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According to the case file, Amber Wilhite had killed a guy when she was fifteen. The guy had been her mother’s new husband. She’d been raised in a cult, which explained the therapy and voluntary incarceration at a state run hospital for the criminally insane. In Amber’s defense, she had been abused sexually and physically by the guy, her mother, and other adult members of the cult.
At the age of twelve, she had watched the guy murder her older sister, who had been fifteen. She told police her mother had prepared all her daughters to be sacrificed to the devil. Which explained why she was killing Satanic parents I supposed. However, devil worship and Satanism were vastly different. Especially devil worship within a cult like atmosphere.
Amber had stabbed her mother and the mother’s new husband who was going to do actually do the sacrificing and ran away to her aunt’s house. Only after her aunt told the police did they raid the compound the cult inhabited and find the dead man and Amber’s mother who was not mortally wounded. They also dug up more than a dozen skeletons, all of them appeared to be around the same age as Amber at the time, fifteen.
She was now twenty-seven. She didn’t have fingerprints to leave. The tips of her fingers were listed as scarred to the point that her fingerprints had been removed, which perhaps explained her fascination with acid. It was difficult to remove fingerprints permanently even with scarring.
The conversation regarding Amber Wilhite revolved mostly around her being weird and her growing up in a cult. I didn’t find it particularly useful. And apparently neither did Lucas. He and I loaded up in the SUV shortly after traffic started to get heavy and headed to see Dr. Melinda Abernathy, Ph.D. and MD. We carried a generic court order that voided most privacy laws. It always amazed me what people were willing to give up for the illusion of safety.
The mental health ward where Dr. Abernathy saw patients was at a small hospital that looked like it was privately funded. It did not look like a state run institution, in other words. We told the guard and receptionist who we were and who we wanted to talk to, passed over the court order and took seats in the waiting room. There were two big doors with the crisscrossed wire in the little glass windows. We didn’t wait long before there was a loud buzz and the door opened.
Dr. Melinda Abernathy was taller than me by a few inches, had dark hair starting to grey, and what appeared to be plastic framed glasses with an all plastic construction. She stood erect and showed no hesitation in talking with us. She lead us down a hallway that had a door marked authorized personnel only and into a small cluttered office. The desk was immaculate but there was too much furniture in the small room which gave it a feeling of being cluttered and claustrophobic.
“Serial Crimes Tracking Unit, huh?” She said as she motioned for us to take seats. “And you said you wanted to talk about Amber Wilhite, I take it Martha is killing.” She paused. “Oh, wait, the Satanist murders, I take it you suspect Martha of doing them.”
“Martha?” I asked.
“Martha.” Dr. Abernathy took a seat at a little square table. “Since you don’t know about Martha, I’m guessing Dr. Durant did not release her medical chart to the police or probation and parole.”
“Dr. Durant?” I said. “Let’s start from the beginning, I think.”
“Dr. Durant is the director of the hospital and my boss. I did not want to release Amber Wilhite, but he over ruled me. Said her integration had been successful. I don’t believe integration of violent personalities is ever successful, so I was unwilling to release her.”
“Amber has dissociative identity disorder?” Lucas asked.
“Yes, it’s not surprising really given how she grew up. What do you know about Amber Wilhite.”
“She was raised in a devil worshipping cult that murdered some of the children of the followers and she saw her sister murdered.” I said.
“Not much in other words,” Dr. Abernathy sighed. “How much do you understand about multiple personalities?”
“I’m a trained psychiatrist and Dr. Cain knows enough about everything to be dangerous.” Lucas smiled at her.
“I’ve read about you, Dr. Cain, not just in the news but at a conference, one of the presenters did a lecture on your case from the 1980s and he had handouts for us.”
“Yes, I admit I am a great big mess.” I tried not to give her a creepy smile.
“Strange it was presented as just the opposite, a high functioning psychopath with mental symptoms more in line with a high functioning sociopath, but the physicality of a psychopath. And very smart. It was presented by a Dr. Kelce.”
“He was the psychiatrist I had to see after my abduction.” I told her.
“Was he correct or was it all just bluster to make himself look important?”
“He was correct,” Lucas answered for me. “We’ve been trying to figure out what to term her mental and physical condition for just over 5 years now.”
“I see. And you understand the basics of multiple personalities?”
“Yes.” I answered.
“If you lose track, stop me and I’ll explain.” Dr. Abernathy said. “Amber was my patient because dissociative identity disorder is my specialty. She comes from a very wealthy family. I’d say she is worth millions, although I think it is all under the guardianship of her aunt, she could afford a private hospital for her voluntary incarceration, so they choose us. She was here for seven years. During that time, I discovered 3 personalities, Amber is the original, but she suffers from mental stunting. She will forever be a child, incapable of comprehending adult concepts and responsibilities like driving a car or holding down a job. Then there was Caroline, Caroline is a little older than Amber, I suspect she’s the fracture that resulted from watching her sister be murdered. She’s 16 years old and slightly more mature than Amber. Neither Amber nor Caroline are the dominant personality. And neither was Martha, even though Martha appeared to be an adult; she understood the concept of working, personal responsibility, and other traits you would expect from a teen getting ready to pass into adulthood. Martha was smart, capable of learning, capable of manipulation that neither Amber nor Caroline could do. Talking to either Amber or Caroline is like talking to a child. Talking to Martha is much different. I suspected there was a fourth personality, but I could never bring it out. Martha talked about it, though, a few times and it is that personality that is the killer. Dr. Durant believed Martha was making up the fourth personality, manipulating me into believing that she wasn’t the dominant. He did have one point in favor of his theory, Martha was aware of Amber and Caroline, even though they were not aware of her. Normally, only the dominant personality is aware of the others. But normally is not always. And while we eventually labeled Martha the violent personality, I believed the fourth personality was also violent, possibly more violent than Martha. Martha would get violently angry over imagined insults, but it wasn’t mortal violence if that makes any sense. She never tried to grab an ink pen and stab anyone or bash someone’s head into the floor.”
“But one of her personalities is like that?” I asked, proving I was keeping up with the conversation.
“Yes, have you seen the crime scene photos from the cult’s compound? She decapitated her mother’s second husband with a steak knife.”
“That requires some serious effort.” I commented.
“It wasn’t just that, though. She stabbed every adult that tried to pull her away from the body as she sawed at his vertebra with the knife, including her mother. Before she ran away to her aunt’s, she grabbed the guy’s head to take with her and stopped to stab her mother several more times, none of them fatally. I don’t believe Martha had that kind of knowledge available to her, and while she can be violent, that seemed over the top for Martha.”
“You think the fourth personality had some kind of anatomical knowledge?” Lucas asked.
“Yes, and possibly a psychopathic personality.” Dr. Abernathy said. “It’s rare, but it does happen. I have studied several cases of multiple personalities where one personality does have knowledge the others don’t. For instance, I once worked with a boy who had an alter personality that could play the piano beautifully, even composed music, but the original personality had never even touched a piano. Unfortunately, he also had a low functioning psychopathic personality that was eventually shot by police after he rammed a police station with his car, repeatedly. How it works is still a mystery to us that may never be solved.”
“And Amber has one of these psychopathic alters,” I said.
“I think so. Possibly a low functioning psychopath. If she is responsible for the Satanist murders, then I think Martha probably plans them and the fourth alter does the actual killing.”
“You mentioned integration,” Lucas said.
“Dr. Durant decided the best way to treat Amber was to integrate Martha into her other personalities. He claimed it a success. I didn’t. Amber requires glasses, really thick lensed glasses. Caroline likes to part her hair in the middle. It may seem like very subtle differences, but there were times after the integration that I was sure I was still dealing with Martha and she was pretending to be Caroline or Amber. Martha doesn’t part her hair in the middle, she parts it on the right side. And she doesn’t need glasses like Amber does. I noticed times when talking to Amber that she would take her glasses off, set them on the desk and rub her eyes and temples, like she had a headache. But Amber only got headaches when she wasn’t wearing her glasses. I voiced my concerns about it, I felt the headaches were because Martha was wearing a very strong prescription lens that she didn’t need. I was ignored, because Dr. Durant doesn’t believe one personality can have a different vision acuity than another since they share a body. But Amber and Martha aren’t the first to exhibit that particular difference.”
“You’re implying neither Amber nor Martha are the true original personality,” Lucas said.
“I know,” Dr. Abernathy rubbed her own forehead and took off her glasses, set them on the table. “I told Dr. Durant I suspected the mystery fourth personality was the true original, but since he didn’t believe in the mystery fourth, I was essentially told to hold my tongue.”
“Why wouldn’t Amber be the original?” Lucas asked.
“Her real name isn’t Amber.” Dr. Abernathy told us. “It’s Melissa. Melissa’s mother legally changed Melissa’s name after her father died. She changed the names of all the children. Martha once told me that her mother killed her father, she saw it happen, and then some men came to the house and helped her move the body to make it look like an accident. I was inclined to believe Martha, there were a lot of details in her account of it. I think that was the original fracture of personality and I think it’s when Martha was created. I think Amber and Caroline came later when the myriad of abuses started.”
“And you suspect Melissa’s personality was basically killed off when the fourth personality was created.”
“Absorbed, I think. Martha had this strange habit of listening to kids’ music and singing nursery rhymes. She never would tell me why. Dr. Durant thought she did it to make Amber and Caroline happy, I suspect it was done to placate the fourth personality.”
“We have found snippets of nursery rhymes at the murder scenes,” I told Dr. Abernathy. “And last night someone took a picture of Amber as she ran from the scene of an interrupted murder. She was identified by a detective that had been a patrol man who responded to the compound after Amber’s aunt called in to tell them about her niece showing up babbling about murders and carrying a human head in a bag.”
“I’ve read the transcripts and listened the audio recordings of the interview and 911 tapes. That was the fourth personality, I’m sure of it. She doesn’t sound anything like Amber, Martha, or Caroline. And her vocabulary and word choices were not what I would expect from a 15-year-old girl who grew up in a devil worshipping cult. She sounds a lot like my college roommate who grew up in Boston. Amber has always lived in Florida.”
“Do you know anything definite about the fourth personality?” Lucas asked her.
“I have never met her.” Dr. Abernathy shrugged. “And Martha didn’t like to talk about it. She was more than happy to talk about Amber and Caroline, but she wouldn’t discuss the fourth, just dropped cryptic clues to the existence of it from time to time. I am positive it’s psychopathic with homicidal tendencies. I said earlier Martha is violent, but not to the level of the murder the physical person committed, and I don’t think Amber nor Caroline are capable of killing. For that matter, I don’t think Martha is either. But someone in that girl is capable of extreme violence and brutality and they have Martha to help.”
