for them. I know he was not all that enthusiastic about my coming. It was, therefore, a freebie. This did not please me. At Bellevue, I rely almost entirely on funds from these kinds of evaluations to keep our office running and do our violence research. Getting money from the government to do clinical research on violence is next to impossible. I am still trying unsuccessfully to convince the Office of Juvenile Justice to help me study the children of the hundred or so violent delinquents Jonathan and I studied in the late 1970s. The study just might give us a window on the intergenerational transmission of violence. Given the level of violence in our country, you would think the government would be interested in this topic. Not so.
My department chairman at N.Y.U. wishes I’d find something biochemical or physiological to study so I could pull in some big grant money. But if I did that, who would talk to the murderers and their kin and find out what sorts of experiences had lowered their serotonin levels or why their frontal lobes didn’t communicate well with their limbic systems? Besides, most people agree that the most important influence on how we treat others as adults is how we were treated as children.
Dick Burr accompanied me to the prison and sat in on the psychiatric examination of Velma Barfield. What I remember most clearly is that, in order to get to the small courtroom set aside for our interview, we had to pass by the gas chamber. I shall never forget a gauge I saw on the wall of the outside corridor. “That measures the level of cyanide gas that escapes so they don’t poison any of the witnesses,” Dick explained.
“Thanks for sharing that.”
We learned lots about Velma Barfield that day, Dick Burr and I. I was pretty sure much of what we learned could have been used in a clemency appeal to the governor. When I left North Carolina, I was optimistic.
A few days later Dick Burr called to tell me that Velma Barfield and her lawyer had decided not to reveal the most crucial psychiatric findings. Velma was afraid of upsetting her folks and losing their support during what might be her final days. To my mind, these definitely would be her final days if she refused to allow disclosure. What got me was that her lawyer took the same position she did. He worried about embarrassing her family. He had grown to like them.
I offered to return to North Carolina and talk with Velma again. I was pretty sure that I could convince her to change her mind. I thought that if she realized how much her story might help people understand what kinds of experiences could drive a woman to murder, she would relent and allow her full story to be told. But her attorney was adamant—just let things be. He would not even allow me to speak with her on the phone.
Velma Barfield was executed in a new, modern death chamber in North Carolina. The gas chamber remained empty and the corridor safe. She was put to death by lethal injection. A couple of years later, when I went to North Carolina’s death row to examine a couple of juveniles, a guard insisted on showing me the anteroom where Velma Barfield awaited death and the room with the gurney on which she died. It looked pretty sterile compared to Old Sparky. Such is the progress of justice.
I can’t really say that Velma Barfield’s secrets died with her. Like Dick Burr and her local attorney, I am not allowed to reveal them and her folks aren’t likely to spill the beans, so I guess they will die with us. It’s hard to play by those rules. Just before her execution I fantasized calling the governor or Gloria Steinem or going to the newspapers with Velma’s story. I didn’t; I’m not allowed to.
Now, as I think back about Ted Bundy and Mark David Chapman and Velma Barfield—in fact, as I think back about Johnny Garrett and the clemency board that confirmed his death sentence without even reading the materials that his superb court-appointed defense attorneys so diligently provided them, or looking at the videotapes I had made of his madness, I think I understand what’s happening. Ever since 1976, when the Supreme Court mandated separate sentencing phases in capital cases, juries have been obliged to consider the mitigating as well as the aggravating circumstances of a murder. Aggravating circumstances focus for the most part on the grotesqueness of the crime or crimes: Was the victim tortured or raped or mutilated? Was there more than one victim? Then there are the mitigating circumstances. These often focus on the defendant’s abusive childhood and on issues of mental health. Herein lies the contradiction. Another mathematical formula comes to mind: The gruesomeness of a murder is directly proportional to the craziness of the murderer. That’s just the way it is. Now ask a jury to wrestle with that equation and come up with the right answer. It can’t be done.
And our own lack of curiosity? How is it that we pour millions of dollars into Bundy books and the like, but are, nevertheless, willing to sacrifice further knowledge about him and his ilk in the interest of doing away with them? Maybe Ted Bundy was right. I suspect we are all far more curious about what the murderer did—the gory details of the crime—than about why he did it. It’s the act of murder that fascinates us and tickles our own limbic systems. No wonder people fight for seats at executions. Is that, at least in part, why I do the work I do? Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised.
A final word for my tweedy professor in the back row of the auditorium, whose question I have tried hard to answer; it is a corollary of the last equation: In a given murder, our desire to learn its causes, and the time we are willing to spend doing that, are inversely proportional to the grisliness of the crime and the pleasure we anticipate deriving from the execution.